academia

i gave my first academic talk yesterday at the SIAM annual meeting, and it was quite scary. fortunately no one tried to make me look stupid. i think i made myself look stupid enough just by standing up there. does it get easier???

now i have two weeks until nc state, 10 days of hard work there, then i start writing the paper on the work i presented yesterday. hopefully it'll be done by the end of september and i'll be one step closer to my phd...

in other news, i got cable and internet set up yesterday. fsc, heck yeah! 5 1/2 weeks til opening weekend of the premier league, when arsenal takes on everton aug 15th. 1st pre-season friendly is july 18th. hopefully we'll pick up the rockin' little brazilian midfielder melo from fiorentina. apparently they demanded eboue in exchange - take him. seriously. i'd be quite happy if i never saw his pouting on the pitch again.

if anyone would like to watch games at my place, you're more than welcome. just call. i'll be up early every weekend. i'm kinda looking forward to it. is that wrong?

last day of class

i gave my kiddies their final at 9:15 this morning to kick off the final day of class for the summer. believe it or not, i'm going to miss them - i had a good bunch of kids this time around. actually, i don't think i've had a bad bunch of kids since i started teaching. damn i'm lucky!

just for fun i gave the kids a pop quiz yesterday in class. exactly zero of the questions were math related in any way, but a few of them did have numbers as answers - for instance, the ones asking "on average, how many minutes late was erin to lecture every day?" or "how many recitations did dave miss?" i got some pretty funny answers for both, like "4 minutes, or 11 minutes before i was gonna leave" and "as many as i would have liked to". well met - they get bonus points for that. the quiz put them in a good mood for studying for the final, too, which was kinda the point. i also tried to ease their pain this morning by baking cinnamon roll bread for them - hopefully it made the test a little more palatable...

in other news, we tied our outdoor soccer game last night. that may not sound like much, but considering we only had 8 players, they had around 20, and we were playing full-field 35 minute halves, i'd say it's damn impressive we managed to tie. i actually think we played a ton better being pressured like that because we were forced to play smarter. and i played defense for the first time in my life and didn't totally suck. dave kicked total ass up front, even sprinting at the end of the game when the rest of us were hard-pressed to do anything over a light jog. he paid for it later tho when he started cramping up on the drive home... poor dave...

i heart julio baptista

in the final of the copa america today, he scored a brilliant goal in the fourth minute to help brazil to a 3-nil win over argentina. perhaps arsenal *will* be better off without thierry if it means this boy gets more playing time...

4 weeks and counting

it's been a decent weekend overall. i mean, aside from tweaking my knee at our indoor soccer game friday and therefore missing my tri this morning (no worries, this one was kind of a "practice tri"), things went pretty well. i scored twice in the indoor game, which shocked the hell out of me. i over-indulged in sleep, getting a whopping 21 hours over two days. i even made it to the farmer's market saturday, only to be disappointed that all the fruit had sold out. but that's what happens when you don't show up til 1.

it's been a bit since my last arsenal rant, so here's an update on my boys in red:
arsenal won their first friendly of the pre-season, tho it was only 2-nil and the opposing side Barnet were pretty hopeless (they even had a 40-something guy pay 10,000 pounds to be named as a substitute, sit the bench, then be put in with a minute or two remaining). vp is back from injury, but the brazilian wunderkid denilson had to be stretchered off during the match, tho they're now saying the injury isn't serious. thank god, cuz we're going to need him this year. sir alex has said arsenal will be better off without henry, and i must say i agree - the boys tended to rely on him too much this last season and it became pretty apparent that thierry was starting to give under the weight of his team. 4 weeks to the opening game v. fulham! anyone who wants to come watch it at my place had better bring java porter - it's the only way we'll stay awake after the 5am kickoff...

disaster!

i got home last night from a fun and relaxing weekend visiting mikey in seattle to the following email from my friend rob:


"Erin what happened to Henry? I can't believe he signed with Barcelona, he and Ronaldinho are going to be unstoppable. You must be pretty pissed about it I would guess... "


pissed doesn't even *begin* to describe my reaction. i hadn't been online or checked sky sports news all weekend so i was completely blind-sided by this information. at first i thought he was just playing a cruel joke on me, and seeing as how it's rob, i wouldn't put it past him. so i checked sky sports - sure enough, there was the headline. but there's always been speculation about henry moving and this could be more of said speculation. so i go to arsenal.com to see if they agree, because they'd be the first to deny any wayward rumors. here was the first article:

Thierry Henry transfer to Barcelona agreed

nothing could possibly describe the sinking feeling in my heart any better than agony - pure agony.

then agony turned to anger. thierry, how could you?? where's the loyalty? arsenal made you the player you are today, gave you the best years of your career, and you abandon them? for *barcelona*?? bastard.

for those of you that don't understand how this makes me feel, try this exercise:
- think of your favorite sports team
- think of your favorite player of all time for that team
- think of a team you truly despise
- imagine that player transferring to that team

yep, that's about how i feel right now. way to ruin a perfectly good weekend, thierry. i forevermore vow to root against any team you play for.