Another day in Oregon

Until the 27th when I am back online, my daily or twice daily trips to free wifi will have to do.

Today I did what I am doing "best"-- spending money on random crap. Well, not random crap-- stuff I need, for example, a chair to sit in. Still, all this junk adds up-- jeez, it's a great way to be kind of stressed out. My highlight was a little drive to Powell's Technical Bookstore in Portland, which has the best math books section I have ever seen. I don't really have money for extra books right now, but I did chill there for a while wishing I did-- there is a whole aisle (about the size of a supermarket aisle) with shelves to the ceiling of nothing but books on linear algebra and... "group theory" (I am not sure what that is, but the next aisle over had "number theory" and "statistical physics" so I guess it relates to one or both of those?) I scored a sweet poster-- a map of the moon with all it's craters and their sizes. Pretty cool! I guess a map of the moon poster is not "necessary" but it does take up wall space-- and I have a lot of it.

I also enjoyed a fairly strange conversation at Lowe's

Me: So, I need a really, really big whiteboard, or something that will work as a whiteboard.

Guy at Lowe's: Uh...

Me: I have heard that melamine will do the trick, but it does not work.

Guy at Lowe's: Why do you need a giant whiteboard?

Me: Well, you see, I am married to a theoretical physicist and I love math, so I need a big whiteboard so we can do lots of expansive math.

Guy: Oh! Okay! Alrighty then! Well, how big are we talking?

Me: We're talking Ising Model big. 2-D Ising model big. *gives guy a 'knowing' look*

Guy: Oh, that's big. I am not sure we carry something that big....

As it turns out, they don't even carry whiteboards. But I was fairly amused by the fact that either this guy at Lowe's knew what an Ising model was, or at least he was pretending quite well that it was a standard size measurement. Maybe I will start measuring my height in terms of Ising models, too.

Still working on this giant whiteboard thing. I am determined. My next idea is to paint the back of a plexiglass so that I can write on the front and have a backing. What may be even cheaper is to test this on a small one, first.