Heptadecagon

Since March 19, we have had only 1 full day without a visitor present. That is not a bad thing. We all love having family around here. Aunt Teresa was up first, and she loves to take pictures. I thought I'd share those here. The kids had a great time with Aunt Teresa, and can't wait until she visits again. That might be awhile, as she is getting married this summer, and is also in school. We'll keep our fingers crossed for another visit and in the meantime, look forward to her wedding.

Aunt Teresa caught this little gem a couple of days ago. I need to say that, while I did major in French in college, I have not taught her any of the language. We can thank Scooby Doo and the Creepy Chef book for that one. Enjoy!

Last year, our small garden was a success! Tim was the keeper, but the kids and I had planted the seeds and cared for them prior to putting the budding plants in the ground. I have been a little lazy lately, and just yesterday Melina and I went to the store to get our seeds. Aunt Teresa is visiting, so she was our helper for the morning. I had planned on purchasing seeds for tomatoes, peppers, carrots -- your usual stuff. Melina had other things in mind. She chose flower seeds and watermelon seeds. The one she really wanted, though, was a packet of school bus seeds. Yep, you read that correctly. She thinks you can plant little seeds in the ground and grow school buses. We really did look at the store, but walked away without the school bus seeds. Apparently, the little red man told her that school buses came from seeds. *** Spring is March of Dimes time. I have two friends I support with a small donation, both of whom have very healthy little boys that were born too early. T

There are many things I love that tend to get pushed back into the closet. Any song by Asia, Air Supply, or Neil Diamond qualifies. My love for little kids' clothes-- which involves me wearing them -- is another one. That sounds a little creepy, but manufacturers make the largest kid size pretty big these days, so if I think it can pass as something an adult would wear (or not), I might just purchase it. Case in point: I am writing this while wearing pink fleece pajamas with polar bears, trees, and snowflakes on them. Anyway, Melina and I stumbled down the stairs this morning, Sunday, at 5:15 am. The only thing I love at that time of the morning is a good cup of coffee (it is sitting next to me right now). Due to the early hour, her request for watching a little television was granted. At some point, between shows, Steven Burns and Steven Drozd came on, singing I Hog the Ground (The Groundhog Song) . You can find it on You Tube, if you'd like to hear it, but your best

Aaron came home yesterday with a math paper that had 6 incorrect answers on it. Considering math is his favorite subject, I was quite surprised. I don't expect him to always get the right answers, but 6 wrong in kindergarten math seemed a bit much. The directions (which are read aloud by the teacher) for the first 5 said: Write the number in each group. Add. Write the sum . So, for the first one, he would look at the 7 lizards in the first group and the 2 lizards in the second group, and make a number sentence that looked like 7 + 2 = 9. Basically, he is practicing three things: counting the number of objects in a group, writing his numbers, and adding numbers. Good exercise all around. But Aaron is very much like his father, who is so excited about math, it can get him in trouble. So on the second page, Aaron should have recognized two groups, one with 6 and one with 2, to make the number sentence 6 + 2 = 8. But he Aaron didn't. He decided to write 6 + 8 = 14. True,

Can you find Melina in this picture? There she is! The kids all found this hysterical, for quite a long time. Melina just stood there, letting the kids build the column around her. What a sport!

Do you know how much I like cats? We have two of them, so you would think that I actually love them. Well, I don't. I like one cat. His name is Oscar, and he's been dead for quite a while now. I fell in love with that cat, and he with me, and when we parted (upon my leaving for college) it was so bittersweet. I didn't think I'd ever find a cat to replace him, and I haven't. And yet, as I said, we own two cats. Why? When I first moved out into my own apartment, I felt that I needed some company. I was living alone, and could not have a dog, so I opted for a cat. I just needed to be able to come home to somebody, and not a silent apartment. I found an advertisement in the newspaper and called it right away. The woman giving the cats away was named Lillian, and she lived in the next town over. Tim and I were dating at the time, and so I dragged him with me to Lillian's house. He figured since you should never go to a stranger's home alone, he bette

When I was a child, my mom always had us do two things for the 40 days of Lent: give something up, and try to do something positive. It was always more difficult to do the positive things. Somehow, giving up chocolate was much easier than trying to be nicer to my sisters. When Ash Wednesday rolled around last week, the girls and I decided to give up sweets. I forgot about discussing the possibility of doing something positive. While running on Saturday, I realized that our Lenten promises were pretty ridiculous. I knew I could go 40 days without sweets, and while Zoe especially would complain, with all the fruits coming into season, the girls probably wouldn't miss the cookies and candy. So what would be the point, then? I don't think God will mind if we change our plan a couple of days into Lent, do you? I thought about what promises might do the most good for everyone, and brought up the subject when I returned home. This is what we decided would be good for the gi

