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A cuter alternative to Ben’s entry today:

I spent the day working on my presentation for Friday’s tectonics lunch. 15 slides down, 13 to go. They take FOREVER! My powerpoint doesn’t have an equation editor, so for lack of an alternative I spent hours trying to craft long, complicated fractions out of underlines and multiple text boxes. I wanted to smack the “Animated Paperclip Help Icon” sooo badly!!! I hate powerpoint!!! I finally reached my breaking point and discovered LaTeX Equation Editor, so I can type the equations in LaTeX and drag ‘n drop them into PowerPoint. Much better.

I hope I can finish those last 13 slides quickly tomorrow morning, as I have a meeting with my advisor at 2 … ha! Right! Oh well.

I tried my first “studio setting” with Ben and Chaco today. (The studio was our bedroom.) What do you think?

I posted these on Fred Miranda, too, if you’re interested.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Year: 2003
Stars: Leslie Nielsen, Hugh Grant
Violence? No.
Sex? One of the vignettes is about a couple who meets while co-starring in a porn film. Enough said.
My Rating: 3.5 stars

This movie follows 12 (I didn’t count, I read it on the jacket) couples who fall in love. They range from an elementary school boy and the “cool girl” to a writer and his foreign servant who don’t speak a common language, to porn stars to the Prime Minister of England. Despite the inherent chaos of so many characters, the movie is actually not that hard to follow and is surprisingly heartwarming. Well, most of it. :) And it’s got a good soundtrack. Just don’t watch it with Mom and Dad.

Genre: Comedy
Year: 1987
Stars: Nicholas Cage
Violence? Yes, pretty violent, but not creepy.
Sex? Not too bad.
My Rating: 3 stars

This is a pretty silly comedy about an ex-convict and a police officer who, upon discovering they can’t have children of their own, kidnap a toddler. It’s pretty silly and a little weird, but rather fun.

The long-awaited, much-anticipated Colorado Dayhiking gallery!

Well, tonight I tried something new — gymnastics class at Vernon Lee Gymnastics! I have been shamelessly inspired by the olympics on TV to revive my middle-school hobby of recreational tumbling. I must emphasize recreational; I have no particular skill whatsoever, other than I’m shorter than Svetlana Khorkina. I had SO much fun!!! We broke into groups because the class was fairly large (maybe 20 people?), and by the end of the evening I promoted myself from the “I’ve never done a cartwheel” group to the “let’s bounce on the trampoline a lot” group. I got to practice back handsprings, which I think are a long way off because I can’t actually do a backbend, and front flips off the trampoline onto a mat, where I land on my bottom. I had a great time.

On the way home I stopped at Target to pick up some odds and ends and also some new … err … “sportswear” because I’m working out fairly often and, frankly, I’m getting tired of wearing the same disgusting sports bra for days on end. They get pretty sweaty and gross. Anyway, Target is in a shambles because they’re remodelling, and the chaos has spilled over to the cashier. I found a pretty good deal on some underwear and took it to the shortest line, where a very nice, young gentleman started checking me out. Everything went just fine, though the ponytail holders and the pair of pants … until the underwear. He didn’t even know what to DO with it … he kind of held it by the edges and asked, “Um, do you need a hanger with this?” and then he tried to scan it … and he tried again … and again … and it just wouldn’t work! So he had to call his manager and they all stood around debating the price of this bra I picked out specifically because it was on sale for $5. And THEN when the price finally came up, it wasn’t on sale! I started to debate it, but I think I was about the color of a strawberry by that point, so I just said no thanks, paid, and got out of there. :P

I’ve got some pictures up for comment on Fred Miranda if you’d like to see the revised B&W and color versions of my Pitkin Lake wildflower pictures.

I spent the day untangling more river incision problems. I found a mistake in my algorithm — sort of good, I guess. I wish fixing that would have made the simulations work, but it didn’t. More of the same awaits me tomorrow.

My advisor, who’s on sabbatical in Japan, finally got back to me about a draft of a paper I sent him. Guess what he said….

“You are a very good, clear writer.”

:) Of course, he accompanied that sentence with FOUR PAGES of suggestions, so my writing wasn’t THAT good ;) But I’m very impressed with his comments. He really read the whole thing, and he has comments about the overall structure of the paper in addition to individual sentences and paragraphs. Now, I just need to make time to edit my paper, fix my river program, and write two talks for next week.