No Baby Einstein, Moi

I know.  I know.  It's been 2 weeks to the day.  You've kept up your end of the bargain by reading, and I have not.  But, even if Reading is Fundamental™ Math is Hard, yo.  And I had a mid-term and last week was the culmination of months of work towards the Congo in Harlem film series, and Cuthbert has returned from Ye Olde Sod and math is still hard.  Even my beloved niece, who attends St. Whozit, and who laid her mother and uncle on the floor as in ROFLMAO when she announced that they make the 1st graders study Math and other terrible things at her school, even she offered to help me with my homework.  I did not refuse her.

As some of you may know, we have been doing proofs.  As in prove that:

3√2 – 7 is irrational

   5  

Now, I've been called irrational and have been presented with sufficient evidence that proves it, but this is an altogether other matter and one that takes time.  I offer this in demi-apology for not writing while studying for the midterm.  I did okay, iff the professor grades on a curve.  The range of test scores out of a possible 100 were 7 to 93.  But, two months into this class my expectations are tumbling faster than Felix Baumgartner.  I'm just tryin' to get out of this one alive.  Have mercy ...

I have also discovered (not for the first time) that math makes you stupid.  That is, the more higher mathematics you study the more arithmetic you forget.  (One common complaint on these tests are the oh no you din'it! algebraic errors one makes that Cost Points.  I mean I had the definition of the negation of a limit dead to rights and then wrote:  |‌‌x-a| ≥ ∂, etc. ‌‌instead of |x-a| < ∂.  Oh, the shame.  But even stupider than that is what I did at dinner last night.  It's raining.  It's Friday.  Cuthbert and I have already eaten the low-hanging fruit -- the crackers, the cheese, the peanuts, and truth-be-told, neither of us wanted to cook dinner.  (Heh, heh as I pretend I'm ever willing to cook dinner.)  So, we decide to go out and he finds a new place close by, The New Haven Meatball House.  We go there, and have a meal served by a friendly young man with ear plugs which I always associate with the Maasai and other East African people, and the young man suggested we try some beers and when I said I liked 'em dark and stout (self-portrait as a glass of beer?) he started talking about beers like sommeliers talk about wine and brought me something fruity and dark called the Vampireslayer, and yeah buddy (as they say in Louisiana) it was good.  Great meal -- 2 main dishes, 4 exquisite beers, dessert and coffee -- great service all while Cuthbert and I discuss Christopher Hitchens, Niall Ferguson and Mitt Romney.  We get the check.  I calculate the tip, do the addition, sign off and we leave.

Just before we pulled into the driveway I realized that I'd made a mistake.  When we get in the house I start harassing Cuthbert -- get me the phone number! google the restaurant! don't you know he has to enter in the amount I signed and hurry up hurry up hurry up!!!.  When he wasn't fast enough I remembered I had the receipt and poured out my purse to find it and breathlessly, boozily called the restaurant and said:  Oh, no!  I just ate at your place and I added wrong and the total should actually be ...  Turns out the person I talked to was the person, Juan, who served us and he had my receipt and he was probably cursing out the sociopathic cheapskate who just up and left him a $5 tip.  And I made right by him and we signed off as BFF and damnit, math is hard.