I'm engaged!!!!!

As of 8:50pm May 12th, 2006.  I proposed to Tiffany at the reception after her graduation.  She had no idea.  We both cried.  I didn't get the words out, but she nodded and said "yes!"

More details and pictures to come.

Currently Listening A Rush of Blood to the Head By Coldplay see related

- Clocks

The Great John Nash

Tonight Tiffany and I drove up to the University of Northern Iowa (were I was last semester) and went to a lecture by Dr. John Nash.  The mathematition of the greatly fictionalized movie "A Beautiful Mind". (The movie was not true to his life if you did not already know this.)  At the lecture tonight the introductory speakers did not even mention the movie in their introductions of him.  I considered it a great honor to be able to attend a lecture of someone who has given such great foundational contributions to current mathematical and economic theory.  Unfortunately not everyone took this into consideration and didn't act with respect toward him or those of us who came in attempt to learn from Dr. Nash.  So many people kept getting up and leaving all through his lecture and they kept taking pictures with digital cameras that make noises when they take pictures.

     I was sadened by the number of peole who seemed to have shown up simple because it was a free event only to leave because they got bored when maybe if they had read more than the words "lecture and reception are free to the public" and had noticed that the title of the lecture was "The Agencies Method for Modeling. Coalitions and Cooperation in Games." perhaps this would have given them a clue that they would not remain interested and would become bored and disrupt the event by their participation.  They are university students.  I expected them to be more serious about this.

Ok well...enough being ticked off at people.  Tiffany and I really did have a lot of fun at the lecture, despite not being able to understand it all.  I probably won't check in tomorrow I'm planning to work 8am-9pm so I'll try to post again wednesday.

Currently Reading Poetry 180 : A Turning Back to Poetry see related

Things I've learned from my coworkers at a sporting goods store.

If you play basket with a medicine ball you will end up missing and sending the ball through a plate glass counter.

If you try to pound a nail into the side of a Sharpy marker you will get ink every where.

If another coworker says something offensive you can always use the manikan to moon them.

You can knock anything over if you through a hackysack at it hard enough

My ear will go numb when hit by a hackysack.

You can put the left shoe on the right foot and have a kid tell you it fits well.(This one was all me.  I'm still feeling retarded about that one.)

It is possible to carry 15 boxes of shoes at once but not necessarily recommended.

Currently Listening The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek By Relient K see related

- For the Moments I feel Faint

     While I was in the dining center tonight two members of the kitchen staff came carrying a girl to the table next to me.  I double taked before I realized that the girl was passing out as they were carrying her by the shoulders.  They put her in a chair and then knelt down beside her to make sure she was steady in the chair.  Then one of them went to get their managers.  The one still there knew to also get one of the cooks and told that to another employee as she stayed and comforted the girl.  I offered my help, but the lady told me they had it under control.  Two more guys working there came up to her table with a glass of water for her and her tray of food.  Soon they had three head managers there looking over the girl.  She had given blood on campus and had walked too much so she fainted as she walked through the dining center.  One of the managers then got her a glass or orange juice.
    The afformentioned cook then came up from behind me and said that rubbing her neck and ice of some sort on her neck would help her the most at this point.  At which point he did just that.  He knelt down beside her and massaged her neck.  As one of the male employees went to prepair a bag of ice for the girl.  It was really comforting for her, I'm sure, how they all came up and knelt at her level in the chair so she didn't feel quite so crowded.  Once they had her coming around, they asked if she had a friend with her there and they then sent  several employees to look for her friend.  Once her friend had come, the cook and some of the staff still stayed around to see how they could help comfort her untill she was fully conscious again.

College can be a LOT of homework and studying!  After I finished eating dinner with my RA and some other people from my hall, I moved to a different table in the Dining Center to study for a while.  I found that I can study well in there, because in other rooms I'll get distracted by peoples' conversations as they walk by and such, but in the dining center(Piazza) there is too much noise to pick up any conversation or television.  It's just a mess of a thousand different conversations.  At any given moment there is probably 300+ people in there during dinner.  So it's quite noisy with all of them talking, plus the tvs, and kitchen staff noises.
   The next thing I remember is waking up.  Sitting in a chair holding a book.  Apperently I was a wee bit too tired.  So I went back to my room and tried to take a nap for a while.  While I was laying there I was thinking about Tiffany and I getting married.  One question that always comes to my mind is how much will getting/being married cost?  I then started to wonder just how much my meals here cost if I average out my meal plan. 
     It turns out it costs about $7.60 per meal for me to eat here.  This really struck me because when Tiffany and I have been eating out lately we've been eating at Fazoli's.  There her and I get one meal to split and it cost us like $7.64.  That's for two people!  So I then looked at some more numbers.  If her and I got married and lived in an apartment here on campus it would cost us $3,145.5 for 9 months rent.  and we wouldn't have to get a meal plan.  My room and board here costs $5,478 for one year.  Subtract just the rent cost from my current cost...which comes to a $2,332.5 savings per year.

 I'm sure we can eat broke food(macaroni, ramen, other noodles, cereal...) for a lot less than $2,332.5.  Even with $100 groceries for a month we would still save $1,432.5 per year. 

However, that is the cost for the two of us married subtracted from my current cost.  On the other hand if I subtract the cost for the two of us married from the cost of us both living here for a year:
$5,478 x 2 = $10,956  Cost for us to live on campus in separate dorms with luck of the draw roommates.
$10,956 - [$3145.5(9 months rent) + $900(groceries)]=
$10,956 - $4045.5= $6,910.5 yearly savings.

    So yeah...it was a blessing to realize that whatever cost of a wedding could certainly come back in college savings.  I really feel like God is taking away the last things that were making me feel hesitant about marriage. 

     So rather than a nap I just took a short break away from studying to run these figures.  Then I went to the store we have in the basement and bought a bottle of Mountain Dew for when I start getting tired again.  and then I moved into a lounge to try to get caught up in my homework and reread chapters to hopefully understand them better.  While walking to the lounge I realized that my bottle of MD was in fact warm.  Not really cold.  However, the lounges of my building, like the one I was headed to, are air conditioned.  and they always have the units running full blast.  So it's like a walk in fridge.  So I went back to my room and got a suction cup tooth brush basket and a roll of duck tape.  I stuck the basket thing to the top of the window AC unit and then hung my MD infront of it's vent by duck taping it to the toothbrush thingy.

    I finally stopped studying at 12:09 when Mountain Dew and chocolate was no longer keeping me awake. 

Ok...I gtg to class again.