It rained last night. It was the first winter rain. I don't know how many I should expect in a normal season, but it doesn't matter. It's getting pretty cold out here, dropping into the high 30s at night.
One more week of classes... one more week... it's exciting to be nearly at the end of the semester so that I can take a break and a new semester can begin. Not that I don't like my classes, but there are things I want to change and try to do better, and now really isn't the time to be doing anything new. Right now, it's just a matter of preparing everyone for the final exam. And of course, writing the final exam. I'm moving a pretty good pace right now, so I might actually be ready significantly earlier than I anticipated.
This morning was the Putnam competition. Three of our math students took the 6 hour test. I think the scores will all be positive, which will be an accomplishment in itself. But we'll have to wait until March for the results. I think I would have been able to score about 40.
There's not a whole lot else going on right now. I'm reading up on some literature about math education. The book I'm looking through was compiled in the early 1980s and is directed mostly at teachers of elementary and middle school students, but this isn't actually that bad for the algebra classes since many of the students' mathematical development is not much beyond that point.
I just made some red potatoes with a nice butter sauce. I boiled the potatoes in only a little bit of water, covered half the time and uncovered the other half. As the water boiled off, it left a nice little starchy liquid that turned into a nice sauce when I put in a couple tablespoons of butter. It sticks well to the potatoes so I don't have to a lot of liquid just sitting around at the bottom of the pan. I'll have to try it again sometime.
