An Early Summer Night's Dream

I was going to post something a couple nights ago, but ran out of time, so here it is today. The studying for the candidacy exam continues on. I lead such an exciting life. I'm starting to get tired of the entire process of studying, but I must persist, mainly because I'm too damn stubborn to quit. I almost think I may have started to study too much. On Monday night I woke up in the middle of the night in a middle of a dream involving all sorts of symbols and terminology from what I was studying. As if that isn't scary enough, everything seemed all jumbled to me when I woke up. Hopefully that's just because it was 4 am and it was just my mind's way of processing information. If not, I may just be screwed for the exam.

On Wednesday, I went out to lunch with Dr. Shirer, the professor I was a TA for. It was really nice, just going out and chatting with him. We struck up a nice rapport during the semester as I was grading everything, and I think I must have impressed him with the amount of work I put into the class. Actually, I think a lot of the students were even impressed with the amount of time I spent working with them and on the grading, and even just going to the lecture. Yes, some of my time was spent being somewhat selfish by going to the lectures to help improve my knowledge of dynamics, but a good part of it was so that I would know what was going on in class to be better able to help the students when they came in with questions from the problem set.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there. I went to lunch yesterday at Chili's and had a really nice couple hour chat with Dr. Shirer, thankfully about more things than dynamics. We chatted about Europe (he'd spent some time in Germany on a post-doc, I'd been in France as a senior in high school). Then we chatted politics a little bit, mainly ranting about Bush and his anti-science leaning. Overall, it was a nice time, although I was a little disappointed with the food. I ordered chicken crispers, which I had assumed would be like normal chicken fingers with the typical breading on them. At Chili's they were battered kind of like sweet-and-sour chicken from a Chinese place. This normally wouldn't bother me all that much, but the batter was kind of gooey on the inside, so they weren't exactly the greatest. But still it was a nice time.

Then last night I went to play poker with a large number of the meteo grads. There were 14 in total, which is rather impressive. I managed to improve on my showing from last time. I wasn't the first one knocked out! I was actually playing really well, stealing blinds when I could. The cards were also sort of going my way. I was getting some good cards, but overall, they were hardly playable, but I still played them if I was in a blind. I just happened to get lucky on the flop to pair something. I was also playing a bit conservatively. I did notice that on the first hand I put more than the blinds on, I was really nervous because I actually had a hand. And I ended up winning the pot, which significantly calmed me down. I was also getting a lot of small pairs in my hole cards, which are very hard to play. But I managed to use them to my advantage.

I even made the final table last night (8 people) which means I waited out 6 other people. Unfortunately, I was the first one knocked out of the final table. I think I was losing my touch by the time that happened. The largest stack went all in after the flop, and I had two pair, aces from the flop and nines, one was in my hole cards. I decided to call him since I was the only other one left in the pot. I should have folded, but I went against my better judgment and gambled, and he ended up having a third ace in his hole cards. So, I was basically drawing dead. But it's ok. At least I learned something. I learned that I should always follow my instinct. I also learned that I shouldn't go up against the person with the biggest stack of chips unless I have a really good chance of winning. Oh, well. I improved on what I did before, so I'm happy about that. And I'm happy that the little bit of practice I put into party poker the couple nights before helped a bit. It would have been nice to be in the money, but that can be a goal for the future.

Well, I guess that's enough analysis of my last hand of poker. I've been doing enough analyzing since last night anyway.

Unfortunately, my run of luck in poker didn't extend to progressive rummy, which I played with Paul, Terry, and Andrew last night. For that game, I just couldn't catch cards at all. I got caught without being able to lay down my melds twice. But it's ok. I was getting tired by that point anyway. I didn't get to bed until after 1 am this morning. And then I couldn't sleep past 8:30, which is odd, but it suits me.

One more thing to say. The state of the world these days pretty much scares me. What kind of world is it where a man can go into such a rage that he'd kill his own daughter and her friend because his daughter went outside to play even when she was grounded. Some people just should not have kids, or be committed to an asylum. It's just a scary place.

Well, on that depressing note, I'm going to head off and study a bit more. Hopefully it will go reasonably well. At least I did have the nice study break last night to put the exam out of my head for a few hours. Tomorrow's going to be another study break because Andrew's having a graduation cookout and I'll probably go to his first ceremony tomorrow night. So, that will be nice. Then I'll have a studying marathon from Saturday to Monday. Then the exam comes.

OK, that's enough stalling. Time to get my brain in gear. Maybe I'll write another entry tonight. I doubt it, but it could happen.