It's 2:27 AM and I'm wide awake. Why? The short story is that this afternoon I felt really sick and slept from about 4 in the afternoon until about 1:30 AM. At this point, I'm labeling it as "something I ate." I'm not feeling nauseous right now, though I am feeling a little achy and a little hungry (and I'm not sure I want to test the stomach right now... it's still a little gurgly). More importantly, I'm wide awake. So I guess I'll do something semi-productive and either get tired or get something done.
It's been a while since I've been sick enough to have weird dreams. I can't really remember exactly what I was dreaming about, but I remember it had something to do with orienting some large, pointy, metal object in just the right way to either unlock something or release something. And it had that blurred line between awake and asleep feel to it. I seem to recall waking up at around 8 PM and muttering something about "If only I could..." before realizing I was awake and the pointy thing made no sense anymore. Fun times.
Up until yesterday afternoon, the last couple weeks had gone pretty well. I've mostly been grinding away at making videos. Once I finish recording the audio, I'll be able to finish editing the chapter 4 trigonometry videos. There are about 30 of them, and that's a little more than a third of the class. I think the next chapter should go more quickly because it has fewer diagrams and more straight algebra, which is just a lot faster to TeX up and the structure of the videos is a lot simpler to work with. I probably won't get to the end of chapter 5 before the end of the month, which is when most productivity will come to a halt.
There hasn't been much to do with the math conference planning. We got word that our professional development proposal got approved, which is a good carrot to get teachers to show up, which will help us get more students to come. We're still keeping our expectations rather moderate, but it would be a good confirmation that we're doing the right thing if we ended up with a larger-than-expected crowd.
The math degree updates are in a pretty good place now. There's really just one question that's hanging over us and it's a relatively small one (a question regarding an elective course). But after that question is resolved we'll be in a good place to put that paperwork together.
I guess I don't have a lot of other work updates on that front because I've actually been able to just focus on the math videos, which has been using up most of my time. I did pick up another side project, which is building an "LED Cube" which is pretty much what it sounds like it is. It's a cube of LEDs. But the idea is that you can program them to display whatever 3-dimensional patterns you want. I've certainly learned new things, like what a 74HC595 does and how you can cascade them together to do lots of neat things. I still have a bit more troubleshooting to work through, but I feel as though I'm not far from being ready to build it. This will also require me to learn how to solder properly. Well, maybe not "require" but it's the sort of thing where I think it's worth knowing how to do it right instead of the sloppy way that I currently do it. With all the connections I'll need to make, it will be important to keep things neat and clean.
Last Saturday, I volunteered for an event that our church was helping out with. There's an organization out here called "Club Christ" and they do after school tutoring and other activities in an area that's lower income (government assistance housing), and they were having an end of year block party. It was pretty low key stuff in general, though managing the bounce house was interesting. "Don't lean on the walls, or it's going to collapse." And 2 minutes later, they're all leaning on one wall and the bounce house collapsed. There was one kid that I can tell was acculturated into a world of anger and defiance. I watched him take a flying leap into the side of the bounce house, and when I told him not to do it, his immediate reaction was "I didn't do nothin'!" in that whiny voice that you might expect from an mid-elementary aged kid, and then went on to mope about and swearing a little bit more than what I might have expected. But after blowing off some steam, he wanted to be back with his friends again, so it felt like one of those "I'm behaving this way because this is how I get attention" sort of moves. In the end, everything was fine and I think things went well.
My year of Leadership Las Vegas is coming to a close. Yesterday was the last programmed day, though I had to leave early because of the sickness. And it also means that I missed out on our after party, which I'm kind of bummed about. But given that I slept for almost 8 hours, there was just no way I was going to be able to power through the session and the party. It's definitely been a fun year, and I've enjoyed all the connections I've made. I do intend to stay at least somewhat connected to the program, specifically on the education side of things, but I don't see myself as being one of those "all in" types of participants. My world is too far removed (both physically and professionally) from a lot of what they do, and so while I appreciate everything it has to offer, I think I mostly exist on the periphery.
I guess that more or less wraps up the last couple weeks. Starting at the end of June, I'll be doing a bit of travel, which I'm looking forward to. There may be some actual fundraising steps for the Oaxaca Science Center project soon, which has me pretty excited (because money makes things more real). My team won third place in curling, which isn't too bad for our first season of play. And it's 3:40 AM and I'm still wide awake. Oh well.
