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Friday 5: Ax + By = C

September 17, 2021

What the hell is this formula? A line? I think it’s a line, although I thought line was y = mx +b and m is the slope and b is the … intersection? But this might be new math. And I was a Liberal Arts major.

Anyway, the Big!Work!Upgrade! is pretty much a wrap and sweet merciful crap I am beat. I look forward to having no major projects for a while so I can work from sofa for a bit instead of needing the big monitor like I have for the past months. I’m taking next Thursday and Friday off to burn the last 2 days of PTO I that I can’t carry over to next fiscal year.

So back to this formula – I guess if I rearrange the letters I’d get something closer to y=mx+b…subtract from both sides, divide both sides by b…

likely-incorrect math — Yes? No? It’s been so long!

I’m stuck. I mean, unless slope is also -(a/b) and the intersection – no, intercept! – is also (c/b). I can’t.

Let’s hit the Friday 5, the theme being Ax + By = C.

It’s been said (notably by Divinyls in 1985) there’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. How has this proven true in your life?
So the formula IS for a line and I am NOT completely hopeless! *flips desk in triumph*

There is a fine line between the pleasure of eating JUST the right amount of food and the pain of eating too much food. There is also a fine line between the pain of working out a puzzle (crossword, jigsaw, math) and the pleasure of solving it.
Where in your life have you witnessed the fine line between genius and insanity?
*slyly looks over my shoulder to WM, continues to wordlessly blog*
Where do you draw the fine line between supporting someone and enabling someone?
If the person is a bad steward of the resources I give to them in support, then the line is drawn.
Which sides of the fine lines between caution and cowardice, and between courage and foolhardiness do you tend toward?
Definitely cowardice. I’ve written this a million times. I am not brave. But regarding the other fine line – I tend more toward courage then foolhardiness. It’s hard to explain, but because I am a naturally a coward I MUST be courageous. Each time I needed a breast lump biopsied I cowered in fear for days, but on the mornings of the appointment I went in and had the procedures done. I didn’t run away or ignore the appointment. That’s courage. Foolhardiness would be saying “I’m sure it’s nothing” and not having them done. Huge scaredy-cat though.
Tasked with drawing a literal fine line, what is your writing utensil of choice?
A Pilot Precise v5 rollerball pen in black. Although for day to day writing I enjoy TUL .7mm gel pens in black that I bought from Amazon. I wish I enjoyed fountain pens. I want to enjoy fountain pens but can’t get past the scratching and tendency

It’s supposed to be a gorgeous weekend and maybe I can move my CAE study station outside for a spell. I want to get through the rest of the Tuesday show us your book links. I need to shampoo the bedroom carpet. I should half-heartedly toss some fall decor outside because yay, fall. Whatever I end up doing, have a great weekend!

Reading

Show Us Your Books: September 2021

September 14, 2021

Do you remember?
The second Tuesday of September?
Don’t even need to be a member!
To show us your books todayyyyyyyyy!

BAAAAAADEEEEYAAAA! The plotlines we dismember!
BAAAAAADEEEEYAAAA! Reading always sparks an ember!
BAAAAAADEEEEEYAAA! We’re blogging about books todaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

It was only a three-book month for me. I’m studying between 9 and 12 hours a week for the CAE exam (obviously one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had), so pleasure reading has taken a backseat until December. I’m 1 book short for the Goodreads goal, but I can talk your off about the difference between a 501(c)3, a 501(c)4, and a 501(c)6 organization. So there is that.

Onto the books! I use the Goodreads rating system, which is:

One star: did not like it
Two stars: it was ok
Three stars: liked it
Four stars: really liked it
Five stars: it was amazing

Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid
This was a firecracker of a book. A young Black woman, Emira, is the babysitter for a white toddler. The family has a small emergency, so late one evening they call Emira to take the little girl out of the house for a while. Emira takes her to their favorite grocery store. This leads to her almost being arrested for kidnapping. This happens in the very first chapter, and the rest of the book deals with the ramifications from that incident. I spend a little time on Tiktok before bed these days, and one of the very popular background sounds for videos is woman singing “oh no, oh no… oh no no no no no” on repeat. Almost every decision that every adult character other than Emira makes elicited an “oh no” from me, even though everybody thought they were acting in Emira’s best interest. Four stars!

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
This was an easy, fun scifi book about a young woman trying to escape her past by taking a clerk job on a spaceship that creates tunnels in space for others to use for trade and travel. I cried a bit at the end, but it’s one of those books where, in a few months, I won’t even be able to tell you the plot and in a year or so I won’t even remember that I read it. Two stars, it was ok.

