The Number Field

Because she is a diligent couponer and mommyblog reader, Jenny led a family outing to Target last week. She knew that they had started their summer clearances, and wanted to see what they had in Elena's size. She's still growing so quickly that she really needs them--we're talking about size sevens for a girl who isn't even eighteen months old yet!

For her part, Elena needed no instruction about what to do. She has an innate love for shoes. When we picked a pair off the rack, she would hold out her feet so we could put them on. She wanted to keep wearing them or at least hold onto the ones she liked. I think she did that so that we couldn't steal them away and return them to the shelves without her noticing, at which point she put up a fight. She knew that if she could just get them to the cashier, she would keep them. Luckily, we were able to impose our parental will through diversion and distraction.

We found two pairs of shoes that we liked: first, white slippers that looked nice enough for church and had enough ventilation for her feet to breathe in the summer days to come, we purchased on the spot. The second pair, pink sport sandals, were only 25% off, so Jenny said we should wait. Jenny and Elena made a return trip while I was away over the weekend and snapped them up--the discount had increased, it was the last pair in Elena's size, and they've already become her default everyday footwear.

Oddly enough, when we wandered through the Walmart shoe section yesterday, Elena didn't seem too interested. She certainly wasn't grabbing for anything she could get her hands on. Was it just an off night, or does she really prefer Target?

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Last weekend I gave a talk at the National Youth Science Camp, which is at beautiful Camp Pocahontas in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. I attended the camp the year I graduated from high school, and worked there the following year, but this was the first time I had been back since then. More than anything else, I was surprised by how little had changed.

Every year the campers are different--each state sends two delegates who have just graduated high school--and yet as a group they reminded me very much of the campers from my year. I can describe them in just four words: nerds who play frisbee. Since that description also suits me, I fit right in, just as I did back when I was a camper.

I presented my lecture, with the topic Math and Music * , on Saturday morning. The Friday evening and Saturday evening lectures were also about math, so I think we might have overloaded the campers just a little bit. I think that my talk was well-received, especially because many of the campers are also musicians. I'm afraid that I disappointed the people with my answer of "no" when they asked if I was a musician.

Although the camp itself is peaceful and bucolic, getting there and getting home were both adventures. I flew into Lewisburg, but had to wait for several hours to pick up the Friday evening lecturer, Denny. His flight was delayed in part due to a power outage that struck much of the town, including the airport, which inexplicably didn't have a backup generator. Our driver from there to camp was Dave, Saturday evening's lecturer, and also a long-time presenter at and supporter of the camp, and we talked mostly math for the whole drive.

I was supposed to fly out of Washington, DC on Sunday, which is also where Dave had to return the car, so we were again traveling companions. Our drive was pleasant and speedy, because Sunday morning is the one time when there's no traffic on that route. The time passed even more quickly because of the interesting conversation--yes, more math, but this time mixed with pedagogy.

Once I got to the airport, things changed. I checked in and headed to my terminal, which seemed extremely busy. I was there early and stood by for an earlier flight, but just missed out. The gate agent called the only name ahead of me on the standby list, but he didn't immediately show up. She waited just a moment, then started to struggle through my name. Before I could stand up to claim my spot, the other guy walked up to the gate and claimed the seat.

When it was time for my flight to board, the agent announced that they would need about fifteen volunteers to take a later flight, which seemed like an unusually large number. I was by myself, and the compensation they offered was pretty good, so I called Jenny and decided to take the bump. I tried to get a free internet voucher in the deal, but ended up with meal vouchers instead. Jenny had packed food for me, and I still had lots of it left, so I didn't appreciate the vouchers at first. But during that long day in the terminal I emptied my lunch bag, and still needed dinner, so I was glad I had them.

Throughout the afternoon, the terminal got more and more busy. There were definitely more people trying to leave than there were planes to accommodate them. I couldn't find a place to sit anywhere near my gate, and retreated down the hallway for some peace. Later, as my rescheduled flight approached, I went back to the gate area only to find that it would be delayed by an hour. A customer service agent told me that with that delay I could probably still make my connection, but the delay just kept lengthening and soon I realized that the connecting flight would take off long before I arrived.

