Student SPHere 2008-09

...are death and taxes, as they say. I've had some of both in my life lately.

My mother's father passed away last weekend, so the big family gathered in Western Iowa for funeral services Thursday. Tom and I drove down, stopping as we always do in Ames, IA, the home of our alma mater, Iowa State University. There are numerous restaurants that we miss, and a drive along I-35 gives us an excuse to stop by our old stomping grounds. It's sweet that Ames is on the route to my family's home, otherwise I can't imagine we would ever go out of our way to visit our undergrad university.

This trip, we got a matched pair of window clings, one for U of M and one for ISU to go on the back window of the car. Speaking of the car, our good old Honda Accord rolled over 100k miles on this trip-- here's to another 100k!

Funerals are bittersweet for those not so directly affected by the death. I was delighted to see my family, but the reason for the gathering was sad. My mother has many siblings, some scattered far across the country. It had been too long since I'd see many of them-- many hadn't even met my partner of seven years.

I thought about the circle of life, cheesy as it sounds. Honoring the passing of my grandfather while cooing over the two beautiful new babies in the family, I couldn't help but think of the way humans have been going on like this for so many thousands of years, one generation fading into the next.

Photo by my dad

We knew the trip home would be dicey, as a large snowstorm was predicted for Minneapolis Thursday night. We made it to about 15 miles south of the Minnesota border before the roads turned icy and we had to abandon the drive. Diamond Jo Casino and Hotel turned out to be the first lodging we encountered, so there we stayed. I'm not much for gambling, being a statistician and all, but wanted to check it off my list of life experiences nonetheless. The gambling floor was depressing-- mostly empty of people, but shrouded in cigarette smoke, half-obscuring the endless blinking rows of slot machines.

My only requirements were that we not spend more than the $9 we had on hand and that I get to pull the lever like in the old cartoons. None of this pushing a button on a video screen stuff for me. We ended up winning $6.20. It was a piddling amount, but enough to make me think of the experience as fun and interesting instead of boring and disappointing. Amazing how that works, eh? :)

As for taxes, well, it's filing season and I'm getting more than my fair share of IRS forms. I won't go into detail, but recent experiences are testing my convictions. I have been learning and living on the taxpayer's dime-- attending public schools and universities, conducting NIH-sponsored research-- nearly my whole life, so I take it seriously that everyone ought to give their share. I just wish it would come out of my paycheck steadily the way it's supposed to instead of creeping up all at once!

The semester is flying by. Already I've graded the midterm for the Intro Bayes class and we have one coming up in Spatial next week. That class has been suffering a series of setbacks thanks to Sudipto's travel, trouble with software on the laptops, etc. I hardly feel that we have enough material for an exam, but we'll see. Bayes, in contrast, clips along as ever.

It's unreasonable to think that I would have gotten everything right the first time, but still it's disappointing when we find errors in the Carlin and Louis solutions manual, as we have a couple lately. My TA for Bayes, Brian, found one today as did Brad. Ah well, we'll correct them on the next go round.