a wolf angel is not a good angel

Oh, I liked this game. A lot. (More, I think, than the other people.)

It’s very cognitive; there’s no trading-type interaction. There are auctions, but it’s just an auction, not a trade.

The point of the game is to minimise your road lengths. I have no clue how to make the roads do what I want, though. I can sometimes figure out how to screw other people, but not ensure I’m safe.The real problem is the beginning of the game. I can work the end game out well, but by then most of the pieces are set. And I can’t, from the beginning, tell what will be a good placement and what won’t. None of us could figure it out.

The games are very fast — less than an hour.

The first game we took the suggestion of hiding all the factories in the corner. This made placements more obvious and roads much easier — it was difficult to see why road placement would be a problem. (I tied for second place with 6 points. Leftover money was crucial in both games.) The second game we put the 3 factories away from corners. It is almost impossible to predict where the road will come out of something that’s in the middle of the board. Which means that even if you’re on the corner of one, you can be 8 road tiles away.

The odd thing about this game is that the road tiles go in the weirdest places sometimes. You need to put one floating around in the middle of the board because otherwise you’d split the board, or . . . we were actually quite good about that — we didn’t always catch them immediately, but before we ever built on one.

The first factory goes for a lot, the next bunch go for around 3, and the last are free. I had *8* points freed up from extra money — this is important. (It brought me from 14 to a winning 6 in the second game.)

It’s quite a different kind of game. It’s much more strategy and less luck. It also requires some kind of puzzle skills, so you can figure out what places to expropriate adn turn into roads. It’s a logic puzzle kind of thing, I think — you must enjoy that for the game to be even a little worthwhile. But I was totally taken with it. Part of it is just figuring out *what* the strategy for it is. (No clue. None of us can even imagine.)

I really enjoyed the game — more than Settlers of Catan. I am, however, a minority there. Everyone liked it.

It’s not an expensive game, though, and you can play it with 2 people (I don’t know how well that would work), which is a big plus. I would suggest it, just for something that will be nothing like what you’ve seen before.

Odd day today. Went to my favourite class, where the professor showed how well her theory covers the paycheque problem (not the “they’re too small” one), and how well it generalizes to habits.

The paycheque problem goes like this.

1. Last month, Jon spent his paycheque. Hank saved it.

So the it is anaphoric in 2 ways. It’s anaphoric on the paycheque(.of) in the earlier sentence, and anaphoric on Hank in that one.People solve it in all sorts of ways — I’m not, actually, clear on why this theory is better here. (I lack some essential thing we like to call “background”.) The current theory has it anaphoric on an event — something else (part of the theory for other reasons) ensures the correct person is doing what he likes with his paycheque.
So apparently we solved it more nicely other theories do. Okay.
What’s really nice — and what even I can see is nice — is that this extends without massive type-lifting to habits. This is less clear without the papers in which this theory is proposed, much time to understand the papers and, preferably, the author there to explain what you don’t get. It’s not quite that bad . . . but it’s really formal stuff, and although the intuitions are clear (and, to my mind, right), you just can’t see them shining bright and clear through the boxes and lambdas. (But, hey, Montague needed a whole *book*.)

2. Every month, Jon spends his paycheque. Hank saves half.

So here there’s no event, per se. There’s a *habit* (which is an event that repeats). And everything is anaphoric on the habit (of spending or of saving, whichever).
As far as I know (ie, what I was told), this has not been easily explained in other theories.

I have funding — guaranteed for 4 years, and a “you’ve got a good chance” for the 5th (and even beyond — TAing). And if I don’t have funding in the last year, I will quite happily go home and work there (since I can’t work here) and come in every few weeks for meetings. (Am I hoping for this? Sort of. Yes.) I have a good enough relationship with some of the faculty in the linguistics department there that I would not be totally out of the loop. Who knows — I might even be able to part-teach some courses in one of the many schools around.
It depends on who I write my thesis with, of course. Not all faculty ilke that. (Then again, what do they expect if there is no money?)
But the “if there is no money” is what worries me. They’re trying to lower the TA pay scale to the almost unliveable fellowship scale. Worse yet, TA money (but not fellowship money) is state taxable. The tax treaty with Canada goes something like “Any money you earn from a US company gets charged US taxes only but you can’t take any deductions.” And this job thing seems to be falling through, though I have now emailed to try to find out. This is bad, because it will mean I have to work all summer, which will mean I can’t do research. I appreciate that they want you to do research in the summer. But you need to give me money to live on for that to happen, dears. I do not appreciate that they make it difficult for you if you’ve not done any research.

Far too little sleep last night. Far too much to do today for my all day in class schedule. (Tempted to skip one, but it would, I think, be impolitic.) Far too many plans for this evening — I will need, I think, to skip out on the dinner-for-someone-in-my-cohort-at-a-fairly-expensive-restaurant-which-I-don’t-much-like-and-can’t-afford-anyhow (Japanese food. Not my favourite). I should cancel the inaugural playing of “Fresh Fish” tonight, but I just don’t want to. The more practice all of us have the more likely — in theory –that when N eventually gets to play he *won’t* win. (Look, I like the guy. It’s just more fun to play games when you don’t know who’s gonna win before the game starts.)
I need to pick up my free turkey, some bananas for the long drive tomorrow, and, I think, more on-sale Snapples. I need to finish my laundry. I need to finish packing my papers. I need to pack my clothes. I need to clean out my car. And all this by 10 tomorrow, so I can hit the lightest rush hour (into Canada City at 6 — traffic is leaving it, mostly) and, possibly, get to my grandparents’ house in time for dessert. (Dinner is unlikely.) Though their cat won’t be too ecstatic to suddenly have mine around, mine *will* be happy to be out of the car.
They’re good in cars, actually. One meows for a bit, maybe 20 minutes, then settles down. The other doesn’t even meow. Of course one sits on my shoulder and the other my lap. Lap is not a problem. Shoulder eventually causes pain and numbness in the arm. But since I have to stop all the time to nap anyways, no harm done.
Anyways. All these things to do. No time with which to do them.
Law & Order last night was very good.

