Making my mark in Somerville

I think I might have added another incident to the Legend of Mason today. (Actually, there is another recent addition as well, but I want to use the exact quote from the magazine's editorial before I discuss it fully here.)

I got to lunch in Somerville a little later than usual today because of a seminar. I was in a really crappy mood, but I recognized that I was in such a state (I still am, to some extent, though I am feeling slightly better now), so I tried to avoid people and use lunch for nourishment only. Unfortunately, my efforts to sit on my own were foiled for various reasons (one time, I was about to sit off on my own when a couple of people sat near there, so I needed to go somewhere else), and I ended up just taking the next seat on High Table and sitting near people. (I also didn't want any of the staff to set up an extra table setting somewhere for me. They shouldn't have to do extra work for this.) I put my plate down after my brief random walking in the dining hall, and the garlic bread on my plate bounced off onto my chair---spreading tons of crumbs to the chair. Some people were already amused by this. I was rather annoyed by what I had done to my seat, so I put the bread on the plate but I was sufficiently frustrated that I mildly slammed it on there. Unfortunately, this caused garlic bread shrapnel to hit the old lady sitting next to me. (I think this was an Emeritus Fellow of Somerville.) She quietly, casually wiped it off and gave me a look of mild dismissal. The other people nearby tried to give me disdainful looks, but they weren't able to keep the straight faces necessary to do so. I think I was too ashamed to apologize, and my mood definitely didn't help turn my thoughts in such sensible directions. (As you can tell, I feel a bit guilty for not giving the apology and I hope I get a chance to do this reasonably soon.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Legendary status is a combination of personality and circumstance. It's rarely a matter of setting out to achieve such things.

Dinner and Lunch at High Table

Last night at dinner, I was dangerously close to presiding, as I was actually the second highest ranking person present. This indicates how much of a low-brow affair it could have become, but just wait until it's my turn to sit in the important (but very uncomfortable-looking chair) and preside. Somerville's grace is short and simple and actually manages not to offend me (which is very hard for any sort of grace to accomplish), but as a matter of principle I do feel compelled to do something other than say grace over at least the first dinner over which I preside. I'm looking for suggestions from the audience. (FYI: Mooning the undergraduates is not one of the viable options that I am considering. I prefer words to deeds anyway.)

After dinner, we went to the SCR as usual. Then a bunch of us young folks went pub crawling for a few hours. It was basically just flicking, from which I have always gained a great deal of pleasure when the company is good. (I'm going to have to get that term into use here. Flicking is reasonably common here, so I'll have to work on teaching them some of my language.)

I had been intending to not stay too long because of all the work I need to do (including marking papers, finishing the design of my lecture course, and so on), but I ended up returning home at 2:00 am (several hours later than intended... such is the way of flicking!). I also had a new addition to the family when I came home (no, I didn't impregnate anyone!): a very cute stuffed rat who I have dubbed Schrödinger (aka Schrödinger the Rat). Some pictures were taken last night, so if/when they're passed on to me, I'll post a link.

After returning home, I knew that I needed to get at least some of my work done, so I stayed up until 3:30 doing that. Then I couldn't fall asleep until 6am, so I feel like crap today. (And I'm the one among last night's crowd who is not hung over. Some benefit, eh?)

At today's lunch at High Table, we had an interesting discussion about what seat placement of people would lead to maximize mixing in terms of sitting with different people on different days. Apparently, there was an old convention of how the table would be filled in (from one particular side to the other) that has fallen into some disuse. One Fellow was wistfully mentioning that, and of course I made my comment about understanding the idea but that people can sit where they want. (Incidentally, the two sides of the table have switched roles in recent years---people who sit in the far side tend to do so to engage in private conversations. People who sit on the near side do the standard fill-in. The near and far sides had reverse roles at some point back in the day, and there was even some chastising on at least one occasion if convention was broken.) Moreover, I stated, I think there are sitting algorithms that would lead to more mixing than the convention because where somebody is in the table is very strongly correlated with what time they usually come in for lunch, which for many people has strong correlations due to lectures, meetings, and other regular commitments. (In fact, I'm almost positive that one can come up with an algorithm that would mix things and now I'm damned curious about how to do this as a math/physics problem. Unfortunately, I'll have to think about this more at some other point rather than now. I still need to prepare a lecture and I have a Vampire game tonight.) This led to a question about convention for convention's sake versus somebody employing whatever they want to achieve the same goal as the convention (assuming that they agree with that goal, which in this case I do). I'm definitely in favor of the latter, though I don't think that that was the most prevalent opinion among the crowd at lunch today. Though a visitor---who turned out to be a physicist---appreciated my using of terms like "energy minimization" for certain things that basically confused everybody else. (I was not trying to use scientific language per se but rather was going for Caltech undergraduate language.)

Anyway, that's it for now. I still owe some blog entries about other things.

Quote of the Day (overheard at Chandler)

Today's quote of the day once again comes from Catalin Turc:

"We had strippers dancing on tables. [pause] We wanted to have a nice, relaxed atmosphere." (Some of the minor connecting words may not be entirely accurate.)


Then the conversation at lunch really became "awesome" because of the whole yearbook bit. I think that Cat must have been making up for the recent tameness (relatively speaking) in our lunch conversations.