By this time, there were no more agents working on rebooking in the terminal. Along with others in my position, I was told to go to the main desk at the front of the airport. It too was understaffed, but after a lengthy wait, the booking agent worked some magic. He realized that if I ran, I could make it onto a different flight that had also suffered delays, and would possibly allow me to connect in Atlanta. I raced back to the gate, through what was now a thick crowd of people all trying to get to Atlanta. Order had broken down, and the gate agents had resorted to yelling the names on the manifest to let them know they were cleared to board. My name was the second to last one on the list, but I was glad to hear it.

Once in the air, we suffered an additional delay because of a thunderstorm that had parked over the Atlanta airport. I was worried that I would miss my connection, and upon landing called Jenny. She checked the flight online and found that it had also been delayed. With renewed hope, I raced from one end of the terminal to the other, only to find that there was still plenty of time. Regardless, I was glad to settle into my seat.

Even though I didn't get home until after midnight, I was extremely grateful to be home. I had missed Jenny and Elena, so it was wonderful to be back with them. Next year at this time we'll be within driving distance of camp, so I hope I am invited back and can convince Jenny to drive out there with me.

* These slides contain embedded audio, which may only be audible if you use the official Acrobat Reader.

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I'm running about a week behind in my posting, but we've been busy and haven't really had any events worthy of their own blog posts, so that's a brief explanation of why I haven't written anything in more than a week. Jenny said that I should at least let people know how we spent our holiday weekend, so I'll start with that.

We had a busy and fun Fourth of July weekend with friends and family, including three nights out in a row. On Saturday, we made pizza with Ben. He introduced us to the internet sensation that is Trololo man (aka Eduard Khil ), while we showed him the joy of pesto pizza and the game SET . Elena did obstacle course laps around his dining room.

Sunday we had a cookout with Jeremy, Amy, Jean, Ben and all their kids, followed by fireworks. They had picked up lots of fireworks at one stop of their long drive back from vacation the previous day. I had hoped that Elena would like the sparklers, but she was unimpressed. She did like the larger fireworks--she laughed at them whenever they would change from one stage to another. The only downside of the evening was the extended traffic jam as we tried to drive home after the local municipal fireworks ended.

On Monday we had dinner with Jenny's brother John and his family. It was really nice of them to make time for us to get together, because they were headed out on vacation the following day. After dinner we had the requisite trampoline/hide-and-seek/slide time. Although I resisted the boys' pleas to bounce them on the trampoline, I eventually gave in. Since they were leaving on vacation, and their tomato plants are in their prime fruiting period, we got the added bonus of a big bowl of fresh tomatoes. Even better, John reminded me about cream cheese and fresh tomato sandwiches, which I've enjoyed several times since then. It's too bad that Jenny doesn't like cream cheese or tomatoes, because they make the perfect sandwich, especially on her home-baked bread.

In other news, I sent a draft of my dissertation to my committee on Friday, which means that I'll be able to defend it the second week of August. I hope that they send me some comments and revisions, but not too many. Now I have to make sure I successfully navigate the maze of paperwork between now and the day I turn in the final paper certifying a successful defense. I'm glad that I have other projects to keep me busy, including this week's trip to Science Camp, because it will force me to be ahead of the game with the graduation requirements.

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A week ago, I took Elena on our first daddy-daughter date. We went to a Saturday morning matinee of Toy Story 3 . Jenny was welcome to join us, but she said she thought it would be a nice time for me to share with Elena, and she would appreciate the time to herself. She packed up lunch for Elena and snacks for both of us, and sent us on our way.

One of my former rowers is a manager at the movie theater, and she happened to be on duty when we got there. She came out to say hi, which was very nice, and then she showed us the right way to our theater.

I'll try not to spoil anything for those who haven't seen the movie yet, but here are just a few notes. Elena was hooked from the very beginning--she loved the first action sequence. I don't know what she thought about the abuse of toys by toddlers, but I hope she doesn't treat any toys that way. By the end, she was a little bit restless, but I was very emotionally involved. I was happy that we made it all the way through to see how it all turned out.

This weekend, Jenny and I had a date. Many thanks to Uncle John, Aunt Karina, and cousins Warren, Gavin and Ainsley for taking Elena overnight. She had a great time playing with them and didn't mind us leaving her at all. She loves Warren and Gavin, and will miss them when we leave. Jenny and I had a nice night out. We went out to dinner, did some window shopping at a fancy outdoor mall , then spent the night in a hotel. It was a nice change of pace, and a good way of celebrating the good news that I got a job! Now all I have to do is graduate, and we're all set.

