Saturdays with Joe

It's really fun driving all the way out to Azusa Pacific to pick up Joe for the day. Actually, I could barely type that without giggling - APU is in the most dead-end place I can think of - there's literally nothing in Azusa, which is 20 miles east or so of Pasadena. But I like seeing Joe and we had a nice time getting sushi for lunch, watching a terrible movie that I thought was funny when I was 12, and then messing around with my Mac for a while. We tried to find a copy of "Settlers of Catan" - a board game that I really need to get my hands on soon - but to no avail. Perhaps I'll find a copy in the coming weeks though. Driving him back to school was an adventure, I nearly got "banned from campus" for my little tiny car's engine being a little noisy - oh well. Just for fun - a really great picture of Twinkie (again).

I Don't Do Fridays

My Friday was spent in leisure, as I believe Fridays should be spent. I bought an app for the iPhone called "Bloom" over the weekend, and it's a really great little piece of software - the basic premise is a color changing background that modifies different tones, and if you tap the screen in different areas, sounds play and slowly being to loop. What results is some really pretty ambient sounds that will generate new loops if left idle. It's really calming music, and I thought it would be nice to have a little speaker system for my iPhone to play when I feel like zoning out in my room. Unfortunately, there seems to be no such thing as an affordable iPhone compatible speaker dock that doesn't look like a child's toy. We have an extra set of speakers in the house that I tried hooking up to my phone, but the interference from the cellular antenna was so loud that it's not worth using. My search will now expand to the internet - and Best Buy won't get a sale out of their 10% off coupons. This little whistling duck from Safari West always makes me smile - he was really cute and actually whistled.

Calculus Can Be Fun!

I got to tutor calculus for the first time today (not-including the first time I tried without preparing beforehand). I actually had a really good time with it, and remembering how to do different operations (with the benefit of having studied earlier in the day) made me feel great. It was a nice confidence boost to prepare for actually teaching the subject - I still have a lot of notes to make before I start though. That's basically what Tuesdays and Thursdays will be like from now on - so expect some thoughts on how class went. This is a nice oldie photo - back when the Jeep only had 99,999 miles on it - 95,000 miles or so later and it decided to quit on us.