Well, the presentation went just as badly as anticipated. But it was the last one for this semester. On the other hand, it’s also supposed to be my syntax paper for this semester, and it’s . . . yeah. But I have 3 weeks for that one. Um. Hmm. Maybe I’d better stop thinking about this.
The problem is that I keep not thinking about this. (No, my depression is NOT undiagnosed, thank you. No, drugs don’t work.) I’m far behind in much of my work. Well, in one course. In one I’m fine, in the other I’m only somewhat behind. And I know damn well why I’m avoiding this. Because — well, in part because I am just plain depressed and not doing anything that isn’t watching kids’ movies over and over, but mostly because I feel overwhelmed, outclassed. Stupid.
Stupid stupid. Oh, I could go on, but anyone who’s been depressed knows how it goes, and anyone who hasn’t wouldn’t understand anyways. A — the brilliant boy in my department (he’s good at everything, he’s the best TA in the class he’s TAing (7 TAs?), and the stupid jerk is just a really nice guy, so you can’t even dislike him) — said once that I am not entirely stupid, that I could do semantics. I do hope he’s right. I think. Part of me just wants to be too stupid to do this so I can leave and do something where I don’t feel too stupid, and where it, somehow, matters less.
Fake. I don’t know what I’m faking. I guess I’m faking my comprehension. I don’t understand where all this comes from. When I was in high school,I felt like a horrible person (well, I admit sometimes I still do) who had no friends and never would (this part I am better about) but I felt smart. It’s nice to feel — to know — I have friends (it would be nice too to have a relationship, but that is apparently too much to ask for) but it’s not fun to always feel out of my league, to always feel barely a step in front of failure.
I dreamed the other night that my mother died.

I know that it’s good and all to present work-in-progress within your department. It is. It gives you practice creating handouts, knowing timing, practicing speaking, getting feedback. All of it good. But I am tired of presenting. And now, at the end of the semester, I have several a week (or even a day). Not useful anymore! Too much, and everything will end up being too shoddy. Already is too shoddy.
(Quick guess: who is underprepared for her presentation today? Who, for instance, hasn’t even begun to write her handout?)

That’s the sound of air escaping. Whoosh. Aren’t sound effects fun?
How frustrating. I had another great huge tear in my tire. I drove to school (a desperate meeting about semantics — yes, it will work, now I need to screw my courage to the sticking point[1] and actually try to work out the formulae), changed the tire and drove somewhere to get a new one. None in my size. Went back to make my other meeting (also productive!) and came home. Decided to try another place. Phoned ahead — they thought they had some in my size. Yay! Except not, because they were wrong about my tire size. (I know the size now.)
Tomorrow: I will be phoning every stupid place in the area until I find one with tires in my size. I’m driving 7ish hours on Friday — I need this tire. Also I will buy cat food. And write my presentation for tomorrow afternoon. I have nothing to say, but whatever. Thank god my non-cancelled class was just cancelled.

[1] In grades 5 & 6 we read Macbeth and The Tempest. Yes, someone spoke in a fake Scottish accent, and, yes, we all loved those plays. And no matter how bad a production of either of them I see (the worst: Macbeth was played by someone who was, I swear, channelling Hulk Hogan) I still love them best.

Both Joanne Jacobs and Kimberly Swygert have linked to a story about two grade 11 students who were “traumatised” after hearing an offensive word in a book their teacher was reading aloud.
Now leaving aside the utter absurdity of being traumatised (enough to need psychiatric help? Come on) from this, there is the question of why the teacher was reading aloud. After all, one would hope, by the time you’re 16 or 17, you ought to be able to read all by yourself.
If the teacher was reading the whole book to the class, chapter at a time — I’m jealous, but that is a little silly. (Although we always read every single play aloud. Every last word.) But an illustrative couple of pages? I love listening to books being read to me — the pacing is always so much better, the . . . I don’t know what it is. But I can see much benefit in having books read to students, even at that level.

Oh well. Typical typo for me. I also always write Emaily instead of Emily. (It’s not my name, which I am able to type, usually.)
I got an idea! The difference between the two senses of “I’m looking for a book about giraffes” is in whether you put (the representation of) an actual book in the discourse or just of the kind “book” which gets further specified to “about giraffes” and then, later, “at least 53 pages long so my plagiarism will be less apparent”. You can’t do this with an actual book properly.
Of course I come up with this idea 55 minutes before my meeting, when I am as of yet not dressed and will need to print this and of course get to school — still, I came up with it (I’m sureit’s not original, I’m just pleased) BEFORE I had to go beg for help.
Instead of working it out, I’m blogging. Sigh.

The cats are back to sitting at my window, waiting for me to let them in. Which works, for now. I’m not sure if I will be as keen when it’s winter proper . . . but who’m I trying to kid? I’ll do anything they want me to: they’re spoiled rotten.

Right now they’re both napping on my bed (I bet there’s no food in their bowls) and periodically (when she comes within view) giving my roommate’s cat dirty leave-this-house-now-and-never-come-back-or-at-least-leave-my-tail-alone looks.