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When we woke up on Wednesday morning, the group seemed much more cohesive. I'm not sure whether it was the challenges we had already traversed or the anticipation of what was ahead that helped us to gel as a group, but I was thankful to see more cooperation. We had oatmeal and pop tarts for breakfast, then started to filter and purify water from the stagnant pond.

Just a few minutes later, one of the other adults came back from his own water expedition. Following the same stream bed where I had found water the night before, but going upstream instead of down, he found a couple of deep, clear pools of water each about the size of a kitchen table. A few of us took most of the water bottles and our largest pot to fill up and bring back to camp. It was a stroke of luck that he found it, because the filter had started to clog. The new water supply looked clear enough that we were comfortable just purifying it with tablets, instead of using two different methods.

After all this water drama in the valley, we decided that we needed to modify our plans, because we were worried there would be even less water after we got to the top of Winding Stair Mountain, which was where we planned to camp that night. After deliberation, we decided to curtail the backpacking portion of the trip. To that end, we split into two groups. The first group would go ahead all the way to the van (about eight miles away), and bring it back to a rendezvous point at the location of our first-day water drop. From there we would head to the nearby state park, which had running water and even showers.

We broke camp and let the first group of four start down the trail before the rest of us got rolling. After just a few minutes, when we were going down the hill instead of up, I got nervous and pulled out my GPS to see that we had missed a critical early intersection. Luckily, the leaders were still within earshot and we yelled them back, found the intersection, and headed in the right direction. If we had stayed on the wrong trail without realizing it, we would have been in for a very long detour.

The new trail was uphill almost from the beginning. It was gradual at first, but those who had suffered most the previous day hadn't fully recovered, and needed lots of stops with plenty of rest. We tried to lighten their packs as much as possible and maintain a steady pace. One signpost along the way had an arrow pointing towards "Deadman Gap," and we eventually realized that's where we were heading to climb the mountain. We hoped we wouldn't meet the same fate as the person it was named after.

I've hiked up some steep trails in my life, and I'm of the opinion that it's impossible to say which has been the hardest, because in the midst of things they all seem the worst, but afterwards they don't seem as bad. Nevertheless, I'll say that the trail we took that day is comparable to any of the steepest trails I've ever climbed. Adding to that, it was very poorly maintained, so at times we had to wade through a sea of poison ivy. To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only one who was affected by it, and only one small patch on my wrist. We certainly learned why it was called "Deadman Gap," but persevered and eventually all made it to the top of the mountain.

At the top, we found the Talimena Scenic Byway, which is a lightly-travelled road that follows the Winding Stair mountain ridge line. After the climb, most of the people in my group had visibly reached their limit, so we made another executive decision--I took one other person (a junior leader) and we forged ahead without our packs. We thought we would wait at the rendezvous point for the van, and when the lead group came to get us, we would load up and head back to the first road crossing to get everyone else.

Instead, without our loaded packs we made such good time that we caught up with the advance group. Although we were on top of the mountain, we saw more flowing water than we had down in the valley. But the decision had been made, and everyone was ready to be done. We helped carry the packs of the lead group, and eventually made it to the rendezvous, although we did pause for some early season wild blueberries that had ripened along the sunnier parts of the trail. At the rendezvous, with several miles still to go before the car, we decided to send just two people the rest of the way--my hiking companion and the van driver. They were in good shape, and the rest of us could stay with the packs.

While we waited at the panoramic vista, they hiked along the road. Even though it was hotter than on the trail, they hoped that someone passing by would pick them up. They only saw a few vehicles, mostly motorcycles heading in the opposite direction. They deserve a lot of credit for forging on ahead at the end of the day to get to the van and rescue us.

On Thursday, instead of a final day of hiking, we found a state park along the shores of Broken Bow Lake, and enjoyed a relaxing day of swimming and eating all the leftover food. The next day we had a "reward" activity--after the rigors of backpacking, it was a great change of pace to canoe the Mountain Fork river, which featured Class II rapids and a three foot waterfall. I'm proud to say that my canoe was the only one in our group that never tipped over. My partner Gabriel deserves the credit for that, because his good handling helped us out numerous times.

