Same stuff, different day

I've decided that I prefer the fever-reducing buzz of Tylenol to that of ibuprofen.

I'm not writing so much because I'm feeling better, I'm writing because I'm feeling BOOOORED!

I don't usually write about math here and if you dislike math stop reading now, but I had an interesting interchange with one of my kids the other day. It concerned the the despised point-slope form of a linear equation, y - y1 = m(x - x1). I don't teach that form because (1) I find the distributive property to be a top-level producer of errors, and (2), you can't graph it on the calculator that way. In fact, the only way you can graph it without transforming it to slope-intercept form (which was I was taught to do in HS) is to plot the point and make a "slope triangle." What I teach kids to do is put the slope and coordinates of the point into y = mx + b and solve for b. Fewer steps and simpler.

My kid mentioned this to her teacher, who promptly flipped out. Apparently mine is a very old-fashioned way of doing this. It took me quite a while to figure out why someone would prefer that awkward form over the more commonly used one. I think it's about shifting. For all other kids of graphs, you learn how to shift them up and down, left and right, and equation form you use to do that is like point-slope form and has the same effect, shifting the line up and down, left and right. So it makes sense to do it that way except that although the form is similar and has the same effect, (1) the form is similar, but not identical (the standard form being y - k = f(x - h) or more commonly y = f(x-h) + k), and (2) I have NEVER seen a math teacher, or a math book for that matter, talk about point slope being about shifting lines. It wouldn't be a bad idea to do that, but they don't.

Mid-life mania

My daughter thinks I should pretend to have a midlife crisis so I could buy that motorcycle.

My morning visit to the hospital

I've kind of had it. I still have this low fever so I couldn't go to shul which was very upsetting, plus I'm supposed to do an 80 mile MS fundraising bike ride next weekend and this was the weekend I needed to ride 40-50 miles to get myself ready for it. Now I don't know what I'm going to do. There's a 45 mile version, or I could just say, oh well, this is gonna hurt and do the 80 miles anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

In the advancement of waiting and seeing, I've been doing the waiting part for most of the day, waiting at the registration places at the hospital, waiting at the lab, waiting for the results, which apparently are not coming today.

My doctor rules out swine flu, since this clearly is not any kind of flu, so we're looking for things like mono, Lyme disease, hepatitis, random infections (the registration lady said 'well, I certainly hope you don't have any of these things,' which was sweet).

I've had mono before, but apparently you can get it again. I got it the first time at age 30, which I do not recommend. It's one of those things where the older you are when you get it the worse it is. I caught it 2 months after starting my fist job out of biz school. I was really really sick, like 104+ fever for 2 weeks and a sore throat so bad I had to take steroids for it, which I also do not recommend as a way to have a good time. Then another couple of weeks of just being regular sick. All told, I missed a month of work and I didn't have the stamina to work 12 hour days immediately when I returned. My boss never forgave me for this. They probably would have done me a favor if they'd just fired me then instead of torturing me for a year first, but then maybe I wouldn't have ended up at the place I worked next where I ended up meeting my wife. So you never know.

As for Lyme disease, I've been to Lyme, CT where it was invented by deer who were tired of being hunted and hit by cars and who conspired with the deer ticks to spread it. By the way, did you know that more people are killed by deer than almost every other kind of animal? Between Lyme disease and car crashes, only bees kill more people each year.

Infection? I dunno, the body's got lots of parts and as best I can tell, almost all of them can get infected.

And then, of course, it may just go away by itself.

Randomly Feverish Notes

There are a lot of shows on TV about dogs.

There are also a lot of superlatives on TV- greatest, extreme, amazing, top, outrageous, super; you could spend a long time watching nothing but the best and worst of virtually everything. And why would we be interested in anything else? Normal is boring is the assumption, I guess. I think normal is what you make it and it really isn't that hard to make almost anything interesting if you try. I'm concerned that people can be too dependent on outside stimulation. This is a really bad thing because ultimately you're stuck with yourself, and if you don't know how to enjoy life without somebody or something else's help, you probably not going to be very happy.

