I want to tell you about my day!! And you want to listen!! (Yes you do, too!!)

1) I was up for a good part of the night trying to prove that {nz^n} converges absolutely and locally uniformly on the the unit disc:
Note that 1)you know you're Truly Crazy when wikipedia doesn't have articles on the terms you're using, and, 2) that's a pretty version of the unit disc. Mine was black and white.

2) I lost my contact this morning and found it on the bathroom rug tonight.

3) I am SO totally wearing my shirt backwards because that's what people end up doing who insist on wearing white T-shirts and drinking coffee while driving and wearing leather gloves.

3) Professor Friendly, who greets every student by name when passing in the hallways, engaged me in the following conversation this morning:

PF: "Hi, Nancy."
Me: "Hi."
PF: "How are you?" (Surprise! we are moving beyond "hi" for the first time!!!)
Me: "Good thanks. Except that I'm stuck on a complex analysis problem. [...]"
PF: "Ah." (or, "oh" or something)
Me: "How are you?"
PF: "Good, how are you?"
Me: (fearing an infinite loop) "Um, good..."*
PF: (slight awkward pause) "So, you're going to be a TA in the fall, right?"
Me: (risking a slight attempt at humor) "Yes-- that is, if you decide to keep me!" :-)
PF: (looking completely horrified and concerned) "Oh, no! No, no! You're doing fine!!! I mean, as far as I know, you're doing completely fine! Of course we'll keep you!"
Me: (wanting to soothe him) "I know I'm doing fine. It's okay."
PF: "Okay!! Well, see you later!"

Did you see it? The complete missing of Wit? Perhaps he is partially autistic and cannot read irony in a person's voice. He's so sweet though. What can we say...?

4) I got the quintescential Free Lunch today by going with members of the department to The Big (Fancy-Pants) Cafeteria to help welcome a visiting algebra candidate, Hans Jurgen**, or something like that, from Asouthwestern State U. As we departed the math building to trudge (slowly) up the hill, Mary Ann, our fabulous department secretary, noted pointedly to Professor Algebra that we students had not been introduced to the candidate yet, as a not-to-be-missed hint that he should introduce us. Social skills not being high on Professor Alg.'s list of specialties, he then proceeded to stare at his shoes*** and murmur to the candidate that here were "Mary-Elizabeth, Stephanie, and Chris..." I'm so pleased he remembered my double name!!

5) There was a Drive-Behind Recognition Waving Incident (D-BRWI) as we left school, and I couldn't really see who it was, but I think it might, just might have been Professor Random Processes!!!!! Someone in a beige Plymouth Acclaim/Dodge Spirit was behind us and honked and waved and I saw him in the rear-view mirror and peaked over my shoulder but still couldn't make a definitive identification. Still!! The Possibility!! He must have been very excited to see that we drive the same kind of car...(^4*)

6) I took a nap and dreamed someone was lecturing (probably Prof. Prob.) and woke up when I was given permission to wake up, which was just as the lecture ended. Nate said my nap was about the length of a Lehigh class. So disturbing.

7) We watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony at Mike's house tonight, and laughed a lot. Parts of it were cool, like the choreographed skier and the acrobats, and parts of it were just laughable, like Yoko reading a 4th grader's essay about peace, and the Mohawk spandex body suit external heart guy. Um, yeah, I guess you had to see it to understand...? Seriously, though, what is with all the Shiny Spandex? So much shiny spandex. And the YMCA? What are they thinking? The ladies that preceded each group of athletes coming in were wearing black and white dresses that had a complete set of Italian alps constructed in each skirt. The athletes might not be doped, but I think the ceremony planners are...

*In the interest of full disclosure here, I want to note that I was Very Sleep Deprived when this conversation happened so that there is a slight chance that I was actually the one responsible for the "how are you" redundancy. However, the evidence points against it: it is known with certainty that Prof. Friendly initiated with "how are you?" #1, meaning that "how are you" #3 was his as well (that's what we call a "parity argument" in mathematics), unless I was so sleep deprived that I asked the man how he was and then asked him again right after he answered. So I think there's a large probability that HE was the conversation bounce-back instigator.

**Not his real name. But close to it.

***Okay, okay, I admit it: social skills are not high on any of our lists, so we were pretty much all staring at our mis-matched socks and hoping for the Awkward moment to pass so that we could continue to talk about elliptic generating functions of exponentially Riemannian compact differential manifolds* while not making eye contact and giggling nerdily.

*Not a real thing.

(^4*) This could totally be wishful thinking on my part. After all, Prof. Prob. is all Russian and uptight and proper and wouldn't likely do something like honk and wave at a student. He would be so embarrassed to see a student outside of class that he would look the other way and turn a little pink, I think. Still, let me dream.