"how dark is it?"

"How dark is what?"
"The cumulus nimbus hovering over my head."

this week: lots of teaching stuff, research stuff, and life-staying-going stuff. not much of sleep or food.

"That's on par with car, test, crash test dummy."
(yay for Gilmore girls during laundry and dish washing)
I kind of feel like a crash test dummy right now actually. Don't get me wrong, the month of June was packed with amazing, wonderful things, beautiful places, and lots of fun. However, I'm now feeling the effects of changing time zones too frequently, not sleeping enough, and being out of town more than I was in town.

Today, I learned all about unramified, totally ramified, and tamely ramified extensions of local fields. I also got a sliver of hope that my A exam could happen July 24th and I'm running with it. I sooooo want this thing to be over with before Sept. 1. However, my advisor is leaning towards waiting, and since he's the one who decides if I pass, I either need to convince him I'm ready or let go of the dream. We'll see what happens this week. Tomorrow, I need to learn about power series over finite fields, which I can't find in any of my resources on local fields... I also have to deal with the word "separability" which always scares me. I know what it means, but I still don't get why it's so cool. You'd think life would be nice when you have finite ordered stuff, but it seems like life gets more complicated. More on that tomorrow.

Tomorrow I also get to give my students a really hard quiz. I'm kind of looking forward to it because I'm hoping they'll realize how much they don't know and how much they need to pay attention to me. I'm also kind of sad about it, because I'm punishing everyone for the crime of most. Oh well, all they have to do is pass the course and they get 1/10 for just putting their name on the paper.

Time for more dishwashing, unpacking, and cleaning, before a very early bed time. See my pretty picture from the wedding this past weekend in California!