When I was at the hospital today getting my bodily fluids tested, I saw in the parking garage, one of the most beautiful commercially produced things I've ever seen. It's a Victory Vision Tour motorcycle. I don't really care about motorcycles one way of the other (though I once had a great afternoon in college riding on the back of one (as opposed to driving it) squirting my fraternity mates with a fire extinguisher), but this thing was breathtaking. I spent 5 minutes walking around it and seeing it from all angles.

Oh, so let's add walking to your car in the parking lot as something that doesn't have to be boring.

Managing being sick

I don't get sick a lot and I hate it. I'm now on my 4th day of this and if it's not better by the end of the day I'm off to the doctor.

It's a weird kind of sick. The only symptom I have is a fever 100-102. Nothing, and I mean nothing else. No gunk of any sort coming out of my body. That's why I'm pretty sure it's not swine flu. My doctor said he was not aware of any swine flu that didn't also have runny nose and cough. I got nothin'.

Unfortunately, aside from a few scattered hours here and there (like right now), I've felt generally too crappy to do anything, and I'm incredibly bored. When I was a kid, being sick was an opportunity to watch game shows on TV, which I loved. I remember being upset every day in the early afternoon when Let's Make A Deal and The Price is Right were replaced by One Life to Live and All My Children. I tried watching The Price is Right. It was disgusting. Drew Carey is very unpleasant to look at and not nearly as funny as he thinks he is, the showroom model babe is a complete caricature- huge blonde hair, frightening big white teeth, and leeringly low cut dresses. I like looking at pretty women as much as the next guy, but UGH!

And the people? I guess I have to admit that I don't look like those Michelangelo sculptures I saw this summer, but doesn't anybody go to these things who is not a minimum of 20 pounds overweight? Plus, back in the day, people actually used to try to guess what the price was. Now that everyone's savvy that it's the closest guess without going going over the actual price, the first person would guess $1400, the second one would guess $1401, the third $1402 and the fourth $1 to capture anything under $1400. What's the fun in that? The only thing I liked was the set, which was a melange of neon patterns and looked like it was made out of cardboard.

So the most interesting thing to do is monitor my temperature. I remember from when my kids were little that there isn't anything to be gained by repeatedly taking their temperature. But I find the oscillations fascinating. Maybe I'll record them on a scatter plot and see if I can get a curve of best fit. Up and down, sometimes steadily, sometimes in sudden jumps or falls. Maybe I'm just too self-absorbed, but if my temperature was 100.2 at 6AM and 101.9 at 8AM, what happened during those 2 hours? All I was doing was lying in bed.

The only other thing to do is strategize where I'm going to park myself and whether I will be sitting or lying down. In general, I try to avoid being in bed during the day because it makes it harder for me to sleep there at night. The couch in the den is the most comfortable, but everyone else likes to sit in there too and it's next to the kitchen and therefore noisy. So I stay in the living room. The couch is fine, there's a good TV and it's relatively quiet. So I think I will go in there now and prop myself up at a 45 degree angle and watch something I've seen a bunch of times before.

I think we've just stumbled over the TMI line, so I think I'll stop now.

2 sick 2 blog 2 day

Being sick is cruel

I'm not talking about being deathly ill, I just have a bit of a fever and no other majopr symptoms. And it even gives me a 4 day weekend, but it's sooooo booooring. And frustrating, because I got all this time and I don't have the energy to do a darned thing.

OK. I've said it. Back to bed.

I don't really think they were trying to be funny

Copied verbatim from the text of the talk about the upcoming dance by the head of a school that I don't work at:

Please abide by the following dancing guidelines: (a) consensual (b) vertical (c) nothing over sexualized.

I don't really like to dance, so my dancing is rarely consensual (grudging is a better word), but the intriguing one is definitely 'vertical.' It makes you really want to know what happened at the last dance.

Thursday evening

I'm not feeling well, so I don't have much to say this evening.

I got home from Parents Night and my younger daughter said she needed help with her math homework. She said her older sister had already helped her with a couple of problems. It wasn't until this afternoon that I found out that my older daughter (who was sitting in the next room) knew she needed help because her Facebook status was "Can't do her math homework."

