Ode to Odes

I recently learned that someone I don't even know very well spends a lot of time looking at my web site, and especially, my odes, to the extent that she has memorized them. That's kind of... odd. Interesting, I suppose. I have had people tell me occasionally over the years that they started looking at my web page and they got sucked in and kept looking at things for an hour or more, or that they don't allow themselves to look at it at all because they know they will get sucked in and stay looking there for a while. But these are usually people I know well.

Now, I have memorized my odes, but that is for two reasons:

1. I wrote them, and during the writing process I worked the words around for days until I got them perfect, and then since they were perfect, they stuck with me.

2. I write odes to give myself closure on things, so when I think back upon the things I have written odes about, I find myself using my verses to describe them, because (as in 1) I finally got the words right to express exactly what I wanted to say, and I remember that as the final word on the subject.

Well, keep reading them. They're awesome.

Links for odes to Exeter, Girls' Track at Interschols, Harvard, Williams, Williams Women's Novice Crew. In case you want to memorize them, too, to be cool like me and she who will remain unnamed.

Oh yeah, and

did I mention I ended up with a big room? Here's a (fast and not very well done in MS Paint) panoramic view:

A couple of SMALL pictures

Ha, ha, ha, I am so funny. I am also the official photographer for SMALL. So I have taken pictures and put them in an accessible location. So, go look at some SMALL pictures.

Comic bracelets

A while ago, everyone started wearing yellow Livestrong bracelets. At that time, I wanted one because I thought it was an excellent cause, one that I would want to literally wear on my sleeve. But they were very difficult to obtain. By the time I got one, yellow bracelets were just a fad, and in fact bracelets of all kinds had become a fad, as this comic illustrates:



But I have good reason to wear one, so I have persisted in my bracelet-sporting while the number of yellow-bracelet-wearers has appeared to consistently decrease. At some point, I think that they will go out of vogue and fad-followers will stop wearing them, at which point it will just be those of us with a reason again. Then again, those of us with a reason could do something better than just wearing a bracelet. See here:



Precisely. Well, that and a few other things.

Talks

This past weekend, we gave talks at Bates. They went well, because we had practiced them and we knew how to communicate effectively and all of that. We gave talks on Friday night, and then the conference continued all day Saturday, so people kept coming up to the four of us and telling us how great our talks were, and asking us about Williams, and telling us how great it was that four females were doing math and how we should all go to grad school. After all, we kind of stood out, four young females hanging around together at a math conference.


Professor Morgan and the 2005 Geometry Group

Now that we have a good background in what we are doing, the research will begin in earnest.

VT-NH Race for the Cure

At the end of July, I will be running the VT-NH Race for the Cure in Manchester, VT. This is a 5k race in the Susan G. Komen series to raise money for breast cancer.

My best friend nearly died from breast cancer two years ago, but then she entered a research study, which saved her life. So I am running this race to raise lots of money for research, to save and prolong lives well into the future. And I also hope to have a good time running.

Here are some handy links: you can donate to her or to me just by clicking and following the directions.

My New Room

You can see pictures, with a bit of commentary, here.

Here's a preview: