Allyson Whipple

Tag: autumn

  • The Best of It: Procrastination Edition

    I was so ready to eat that I didn’t think to take a photo
    1. Pecan pie for breakfast
    2. Homemade breadsticks
    3. Getting to visit Zilker Botanical Garden
    4. Going to poetry group tonight (via Zoom, of course)
    5. I had a wonderful Saturday teaching for the Loft, and hope to do so again in the future!

  • The Best of It: FriYAY Edition

    She’s all ears!
    1. Pumpkin risotto
    2. TerraSolace is a fantastic Etsy seller
    3. The Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories TV series
    4. There are new episodes of Archer!
    5. The jalapeno pimento cheese at HEB

  • The Best of It: Almost Feels Like Fall Edition

    Dreamy
    1. Dogs napping in sunbeams
    2. It was genuinely cool when I walked Astrid this morning
    3. Getting a jar of homemade salsa from John just because
    4. My allergy meds
    5. My current quilt project

  • The Best of It: Monday, Monday Edition

    My vintage Corningware percolator
    1. Getting to start the week with a video call from my friend Suzanne
    2. Jackbox Games
    3. Leftover spaghetti for breakfast
    4. Socially distant happy hours
    5. Being more than half done with the current phase of a current writing project

  • A Spider Summer, Continued

    About two weeks ago, I woke up to find an egg sac attached to my bedroom window. I was amazed. I’d never seen one up close before, and now here it was. I’m happy that the spider finds my house safe enough. The abundance of wasps, bees, mosquitoes, and chiggers probably helps.

    img_2196

    But wait! There’s more!

    Yesterday as Simon and I were coming back from our walk, I saw another egg sac attached to the side of the house. I hadn’t realized that spiders would create multiple sacs in a season. The thought occurred to me that it might be from another spider, but this second sac is close to her web. And Arigope are pretty noticeable. I think I’d have seen a second spider.

    I’m just amazed she’s thriving enough to lay a second set of eggs.

    Apparently Arigope aurantia is also known as the Writing Spider, because of the zippers they weave into their webs. I’m quite happy to have a writing spider hanging out with me.

    img_2445Yesterday there was also an amazing double zipper on the web. I didn’t know that happened, either!

     

  • In which I finally realize that math is awesome

    I didn’t like math when I was growing up. I wasn’t especially great at it, either. Not horrible, but not fantastic. After a semester of precalculus in college, in which I got a B through hours upon hours having the material re-explained to me in office hours, I threw math aside and never looked back.

    Then, I moved to Austin, where I made friends with mathematicians, physicists, and programmers – all people who were doing cool things with math all day long. Over the past three-and-a-half years (I cannot believe I have lived here this long), I’ve come to see just how absolutely fun it is, and what it can do. Seeing the movie Moneyball on Thursday night only reinforced that feeling. I want to be able to assemble winning baseball teams using formulas!

    It’s not that I had bad teachers when I was in school. But they were never quite able to make me generate enthusiasm for the subject. When I was solving equations and calculating compound interest, I couldn’t find the fun in it. Now, I wish I’d been able to see it back then. It still might not have been an easy subject, but I wouldn’ t have seen it as a chore to slog through, a requirement I had to put up with so I could focus on what actually interested me. I might have been inspired to really focus on the formulas and boring word problems in hope of getting to do something more fun.

    So, since I’m not busy enough (ha, ha), I’m going to learn. Of course, I haven’t studied any sort of math at all since 2003. I don’t even remember most of the basics. But I’m going to re-learn, no matter how long it takes. And then I’ll get to learn the good stuff.

    I’m excited. It’s been a while since I took up any sort of serious academic undertaking. This should be fun. Challenging, but fun.