With that, we were ready to head home. On Friday night we camped in the sweltering heat of Texas, at Cooper Lake State Park . The heat motivated us to get going early on Saturday morning.

We had an appointment at the Dallas temple, but instead of wearing our church clothes for the whole drive, we stopped at the Galleria Dallas to change. It's a luxury mall, and I think that it was a little bit of a culture shock after our time in the wilderness. The temple was wonderful, and everyone liked the buffet we ate at afterwards. I was shocked by the amount of food that some of the boys packed away, including the tallest soft serve ice cream cone of all time. After we finally pried the boys away from the food, we made good time on the way home, and arrived only a few minutes behind schedule.

I was happy to see Elena and Jenny, and they were happy to see me. I think that everyone had similarly joyful reunions with their loved ones. It's good to go to the woods, but it's even better to come back. In the end, everyone had a good time for at least part of the trip, even those who had doubts at the beginning. In addition, nobody died or was seriously injured, and we're all still talking to each other, so it was a successful trip.

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Elena recently completed her first swim class--she's now certified as a Starfish I swimmer! Jenny and she had a great time together and tried lots of new things. Elena floated with the help of a noodle, got used to lying on her back in the water, and learned to kick her legs. Most exciting of all, she learned how to go all the way under the water. Here are some of the highlights from the day that I visited their lesson:

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My poison ivy rash has died down, the bug bites are mostly gone, and it's time for me to write about last week's trip before the memories also start to fade. Two weeks ago, I was making final plans for the menu and activities when I first heard about the tragic Arkansas flooding, in the exact location we had planned to visit. I made a last minute change to a different location, without begin fully aware of its challenges. I did know that the risk of flash floods was much lower, but that brought on a different set of challenges.

We made good time to our destination, including a lunch stop in Paris (Texas), but met difficulty when we stopped to cache water along the road near a trail intersection. A radiator valve stopper had broken and we were losing coolant fast. It took some time, but we fashioned a temporary replacement and drove carefully to our trailhead, now an hour behind schedule.

That's where I discovered that some of the guys were not too well prepared. We had a few late additions, and while I sent them the packing list, they didn't attend the pack check, so I didn't get a chance to evaluate their gear ahead of time. Likewise, I don't think that they read the itinerary--they seemed surprised that we would be leaving the car and not coming back to it for several days. To their credit, nobody put up too much of a struggle as we started down the trail.

We arrived at our campsite late, and just as the rain started falling--we had seen threatening clouds through the trees for the past hour or so. There was a mad rush to set up the tents before everything got too wet and dark. I decided to wait on my personal gear and set up the dining fly instead so that we could keep the food dry. It was too dark and wet for cooking, so we had lunch for dinner. The daddy longlegs tried to take over the dry area under the top, but I fended them off.

After the rain ended late that night, the temperature cooled off and I got a good night's sleep. The next morning while waiting for the gear to dry I went looking for water. The big storm did nothing to fill up the nearby creek bed, but after following it through endless spiderwebs I eventually found two small cloudy pools. We didn't end up using them, but it was an indication of the water problems yet to come.

The last member of our party, one of the fathers, arrived at camp during breakfast. He had to work the day before, then drove up and hiked in from a much closer trailhead. We quickly made a plan--he and our van driver went back to the close trailhead to try to figure out how to fix the van. We agreed to meet them at lunchtime; they showed up right on schedule, had fixed the van, and brought back lots of fresh water.

Although things seemed to be good as we started on our way, I could see the beginnings of our next set of challenges. We had about six miles to go and it was already afternoon. Because we hadn't hiked very far, nobody was hungry for lunch, which we would need to cook because of the previous night's choice. But off we set, and for the first hour or two things were just fine.

Then one of the adults started to have problems on the trail. He lagged behind farther and farther, and eventually just couldn't go any farther without a long break. I stopped with him, but the rest of the group was farther up the trail. Eventually they must have stopped; they sent two people back to help with the pack.

By the time we all got together, everybody had different ideas about what to do. It was late afternoon and we still hadn't eaten lunch, so some people wanted to do that. Others were getting restless from the long stop and wanted to forge ahead. So we split into two groups again; one went ahead, while the other stopped for some food. We cooked it as quickly as possible, then got on our way.

