math methods, fireants, birds

I have a new abacus toy, or actually, a soroban, with instructions in English, that I might just devote some time to.  You know, these manual calculators have good quick methods for doing large and decimal multiplication and division and can also be used for roots; not just for tallying or for adding numbers without using your fingers.

Although the instruction booklet is in English, it was printed in Japan, and has a few funny things and misspellings like thumb without a b, and more embarrasing, count without an o.

It seems like every time I come to Louisiana I get violated by fireants.  But this time they got me in the morning before heading to Louisiana, while still in Texas.  I got no fewer than 13 or 14 bites, and I am reminded that last time when I pinned my allergic reaction on poison ivy, it was likely a similar fireant violation instead.   The last time I itched like that was when I went camping, and I'm pretty sure I didn't get any fireant bites then, so I don't know what I can put that down to.  But I had a terrific allergic reaction once to fireants and I guess I still have reactions.  My body seems to not react and not react until it reacts to something, and then it will either react easily to the same thing, or get used to it and seem to react less and less until it doesn't react any more.  About these ants, they are all "new" ants, as opposed to getting bitten by the same local type of ants again and again, and maybe there's something in that, too. 

We harvested our first cucumber, yum.

Bonnie and I had a good time watching videos last night about birds that can talk.  Not just parrots and parakeets, but magpies, starlings, crows, and the like.  Fascinating.

33.5 years old

Today is my half year birthday, and I know you're probably wondering why you didn't hear about my 33 1/3 year celebration, but I think at that time I was probably counting candles on boys' birthday cakes, cutting out dinosaur hats, or something of the like.  And I can tell you what I'd like to be doing on my 34 1/3 year celebration.  That's the time (next year, actually on June 5 or 6, 2012, depending on your side of the international date line) when Venus will cross in front of the sun for the so called "transit of Venus" event.  It happens twice, about eight years apart, every 105 or 121 years in a delightful planetary dance that repeats with a periodicity of 243 years.  The last transit happened in 2004, so here's your last chance, living humans, unless you live so long as to see it happen again in 2117.  I hope to be somewhere with my family, watching the sun without looking at it directly, ideally in Japan or Alaska or Hawaii or some other neat place, although just about anywhere will do, so long as we don't go to places like Brazil or the Azores or western Africa.



(The above times are for the 2004 transit which occurred on June 8th.)

Tomorrow is my last day on the job at my current school, where I have been working in the capacity of Academic Director after beginning teaching at this language school last summer.  I am taking a position teaching Geometry in high school for the following school year, and I'm excited about that change.  I liked the leadership role of working with teachers and helping to run a school from that angle, so this is step one in getting a principal certification down the road.

Orry got registered for kindergarten today as well, so we're both excited to start school in a couple of weeks.

Hey, thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog.