Dr. K

There are two reasons I love my Chiropractor, Dr. K.  First is the most obvious one, he helps my body feel better.  It is a miracle to me that for the first time in 3 years I can get around my daily routine without being in any pain.

The second reason is that Dr. K is just cool.  He’s funny and friendly and even rides a motorcycle.  I like his sense of humor too.  Just this week I was lying on the table getting my adjustment listening to the conversation going on around me.  The lady next to me was telling us about what she had learned at church the day before.

“Too often we judge ourselves by our own intentions and others by their actions when we should be doing it the other way around.”

She went on to say this could be applied in all aspects of life, even driving.  “When someone cuts me off I need to remember their intentions were not to offend me and perhaps they were in hurry or having a bad day.”

Dr. K then cuts in to add, “In my family when someone cuts us off while driving we say they must be subluxated.”

Ask and ye shall receive.

The following happened between 10:07pm and 10:27pm tonight.

- the names have been changed to protect the guilty -

{DING!} A text message arrives.

Albert: How are you feeling?

Me to Albert: Sick. Saw the doc this morning, he thinks its strep throat, he put me on a couple meds. :( How are you feeling?

Albert: So-so. Taking things a day at a time. I don’t think I’ll be asking Lily out. I get the impression she is seeing someone. Or subconsciously I’m afraid and looking for a way out. Sorry you have strep.

Weasel: No weezing the juice! Ha ha. Guess which movie im watching?

Me to Weasel: Encino Man, what do I win?

Me to Lily: Are you dating anyone right now?

Weasel: A slurpee! So you can weeze the juice!

Lily: Lol, no.

Me to Albert: I can guarantee Lily is not currently dating anyone. So go for it. No chickening out or you’ll have me to answer to.

This is what went on while chatting with my mother eating "dinner" and avoiding my homework. (Blog post is further avoidance of said homework).

Then it got me thinking. Asking someone out is hard. I did this just a couple weeks ago. I've asked guys out before, and it really doesn't get much easier with practice. My experience reminded me to have a little more sympathy and respect for any guy doing the asking.

Then I thought about Albert, he's a great guy and he's fun to go on a date with too. I know from first hand experience. I'm going to hold him to his idea of asking Lily out on a date. I think they would both have a fun time.

I can't help but wonder if there's some guy out there debating if he should ask me out, but is just a little nervous too. I need a friend like myself to give him a push to just do it.

Perhaps it's Mitchell from church. I've caught him looking at me from across the room a number of times. Mitchell has even walked up to me and looked very much like he wanted to say something, but only managed to get out a whispered 'hi' and kept on walking. He's done this a couple times. I think his shyness is kind of cute, but we'll never become friends if he can't manage to move to the next step and say, 'how are you?'

So here is my advice to guys. I know it's not easy, but suck it up and deal with it. Chances are she'll say yes and you will have a fun time. My personal opinion is every guy deserves a first date. Exceptions to this rule are extremely rare. There is something very attractive about a guy with the guts to ask you out. Guys should know that.

Atypical

As I walked in the door from my evening out (making and eating dumplings, yum!) my parents turned me around and we headed out to Safeway for a late night ice cream run. Ben and Jerry's Cake Batter. I don't share.

While going through the checkout line, our cashier was a friendly gentleman named Pat. He recognized my parents as they frequent the grocery store around the corner from our house. My mother introduced me as her daughter and it came up that I was a student working on my masters degree.

"Oh? What are you getting your degree in?" he inquired.

"Applied Mathematics," was my response.

I watched him closely expecting the typical reaction of a blank stare and a comment about how I must be crazy. It didn't come. Instead he smiled, and turned back to my mother saying, "Whoa, you better watch out some guy is going to snatch her up and marry her!"

I like Pat. I think I'll introduce him to a few of my friends in the singles ward.

Nature by Numbers

My Senior year in High School I wanted an easy load so I took 4 Math classes, 2 Music classes, and the 1 (required) English class. Amoung those classes was a different sort of Math class which was generically named 'Discrete Math'. In it we learned about all sorts of math that is not covered in the regular math curriculum, things like mapping theory, chaos and fractals, and the golden ratio. It was in this class I found my love of the number Phi, commonly referred to as the Golden Ratio.

I know the people who read my blog are mostly friends who do not share my love of mathematics, so to you I say don't worry, I'll keep this very non-technical.

The Fibonacci Sequence is generated by adding the 2 previous terms together. So if we start with 0 and then 1, the next term is found by adding 0 + 1 = 1. Then do it again, 1 + 1 = 2, and so on. The sequence is then

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ...

Why is this important? If you divide any of these numbers by it's previous term it approximates the Golden Ratio. The higher the numbers in this sequence then the more accurate the ratio will be.