Simple Question

Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of signal on the outside of a car to let the other drivers know you're about to turn?

You little whippersnappers...

One of my many activities during the work day consists of minding the soccer field during lunch. Fortunately, nobody is allowed to actually eat lunch on the field, because it's artificial turf. This reminds me of when Lenny Dykstra, a world-class tobacco chewer and spitter, used to play for the Phillies. They had an artificial turf field and the tobacco juice had nothing to soak into, as it would on a grass field. So there it would sit and if it didn't rain for a while the area where he would stand would become increasing brown (you could see this on TV) and sticky (or so I read).

Unfortunately, I lack the ability to fully illustrate why this is such an unpleasant enterprise and can only offer the observation that the field is used almost exclusively by 13 and 14 year-old boys and that my only responsibility is to ensure that they do not suffer mortal wounds from either (1) driveway traffic, or (2) each other.

This responsibility is complicated by this particular sub-species' complete inability to connect actions with consequences. It is, however, good practice for my future as a cranky old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

Darn!

Well, once again, nobody I know got a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

Much Time, Very Little Action

I have nothing but good feelings for the hearing-impaired, but they really shouldn't be telephone reservation agents.

Random New Year Notes

I'm teaching the same thing in 2 different classes out of two different textbooks. Sounds easy, right? Except that the two textbooks use different terms to mean the same thing and I keep switching terminology which is very confusing for the students. Not sure what to do about it. Either way is correct, but I really wish I could stick with just one.

I've been listening to the radio more recently but I keep hearing Nickelback and All American Rejects. There's Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas too, which is fun, but I also keep getting that Taylor Swift song stuck in my head (Update: My daughter just finished practicing piano so now I have Chopin stuck in my head which is much better). It's a way to pass the commuting time, but I might go back to my Learn Italian disks.

Just not getting into Top Chef this time, and So You Think You Can Dance was more fun during the summer. Anybody watch Bored to Death?

What Have They Done?

Not sure what it is or why, but it now takes me twice as long to get through the traffic light at Haverford Station Rd. And Montgomery Av. than it did 2 weeks ago. All I can tell for sure is that the light pattern is more complicated, and more complicated is rarely better.

Is that what it takes? I always wondered what it took.

I know I am a mature individual because my vitamins say so. I apparently achieved maturity almost 4 years ago, when I turned 50. If only I'd known that back in the day when everyone told me how immature I was, I could have said, "Well, just wait."

The End is Near (or, fire that advertising agency)

I just saw some ads at Starbucks that used the atrociously cliched (sorry, I don't know how to do the accent) "It's not just coffee, it's Starbucks." As a professional marketer, I must tell you that if the next thing you see is, "The best just got better" you know they're really in trouble.

Because I never lie, and I'm always right

This post will probably disappoint those who are looking here for humor today. The Jewish new year is designed to be a time of reflection, to evaluate your life and see if you measure up. I've made it pretty easy for myself in that I have a pretty simple life philosophy: Treat everyone the way I'd want to be treated, and leave every situation I encounter better than I found it. As a math teacher, one could argue that the second part should be "better or equal to," or, not worse, since there are many things you can't even affect, much less improve, but I'd prefer to shoot high.

So how did I do? Not sure I can live up to the title (which was, I believe an election slogan on a Firesign Theater album). I still have another couple of hours in shul to work on it, but I think on the macro scale I did well on the first one. On a more moment to moment basis, do I ever get testy with people? Of course I do. I can't promise to never get testy. All I can strive for is to lengthen my fuse, and I think that's something any of us can work on. But I can say with absolute certainty that I did not at any time hold grudges or do anything with the intent of hurting anyone physically or emotionally, and I tried within my own limits to treat everyone with compassion and generosity, whether I felt like they deserved it or not (that being the hard part).

The second part is less focused on intent and more on results, making it a bit stickier both to do and to judge. Was I always a generous with my time and money as I could be? Definitely more so on the latter than the former. I guard my time closely and don't like being imposed on (and in turn try to seldom impose on others). But I feel good about the fact that last school year, at the very end when I was totally exhausted and drained (long story), I still not only gave every bit of my free time in school to helping students who asked, but gave them empathy as well.