When we joined up again, it was after six and people wanted to take another long stop. I could tell that everyone was getting tired, so I forced them to have some snacks. We were still at least a mile away from camp, and I was worried about the water situation when we got there. I invited anyone who still had good legs to go ahead with me and check out the camp. It felt good to finally stretch my legs and get moving, and we got there before long.

The campsite was nice, but the only water immediately accessible nearby was in a stagnant pond. I didn't want to rely on that, so I headed off down a nearby forest road. I probably hiked more than a mile, but found only dry creek beds. By the time I got back, everyone else was arriving, and I let them set up and work on dinner. I took another look at our guide, and it recommended getting water from a creek that we had crossed just before arriving at camp. At the intersection with the trail it was dry, but just downstream there was a small pool. I dug it out, so that the next day it would be large enough for us to dip our water bottles into.

It had been a pretty long day and everyone was happy to eat and go to bed. But overall, things were looking good, because we got safely to our destination. The weather was hot, but not too hot, and our only real challenge going forward would be water--and even there we had some options, even though they weren't the best. We even had a plan for the next day. This post has gone on long enough, so I'll add more soon.

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Seeing as Sunday was my first day back from a week in the wilderness of the Ouachita National Forest, it was a very special Father's Day for me. I got two wonderful presents: a repaired watch and a fancy bag of Cheetos. Even better than that, Elena gave me her first ever hand-illustrated card.

While Elena was creating that artwork, Jenny was working on a masterpiece of her own. She started out making a Father's Day cake, but along the way discovered that it would also be Mia's birthday, so she made a bright birthday cake instead. It tasted great, Mia really liked it, and all the other kids also thought it was cool. It looked to me as if it was straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, especially the balloons.

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It's been too long since my last post, but after I got back from last week's High Adventure trip, I had to re-immerse myself in dissertation writing, and I'm only now taking a brief breath of air. I have a backlog of several posts, but I'll start with this one.

Elena has learned to be very helpful around the house. At the very least, she tries to help, and sometimes she succeeds. The best example is that after we change her diaper and roll it up, she likes to take it and deposit it in the diaper pail. This makes her so happy that she even claps for herself after dropping it in.

When it's time to take the diapers out to the dumpster, she likes to participate too. Often when I arrive home in the evening, Jenny asks me and Elena to take the trash out and check the mail. Elena usually likes to carry some of the trash and throw it into the dumpster, and when we pick up the mail she feels left out unless I give her something to carry back to the apartment.

Elena tries to help out at the grocery store too, but sometimes does more harm than good. She doesn't know what's on the shopping list, so she tries to grab everything from the shelves. Jenny does a good job managing that challenge, and can usually appease her by giving her one or two items to examine. At checkout time, Elena is fascinated by the conveyor belt and loves to put things on it.

The kitchen will probably become a future area of focus, but Elena isn't yet old enough to understand how she can help. She knows that the silverware is supposed to go from the dishwasher to the drawer, but she doesn't know the difference between clean and dirty, and while she can reach into the drawer, she's not tall enough to see inside it. The other day Jenny let her "wash some dishes," but she just ended up playing with water in the sink. Jenny took a cute video:

Also, check out all the recent uploads to my flickr account .

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Yesterday morning, two toddlers joined Elena at our apartment for a play date. Their mothers both needed some assistance, so Jenny and Elena were happy to open our home for a couple of hours. Elena had a really good time. However, Jewel was less than pleased.

The guests were Lincoln, who is just a few weeks older than Elena, and Alice, who is a few months younger. Alice gave Jewel a hard time, because she represented a dangerous combination: she loves cats, and she's very light on her feet. Jewel can usually get away from Elena without much trouble, and she was probably expecting things to be the same way with Alice. When Alice came racing down the hall, Jewel was shocked by her speed and got trapped in a place she didn't want to be. Hissing ensued, and Jenny had to intervene. Jewel didn't learn her lesson, so this happened a few more times.

Lincoln and Elena possibly had too much of a good time. Jenny didn't see how it started or who initiated, but all of a sudden she noticed that they were holding hands. For a little while it was pretty cute, but then she noticed that they didn't seem to want to be holding hands anymore, but they couldn't figure out how to separate. So then they just clumsily tried to push each other away and couldn't understand why they weren't apart yet. They eventually figured it out and were again free to pursue their separate toy interests.

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