The first couple weeks have gone by in a blur, and it's just about time to start classes again.
The first week of the year was filling with scrambling around to get my syllabi put together as well as my first few sets of notes. Usually, this happens the week before classes begin, but I was going to spend the second week of the year in San Francisco at the Joint Math Meetings, so my procrastination week actually ended up being "on time" (or really, ahead of schedule).
Most of my stuff is printed up and ready to go. For the first semester ever, I don't have any evening classes. When I had fewer things going on, I enjoyed having evening classes because it meant I didn't really need to show up all that early, and I felt as if I had a lot more time to get things done. But with small group and basketball being added to my weekly schedule, I needed to reclaim my evenings. So now all my classes are condensed between 11AM and 5PM, which makes my work day look sort of like a regular work day.
The Joint Meetings this year were in San Francisco, so I commuted to and from the meetings on BART and stayed with my parents. I didn't attend any technical talks, but I did sit in on some education-related talks, plus some miscellaneous talks (history of math, mathematics of origami).
But I think the most intriguing idea I had the entire week was that I think I'm going to get an actuarial degree. Given my background, it doesn't seem like it will be all that hard to do. I spent 10-15 minutes talking to the actuary people in the exhibit hall (http://www.BeAnActuary.org/) and they sounded as if I would probably already know about 90% of the math, so all I would need to do is familiarize myself with the some terminology and practice working on a few problems.
I don't know what I would do with an actuarial degree. I don't think I'm going to be changing professions any time soon (but given the economy... you never know). I might be able to leverage it in some way at NSC, but given how hard it has been to just get a normal math degree going, I don't see any reason why this would have a chance of going anywhere.
I've been looking into buying a grill for the backyard, and with the Super Bowl coming up and with friends coming over, I think I've found sufficient motivation to spend the money. I've been doing a little research, and I think I've found a grill in the right price range. I'm going to check out a couple places just to see if I can't do better, but I'm closing in on a 3-burner gas grill in the $200 range. I'll also need some back yard furniture... but one thing at a time.
In one week, we vote on the Senior Pastor candidate. I know a lot of people have heart ache about the consequences of the vote (both yes and no), but nobody really knows what will happen until it happens. There are lots of things that I can say about the candidate and the process, but there's very little value in expressing those things (at least in this venue at this moment in time). My feeling at this point is that most people already know where they stand, and so everything is just waiting for the vote and then counting the votes when they come in.