On the other hand, more than any other year in recent memory I had to depend on others for help and support. There's a part of me that feels that to be a bit of a defeat, because I prize being self-sufficient, but why should I not give other people the chance to feel good about helping someone? That's what makes this whole thing so darned complicated. I always want to be the helper, not the helpee (?), but by being too self-sufficient I deprive others of something that I myself take great pleasure in, helping people. So is it a good thing or a bad thing? Not sure there's an answer to that question.

So how does it add up? Not really up to me to judge.

College Overload Update

The under wins. The word college was spoken a mere 113 times during Back To School night. This works out to 1.51 times per minute.

More Back To School

I'm going to my final BTS night at my older daughter's school. Anybody want to bet on how many times the word "college" will be uttered? I'm putting to over/under at 140 and I'll be keeping track.

Why real life is better than, if not as interesting as, the movies

I came home early unexpectedly from work and my wife was (gasp!) washing the dishes. In the movies, whenever someone says, "I didn't expect you home so early" you know they're doing something they shouldn't oughta be doing and either drama or hilarity will ensue.

The New Digs

When they did the kind of quick and dirty renovations to this building they used several of the largest rooms for group teacher offices. We had a nice big room in the basement that used to be the workout room. This year, they (correctly) decided that they needed larger classrooms, and so they moved us out of that office and into the so-called hotel section, where 7 of us now occupy what had been 2 hotel rooms. They put the 4 women in one room and the 3 men in the other room.

An arrangement like this is full of potential for amusement, too much for one post. Let's start with the hoteliness aspects of things. We have our own little hotel bathroom. Since it's all guys, we have decided we would leave the seat up (I live in a house full of girls, so that's a tough one for me). Instead of little shampoos and shower caps, we have lots of hand sanitizer and lens cleaner for glasses. And a hair dryer, which I think will be handy if either one small part of our body gets cold suddenly or if we put white-out on a paper too thick. We have a small shower and I intend to bring in fluffy towels (no robe or slippers) so that I can ride my bike to work and then shower. We'll see if I actually ever do this- it's an 8 mile, 35 minute ride.

Think about a hotel room with no beds in it and one thing you might notice is that there are no lights. I'm not sure why this is, but I've been in lots of hotel rooms in all kinds of places and almost none of them has an overhead lighting fixture in the bed part of the room, just in the entryway. So our room is lit pretty much by 3 little fluorescent desktop lights that illuminate most of our desk and nothing else. We have a window, but I can't imagine what it's going to look like in there on a cloudy winter morning at 7:30.

There's no room service, but fortunately, we have a refrigerator (no, not a minibar), coffee maker and lots of snacks. Because I am a rebel I have soda in the refrigerator when there's no soda allowed in school. There's also about 10 things of the same flavor yogurt because that's the only flavor the person who bought them likes. I hesitate to say anything about the food we have, because it attracts animals. 7th grade boys in particular are kind of like squirrels- if you feed them once they keep coming back.

All the rest of the space is taken up by the desks, supply closets, and, well, us. We don't have connecting rooms, so you have to go out into the hallway to visit the other. We've only been in there a week, so I'm going to wait a few more days before I comment on the dynamics of all the women in one room and all the men in the other.

Mental Floss

Woody Allen once said that the brain is the most overrated organ. We all trust our brains to do all kinds of things, even though we really have very little control over them. Nobody chooses to have "Umbrella" or the theme to Friends stuck in their head, but there they stick.

People have spent countless hours over the centuries (millenia, really) trying to understand the relationship between people and their minds. They've tried to divide up the functions physically and spiritually and functionally. Thousands and thousands of pages are devoted to mind and soul, id and ego, conscious and unconscious and subconscious and semiconscious (my personal favorite). I studied a lot of that stuff in college.