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I saw this featured in the books section of a few magazines and asked for it for my birthday. It’s a short book. Each chapter features an animal or plant, and Nezhukumatathil ties that being’s behaviors back to different periods of her life. She’s a poet, so she writes an almost lyrical, fantastical prose that will either make you furious or make you fall in love. I don’t think there’s a middle ground there. I thought some of the stories sounded a little bit familiar, and it turns out Nezhukumatathil contributed to The Toast years ago. Four stars, with a little content warning for the axolotl chapter, because it touches on animal testing.

Currently reading:
Feeling Good by David Burns – Needed.
Membership Essentials, CAE Study Guide 2020 – Also needed.

All of my book lists and reviews are on Goodreads.

This a part of the Show us Your Books linkup from Jana Says and Life According to Steph. If you want to read more bloggers gush about the books they’ve read this month, click the button below and have fun!

Other SUYB posts:

BAAADEEEEYAAAAAAAAA!

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Life

Friday 5: Wolf!

September 10, 2021

Happy Friday! The most difficult part of the Big!Work!Upgrade! happened today and I am beat. It went really well in my opinion. Very few bugs and faster performance. I give it 2 weeks until I am free of it and can go back to fretting over data.

And here is the Friday 5. On time, even. This week’s theme is Wolf! And everything ties into Aesop’s fables!

When are you the tortoise, and when are you the hare?
I am the tortoise at work. I’m not slow, but I don’t rush either. And I get the job done. I am the hare when blogging. I create a schedule for myself. Great! I outline and set up blog posts thinking all I have to do is add photos and some words and I’ll get them out on time. And then I end up doing something else and all of a sudden I miss Currently and Friday 5 comes out on Saturday and I have to rewrite the “today is my birthday” post to “oh yeah I had a birthday.”
When are you the grasshopper, and when are you the ants?
I feel like I’m always the freaking ants, working and saving and planning. I know social media isn’t the definitive record of a person’s life, but sometimes I look at other peoples’ lives and wonder: when do you clean your house? I work from home, don’t even have kids, and don’t even have super-high standards for cleanliness and yet if I went out as often as some people do I feel like we’d be living in filth.

In terms of another moralistic story, I’m the Martha to others’ Marys. Hats off to Martha for keeping things running while Mary was philosophizing and Lazarus was living and dying and living again.
When were you the lion, and when were you the mouse?
I think it’s a pretty equal split. I’m very lionesque in a “nobody can help me I’m in this by myself o woe is me” way, but I’m also pretty helpful to people who think I can’t be.
Are you more like the town mouse or the country mouse?
I would rather have simpler things without fear than extravagant things with fear. I’m not brave. And this is a lovely lead in to the next question:
Which fable told in your childhood has resonated with you through the years?
Buckle up. When I was young, my mom won money at a casino in Atlantic City and bought me a big hardbound book of fairy tales (probably one of the most NJ sentences written, but I digress) and in it was the tale of the Fisherman and his Wife. Summarized thusly and probably inaccurately but the moral is still there: a poor fisherman and his wife life in poverty and squalor. One day he catches a fish and the fish starts speaking and says if the fisherman releases him, he’ll come when the fisherman calls and grant his wishes. All the fisherman has to say is:

“Flounder, flounder in the sea. Come I pray thee here to me!”

The man agrees to the deal and wishes for a nicer house. Boom. Done. His wife is painted as the greedy one, and she keeps demanding that he wish for more and more. So henpecked husband keeps going back to the flounder and escalating his wishes. He ask for riches, and a mansion, and then to be a king. They are never happy with their riches and blessings so one day the wife asks him to ask the fish to make him God. And the man does. The flounder becomes irate and rightfully cancelled all of the granted wishes and the man and his wife are once again poor and live in squalor. The end.

I think of this every time I know a person who is never happy with what they have and always strives for more material things. Because the flounder almost always wins in the end and yes you may end up with THING but it might just tear your family up or you go into debt and lose THING. And every time I witness someone (and sometimes myself, I’m not perfect) take that fall I say “Flounder Flounder” in the same tone you’d say “oh, well…”

And this is a Grimm fairy tale and not an Aesop’s fable but it has a moral and I’m sticking with it.

And that’s that. Now I’ll study for my CAE exam for an hour. Tonight is movie night. Tomorrow I might head to the farmer’s market and try to spend my CAE study time to catch the waning days of summer.

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