Skiing

After a long break from the tradition started in Colorado, skiing on Superbowl Sunday has returned.  David found a ski package online and he and A. were off for Snow Valley.

Can you see Big Bear Lake in the background?

A. joined the ski school and caught on quickly.  Despite not having any poles he stayed upright and had a great time.

David had a great time, too!  Maybe next year we'll all go.

Running

R. and I are doing a couch-to-5k program!  Or maybe office chair-to-5k.  The program is designed to take a non-runner and over nine weeks prepare that person to run five kilometers or 3.1 miles.  R. rides her bike to school and has phys ed each day, but is concerned about passing the state fitness test.

With some new equipment, we were off and running!  The first day was the hardest, but seeing progress after just one week was good motivation.  Today we completed day one of week three and the anticipation of the run being twice the time of last week's run was probably harder than the run itself.

Some races promote the free beer at the finish line, but I thought a chocolate race would be more appropriate.  R. doesn't want to do anything that would end up on the internet (like you can find here), so we may run our own race following the course of the local Turkey Trot.  We can celebrate by sitting on the couch.

Playing with math

After hearing about business card fractals from friends and reading about it in the NY Times, we decided to visit the exhibit at USC's Doheny Library.  I learned a bit from the small exhibit and enjoyed poking around the building.  It might not have been the highlight for the kids, but afterward they had a chance to do what they like.

Reading Terry Pratchett
outside Leavey Library

If you look carefully you can see A. on the left.

I wonder if my last visit to USC was in 1978 with my aunt or in 1989 (?) when my older sister lived in LA.

The fractal exhibit was created by The Institute for Figuring, an organization that describes itself as a play tank instead of a think tank.  Almost every week they host an activity and we were lucky to be led by Harvey Mudd College professor Darryl Yong.  He had us "construct hyperbolic surfaces with paper annuli".  Translated that means we made curved objects with rings of paper.

paper annulus (singular of annuli)

my finished project

Even blurry it looks great!

A. was lucky to have instruction from the director, Margaret Wertheim, and came home with his own box fractal (as opposed to a Menger's Sponge or Snowflake Sponge).

from the USC exhibit

The IFF is in Chinatown so we found a good place for dinner and we all said our good thing of the day was visiting the Institute for Figuring (except for the A. because he had been at a slumber party and that was his good thing - his second good thing was learning to connect the cubes).

My next task is figuring out how to get them to move their office to Claremont so we can go to each event.

The End is Here

If I can hold off for less than eight hours I will have broken my running streak!  I tried to stop yesterday, but couldn't help listening to that little voice saying, "What's one mile?  Just go run!"  I had already cycled to the pool, swum 3000+ yards, cycled home, and done the couch-to-5K walk/run for the day (more on that in another post).  Plus I was sore from the six miles of running the day before and the 4000+ yards of swimming the day before that.  Enough is enough, but I couldn't stop.  Today I am forcing myself to not run because I can feel the obsession beginning.

It was a good challenge and I learned that I can run on consecutive days and that I can run at almost any time of the day.  It also confirmed for me that almost anything can become compulsive.

I am proud to announce that I am not running today and returning to my normal training routine.

Six of One

Half dozen of another.  I say that because I am not yet sure if the purchase, lugging home, and building of this shelving unit improved the mudroom or not.

Before

After

I would guess the answer is to get rid of stuff (does one really need to have a pair of too small cleats, too big cleats, and just right cleats on the shelf?), but maybe this will be a bit of an improvement.

Numeric Palindromes

While looking to see if there was a word for a numeric palindrome I came across this website, which I find entertaining.  Mostly I like to watch for numeric palindromes on the odometer.

photo taken in the garage with speedometer at zero

Then I like to calculate how many miles until the next palindrome (1,100 - about 1.5 months).

Maybe this weekend we'll go play with math at the Institute of Figuring and the USC Doheny Library, which was written up in the NY Times Science section.  We would have a chance to construct hyperbolic surfaces with paper annuli.  Stay tuned.

Company

We are so lucky to have a guest room.  It is also lucky that it is not hidden away so we can't use it as a dumping ground, which means it is ready when company arrives (except for some soccer clothes and other items tucked away in the dresser).

In the past thirty days we have had guests for fifteen of them.  Five nights were friends sleeping over, five were my parents visiting from Ohio, and five were a Finnish student staying with us as part of a program through Community Friends of International Students.

Drop a note and maybe you can be next!