And what do I think about it now? I think it's a bunch of hooey (yes, that's actually a word). I firmly believe that the whole world of philosophy has been built trying to convince ourselves that we are somehow in control. If you dig into it, the logic of the argument in favor of all of our actions being predetermined is much, much simpler than the argument for our having free will, which is still a work in progress. Simplest explanations aren't always the best, but they're usually a good starting point as long as your specal (? what would be adjective form of species?) pride doesn't get in the way.

And of course, I have no idea why I was thinking about this.

A little more about Serena Williams and a little more

I see that Serena Williams finally issued and apology. Good for her.

I'm not any kind of behavioral purist, but what I find inexcusable about what she did is that she is a professional athlete. Nobody's forcing her to do this. If your chosen profession is that of a an athletic competitor, part of the job requirement is that you respect the rules and the people who enforce them. People cut corners, intentionally or not, and cheat all the time, but they know enough not to lose their temper and threaten the people whose job it is to enforce the rules. I'm sure Serena didn't foot fault intentionally, but she also could not possible be looking at her feet, so how could she know for sure that she didn't? I'm not sure what was going on in her mind that made her think it was okay to do what she did.

In a behaviorally related item, I love Kanye, but what he did to Taylor Swift, who did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG, was inexcusable. Nice to know you loved Beyonce's video, but how would you feel if you'd just gotten an award and the presenter started spouting off how Flo Rida's video made yours look like a 6th grade art project? Would that feel good, or might it make the moment a little less satisfying?

It's all a matter of treating people the way you'd want to be treated yourself. It's such an obvious kind of thing that I'm amazed how often people forget it.

Pedro Martinez is a Punk (and other sports news)

I've been watching Pedro Martinez pitch since he was with Montreal (yes, there used to be not just a team but a very good team in Montreal) and I've always hated him. He was just obnoxious enough and more than good enough to annoy and opposing fan, and he had a well-deserved reputation for throwing at people's heads. Then when he was with Boston during a brawl he threw a 70 year-old Yankee coach to the ground and it was sealed. My daughter, who grew up a Yankee fan, almost cried when the Phillies signed him.

All that being said, everyone who loves baseball should take some time to appreciate what Pedro is doing with the Phillies this year. Aside from all the punk stuff, he was also always known as having the best pitching smarts this side of Greg Maddux, and to watch him work last night was to see genius. The man is an absolute artist on the mound and some of the pitches he threw were things of beauty (if you like that kind of thing).

Having been a baseball fan since 1962 (!) I have been privileged to see many wonderful things, from Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle to the 2008 Phillies, and I have to add watching Pedro Martinez pitch-by-pitch to my personal highlights.

Over the weekend, I also got to see Serena Williams curse out a lineswoman (multiple f-bombs) at match point and be given a one point penalty to lose the match. I have never seen anything like that in all my years. That woman is an excellent tennis player but she has a way of tainting every loss, almost like she's planning her excuses as she goes. Usually it was just some injury we'd never heard about before ("and I don't want to use this for an excuse, but...) but this was pretty creative. This is not the kind of person you want to play with.

Big Advances In Science

Glade is now making a room freshener with a motion detector so it can give the room a spritz when someone comes in. Cool idea, though it would be better if it had an odor detector in addition, so it only does its thing when smelly people enter the room.

I Don't Think This Means What You Think It Means

I had to fill out a health from for school that has all the usual emergency contact stuff (I do have to remember to tell my friend that she now rates as an emergency contact- I'm sure she'll be flattered) and doctor information and do I have any allergies. And then there was a space that asked, "Other Procedures You Would Like Done."

I'm not really sure what they're getting at here. Do I want them to take all possible action to save my life? Of course, but why don't they just say that, so it must mean something else. So I put in that I would like Lasik surgery so I don't need reading glasses anymore and new orthotics. I'm sure there's some sort of cosmetic surgery I'd like too but I couldn't think of anything under pressure.

More Start of School Thoughts

There's a real danger in thinking that the kids are listening to you because you are an interesting person when in fact they may just be listening because they have to.

The most flattering thing that's happened to me so far is that I asked a student how she'd liked her summer program (I'd written her a recommendation for it) and all she wanted to tell me about was all the mischievous things they'd done in and around the labs. Nothing about what she'd learned (except maybe that dry ice is entertaining), just the fun parts.