I love blogging. Partly because I love to write. Always have, always will. Perhaps, if I get good enough, I can make some money someday doing some writing. But I digress. Another reason I love to blog (and I know that Kelsey will back me up, and she probably has a post on this already) is that you get advice from people who know you (and sometimes, from people you don't). And, I just wanted to say Thanks! to several of you folks that gave me advice/support regarding the last post: the full-time job, outside the home. I especially need to say a big Thanks! to Julie, for giving (as she calls it) her unsolicited advice. Come to think of it, I probably did solicit advice, considering I posted the topic. However, it was good to get a view from a full-time, outside the home mom. Around here, I know many SAHMs that would have given me the same spiel: Your kids are only young once! Why are you in the rush to get back to work? The list could go on. And while I might sound cavali

A full-time job. I have one of those already. Until I was a mom, I really didn't understand that parenting and keeping house took so much time. However, the college called today to see if I could possibly help them. They are interviewing for full-time tenure track positions right now. I did not apply for that position, because I am not ready to work full-time. If the person who currently serves as the annually contracted faculty gets the tenure track position, then that position (the ACF) will be open. The college will be in a hurry to fill it, and the department wanted to know if I could fill it for spring quarter. The job would entail teaching 18 credit hours, which is quite a bit. Therefore, I would have lots of grading to do, much of which I would be required to do at home. Furthermore, I would be gone Monday through Thursday, from about 7:15 am until 5 pm. I am toying with the opportunity, but here is what comes immediately to mind. Daycare. Our babysitter is great,

I just proctored the last lab practical of the quarter for my A & P class. Because it is an 8 o'clock class, I have a small number of students that enrolled. Usually, the number of students that actually attend is even smaller; a group of 5 students come each week faithfully. This half of the quarter, we covered (among other things) the Endocrine and Reproductive systems. For those of you not in the know, the Endocrine system deals with hormones and the glands that secrete them. I am certain you all know what the Reproductive system entails. Due to harsh winter weather and missed days of class, those two systems were the only topics on the exam today. The students in this lab did well overall, but I have another one at 10 o'clock, and I can already see the mistakes that will happen. Question 25. Part I: Name the organ from which this tissue was taken. Part II: Name the structure indicated by the pointer. If you look closely at this photo AND you have studied this informatio

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. I have done that -- Five times, already, in fact. Still, the bright pink bubblegum stain of the acetaminophen remains. Tenacious, this stain is, Much like the virus that grips Melina. Fever is what brought on the pink bubblegum acetaminophen, Since the ibuprofen, Dye-free and clear, Had no effect. Usually it is magic And my Melina returns to us. Swirling, twirling, laughing Through the afternoon until bedtime, When she pleasantly asks to go to bed. Bedtime has not been pleasant, though. Coughing, flailing, my little peanut thrashes. And each morning, we wake As tired as the night before. Sunny days might help, but today it rains. Plenty of water to wash all of this away, The virus, the bubblegum, the fatigue. We can hope. We will hope. Because under all the drops, we see something peeking out. A green beginning, a strong new life. A simple purple crocus flashes its smile at us. Which reminds me to find the bl

No. I have done no phone calling lately, Reader. It isn't that I don't want to catch up on what is happening in your parts of the world, it is just that I don't feel like calling and then complaining. About what, you ask? I don't think you actually need to ask. What keeps cropping up on this lovely blog every month or so? What seems to schedule itself with regularity, much like a woman's cycle? (Sorry, I just could not resist.) A virus. A germ. A sickness. Yes, we've got another one! Here's the rundown on this one: 1. Most people in the house have had a mild sore throat for the last couple of days. 2. Melina woke up on Tuesday morning feeling warm. She was okay, but not her usual self, and as the day progressed, she was feeling downright hot. We made it through yesterday, thanks to acetominophen and the television. 3. About 11 o'clock last night, Melina's fever spiked, and the medicine I had just given her came back up. 4. At 3 o'clock this morn

Today I discovered a lovely little result. If you list the vertices of a non-self-intersecting polygon in counterclockwise order, then the area of the polygon is where vertical bars denote the determinant. The first thing I thought when I saw this equation was that I could use the nth roots of unity to get the vertices of regular n-gons inscribed in the unit circle, calculate their areas, and get a sequence that has pi as its limit! Excited? Yeah, me too! Since this blog is called Heptadecagon, here's the inscribed heptadecagon: At this scale, it doesn't look too much different than the circumscribed circle, but you can see all 17 distinct sides. The area of the polygon, calculated with the determinant equation, is 3.07055 to six decimal points. Here are the results of the area sequence, from n=3 to n=1002. At 1002, the area is 3.14157. At n=20000, the area is 3.14159260, which misses pi by about five hundred millionths. If I calculate any more of these, it won't be o