Here is the best part, at least for me it is, this number is very special as it appears all throughout nature. Today I stumbled across a video very well done that demonstrates this in a beautiful way. Please enjoy it and let me know what you think.

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Math was not invented to torture high school students as so many of my own students believe. Instead it is a discovery of one of the most beautiful creations of God.

Granite State of Mind

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and it made me laugh. Here's to all my New Hampshire friends. I still think of NH as home.

Of Rules and Obedience

“Can’t she see what’s going to happen?” Calvin asked.

“Oh, not in this kind of thing.” Mrs. Whatsit sounded surprised at his question. “If we knew ahead of time what was going to happen we’d be—we’d be like the people on Camazotz, with no lives of our own, with everything all planned and done for us. How can I explain it to you? Oh, I know. In your language you have a form of poetry called a sonnet.”

“Yes, yes,” Calvin said impatiently. “What’s that got to do with the Happy Medium?”

“Kindly pay me the courtesy of listening to me.” Mrs. Watsit’s voice was stern, and for a moment Calvin stopped pawing the ground like a nervous colt. “It is a very strict form of poetry, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?”

“Yes.” Calvin nodded.

“And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?”

“No.”

“But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.” Calvin nodded again.

“So,” Mrs. Whatsit said.

“So what?”

“Oh do not be stupid, boy!” Mrs. Whatsit scolded. “You know perfectly well what I am driving at!”

“You mean you’re comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Watsit said. “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.” What you say is completely up to you.”


Excerpt from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Girl Power

Top: Jennifer, Windy, Emily, Genni
Bottom: Miranda, Sophie, Ranie

I stumbled across some old pictures tonight, they are from my freshman year at Ricks College. I lived with some of the craziest girls I've ever met. Each of them was a blast. However they were definitely not the typical lot of girls I would normally hang out with. They were girly girls. Those 4 months were a lot of fun, and an eye opener to a lot of new things for me.

I look at this picture and can hardly believe that is me!

Rainy Day Music

There's a local Seattle artist I've been a fan of for a couple of years who has the perfect music to listen to on a soft rainy afternoon. Like this afternoon is. Perhaps you can enjoy a little of it with me.

Murphy’s Law or Count Your Many Blessings

Murphy’s Law has been officially dubbed “Windy’s Law”. It all started two weeks ago when everything was going right. Then

• I woke up with a cough that later turned into Bronchitis and has lasted 2+ weeks
• I took the worst midterm of my life
• I canceled 3 fun events I’d been looking forward to for weeks due to being sick
• My neck pain from the car accident (3 years ago) has returned since I’ve spent an extra amount of time in bed being sick
• While driving my car it began to do a crazy lurching motion in second gear
• I got my grade back on my midterm, lowest math grade of my life
• After spending months inquiring about a large event I’m finally given my list of responsibilities with 2 weeks to prepare
• The hard drive on my computer completely fried, it’s gone for good
• I fell far behind in school because I had no computer for several days
• Then to top things off a lamp in my bedroom that was connected to the ceiling spontaneously snapped and came crashing down

For your own safety I recommend avoiding any near proximity to me. I fully expect my blackberry to explode in the next couple of days. Consider yourself warned.

I don’t mean to complain. Really it’s all laughable at this point. When I stop to think about all of it I realize how blessed I actually am. No really, I mean it.

• It was a bad midterm grade, but I actually passed and I received above the class average (which failed)
• I took my car to the shop to find out the problem was very inexpensive to fix
• Also if I’d waited another week to take my car in it would have been extremely expensive to fix, I caught the problem just in time
• My Chiropractor could tell I was having more pain than usual and got me in for an extra visit this week and I’m doing much better now
• All my data on the hard drive turned out to be recoverable (for a small fee)
• My dad knows computers well enough to get mine back up and running rather quickly considering what happened
• When the lamp came crashing down it only bumped into my guitar and no damage was done, although it scared the heebeegeebee’s out of me
• I did my taxes and will be receiving a nice chunk of my money back to pay for my expensive bad luck

I guess life has a way of evening itself out. Although I’m fresh out of extra tax returns to pay for a new phone (do you hear me blackberry? no exploding!).

How has your week been? It must have been better than the Last Guy.

Someone's been watching too much of the Olympics

Weasel sent the following in an email to me today:

I had a dream you joined the USA Women’s Hockey team. Someone stole your Silver Medal, so you got your boyfriend that you met at the games (who also happened to be Jackie Chan) to beat the crap out of one of the Canadian Men’s figure skaters, and he gave you his medal. Jackie Chan then stuffed the body in a bobsled and sent it down the hill where it crashed.

Canada declared war against the USA and China when they found out who did it.