Constants vs. Ups and downs:

My Math teacher gave me a writing prompt. How dare she, right? Anyway, I was annoyed at the beginning, but when I started writing, I actually had fun and went way beyond the one paragraph that she asked for. Albeit nerdy sounding, I kind of liked what I came up with:

Recently I’ve tried to refinance my house, because interests went down. Unfortunately, along with interests, the value of the home went down as well. It was just four years ago that home prices were soaring. Buying 10 years ago and selling five or six years later would have given us a large profit just by sitting on the house. Also, I recently learned that my employer is not paying for my retirement anymore.

Engrish!!

I swear I'm not making fun of these guys. After all, I wrote like this or even worse when I moved here. It's just that, as an English teacher, I find it so fascinating!

Answer to an email asking about the stats of an item I bought on eBay:

As a rule, it will take 3-5 days to arrive.
Pls wait for more time with patient.
Pls feel free to contact us if there is anything we can assist.

Happy a nice day
Sibyl

The "Sibyl" just kills me.

Math Websites

I'm taking some Math classes for my future Math endorsement. That's right, 3 subjects is not good enough for me. My goal is to teach them all!! Anyway, this is a list of helpful websites I found and that I'd like to list somewhere so I have easy access to them. So, this is not for you, it's for me!

Cool graphic calculator thingy

Equation calculator

Crapload of Math utilities from USU. The grapher is pretty cool.

My Nook Case

I made this following some tutorial I found online. I didn't want to spend $30 on a case, so I tried this, and it turned out surprisingly well. I chose Pontoon because I love how it looks, but it was sad to gut it like that, so if anyone has an extra copy, I'll take it :-)

Awesomes Christmas Ever?

The fact that so many people gave me so many awesome presents makes me feel really bad because I didn't buy anything for anybody, except the kids. It's true that we're more broke than we've ever been, but I also decided that we shouldn't worry, since we drew names with Geoff, so that part of the family was taken care of (I thought), and Meg made cute aprons for all the ladies in the family, which is a better present that I could have bought anyway, because I'm the crapiest present giver ever (awkward sentence). Also, last year was so crappy when it came to presents that I didn't worry. I mean, I got like a wind up worm, and stuff like that.

Books I Read on 2010

I'm pretty sure I won't be finishing any more books this year, so I might as well do this now.

I made it to 46! Of course, I had more time to listen to some audio books on my way to work, so the word "read" is somewhat loosely used. Reading them on my Kindle and Nook apps on my phone made it easier as well.

Life of Pi + Common Nonsense

Life of Pi, novel by Yann Martell

I kept seeing this book in every thrift store I ever went to, so I finally got it and read it. I hated it so much I wish I hadn't even bothered. But at least it caused a strong enough impression that I felt I needed to write about it.

The book begins well enough. There are long descriptions of animals and animal life, which are actually fascinating. The author then describes his quest to find a religion at a very young age, and this part sounds quite uninformed and simplistic. If I hadn't read later that this book was the author's attempt to make sense to his life through some kind of search for spirituality, I would seriously consider that this was his attempt to demonstrate how silly and petty religions were, and, therefore, unnecessary.

Lights at Temple Square

Gabe Crawling / Gabriel gateando

That cable is really unplugged! He just likes cables, and that seems to be the main motivation to make him crawl these days, so we have to unplug everything. I think that if he hadn't been wearing those sack looking pajamas, and if the flash hadn't been distracting, he could have done a better job :)



Ese cable esta desenchufado. Parece que los cables son la única motivación para hacerlo gatear, así que tenemos que desenchufar todo (por éso la etapa del gateo no es algo que esperaba ansiosamente). Si no hubiera estado usando ese piyama en forma de bolsa, y si el flash no lo hubiera distraído tanto, capaz que hubiera ido mas rapido. Capaz...

Letter from China

Well, it's not really a letter. It's a little message from the seller that was attached to a battery I bought. I always find these things fascinating, and I guess that engrish.com shows I'm not the only one. The grammar and word choices are so unique, and yet, we understand pretty much everything they say. The last paragraph is genius, though.