First Day of School

One of teacher's edition math books has math jokes for every section! Here's an example:

Q: What kind of roots does a "geom-e-tree" have?
A: Square roots!

Another...

Q: Why was the math teacher upset with Cupid?
A: He kept changing the "like terms" to "love terms."

It's hard to compare the first day of school to any other job I've ever had. It's this weird mix of new and familiar and routine and completely varied. Plus I'm doing a completely familiar job but I haven't done it for 3 months. For students, this is all they've ever known, but I can't think of any other adult job that's like this. Maybe a farmer.

I like the first day of school, certainly more than I did when I was a kid. On the first day of school there are no papers to grade, no scolding for not having done homework, no pre-exam stress. Just getting to know new people and reconnecting with others. I have one class that's full of students that I know pretty well, but for some reason have never taught.

In another class, half of them are new to the school, which means they learned math in completely different ways. Since one of my favorite things to do is trying to make some sense out things, I always find classes like that challenging and interesting.

The one thing I don't like about the first day is that I talk too much. Maybe the kids like it, but I get tired of the sound of my voice after a while. I like my classes to be conversations, not monologues. I'm always afraid I'm sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher.

72 hours of my life

I'm messing everything up just by writing this. Three hours of sleep followed by the routinely surreal airport experience. The best coach seat I've ever had on an airplane. A bloody mary (an "eye-closer"as my dad used to say) and into hours of head-bobbing dozing and an hour of reading about how people try to disappear and how they (usually) get caught. And it was only now that I had any idea of what time it was.

Back in the day, I never would have even considered taking a flight this long in a smaller type of commercial airplane. It would have to be a widebody- one of those planes with 2 aisles. Nowadays, though, it's almost impossible to find anything else. I'm going to Sacramento where my aunt, who survived 10 years or so with repeated episodes of liver cancer, finally said enough and came home to be comfortable for the last days of her life. I don't have a big or especially close family, for a variety of reasons. My parents each had one sibling. I have 3 first cousins on my father's side of the family and have not seen any of them for what must be 30 years. I don't think they were at my wedding. I'm recently in touch with one of their kids on Facebook. My mother's sister and her family were the only ones I ever really cared about.

This ends up being a very important set of relationships for me. My aunt is my only relative of that generation with whom I've really felt simpatico. She always loved and not just accepted but seemed to understand and even cherish me and my peculiar manner of behaving. Over the years I found myself in all kinds of trouble, or maybe just making mischief, when I was visiting the family at their home outside Sacramento or on their annual camping trips to the mountains and/or the beach. Once I went rafting on the American River with my cousin's boyfriend and for reasons that now escape me later admitted that we had been doing something out there on the river that we probably ought not to have done. This led to many hours of frank and interesting conversation, of which all I remember was how devoid it was of any sort of judgmental vibe. I could make a mistake and still be accepted and loved.

I visited often during high school, college and immediately post-college, so you can imagine the kinds of stuff that went on. It was a gloriously freeing set of experiences. I've had periods of close and sometimes complex relationships with my cousins and their circle over the years. I haven't seen her family as much since I got older and more settled, aside from a bunch of visits when I was living in California. Even that was over 20 years ago. But the close ties have remained and taken as a whole it is unforgettable.

I'm only giving you a trickle of the flood of emotions and memories that have almost overwhelmed me since I heard that my aunt was coming home to die. I arrive in Sacramento and call to check in and find that my aunt passed away while I was in the air. This both stems that flood and starts another one. It seemed like a peculiar time to arrive, but in ways it could not have been more perfectly timed. I had spoken with my aunt on the telephone on one of the last days she was capable of doing that. I had a chance to tell her I loved her and that she was in my thoughts and my heart. I could have done little more had I arrived earlier.

Now, on the last day of my visit, I'm still in this fog of present emotions and memories and family where I can't quite put a name on it. It doesn't always feel good, but it somehow feels right. I will always treasure my memories of my aunt, and I feel blessed to be able to have this sense of closure.

Sitting in the Vegas airport eating a salad.