a visit to the library; talk paranoia continues.

i meant to post this earlier, but there is something very wonderful about having the mathematics library two floors down from my office. i don't know exactly how many times, while in ann arbor, i thought about checking out a mathematics book from the library and decided that it wasn't worth the walk.

of course, it would help if my university ID were working and the librarian didn't have to swipe my card through the reader, again and again and again, to no avail. in the end she manually checked my books out -- that is, wrote down the library of congress numbers, book titles, authors of the books on a special form, and then gave me the books.

at first i didn't realise that this was possible, until it occurred to me how they must have done transactions in the days before barcode scanners. i've lived with these fine electronic devices all my life, you see; i've never seen anyone check out a book "manually."

it made me feel like a suspicious person, like a visiting scholar instead of a postdoc. i've been getting that feeling lately, but not as often anymore; i think this means that i'm wearing out my welcome.

oh well. at least i have the books.

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i've been getting paranoid about how little background i have about the topic i'm presenting tomorrow, in a talk. having checked out these books by väisä1ä and by ah1f0rs, i learned several things.

1. either it's been too long and i've forgotten, or that i never learned these things properly, but these books are really good;
   
   
2. i wasn't paranoid; i was right. i do have a paltry background and am the wrong person to give this talk.
   

since it's too late to cancel, i guess i have to build a talk from the notes i've jotted down from the last few days. there's still the challenge of giving a talk that is both (partly) accessible to students yet interesting enough to experts.

i've seen so many talks that were successful in this dual approach. it makes me wonder, now, how they do it.