tuesdays, then and now.

i like tuesdays. at some point i decided that they were my favorite day of the week.

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my teaching schedules have always avoided tuesdays. when i was a graduate student, i was always given a M-W-F or a M-W-Th. as a postdoc, the trend continues; in fact, it's hard to have an alternative schedule here.

tuesdays make fine mornings.

waking up, i put the pot of coffee on, knowing that i needn't worry about drinking it in a hurry. even if i show up to the office, it wouldn't be until after lunch.

heck, i can make myself lunch!
i can turn on the radio and work in my pajamas.

my books are at home. i've enough paper around to become the bogeyman whom trees tell their children about. if i need to look up a paper, i can access mathscinet through a university proxy.

the only thing i miss about my office, actually, is my chalkboard. paper just isn't the same; neither are marker boards. [1]

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on the other hand, i always seem to have seminars or meetings on thursdays.

for 2 years straight, as a graduate student i'd meet the advisor on thursday afternoons before the study seminar. at first it was an hour, but our discussions would regularly run over. i suppose i was generally to blame when thursday seminar would start a few minutes late; we would wait for him. \-:

so after a while, they became 1 1/2 hour meetings. of course, that didn't really solve the problem of being late.

i guess i've always had a tendency to ramble. q-:

so yes, i could have said the same thing about thursdays, but it was more than about teaching. you see, thursdays were mornings that i spent trying to make myself "make sense."

sure, i'd collect ideas over a week and work out details, but there's nothing like a meeting to separate the wheat from the chaff.

i can't count the number of times when an idea made sense in my own head, and when i'd try explaining it to the advisor, it would suddenly become complete nonsense.

tuesdays were the tranquil sorts of concentrated research days. i didn't need a good idea right away. i had time to wonder.

[1] there is something nice, though, about being able to put a marker board atop your dinner table, and drawing right on the surface. it makes me feel like a vandal!