The living room, however, is pretty vacant at the moment. From my old place, the only living room stuff I brought was my desk, two small filing cabinets and a couple of bookshelves, all of which I put along one wall in my new place. And that’s it. And it’s a pretty big living room. It actually looked quite ridiculous once I unpacked most of the boxes, which were at least filling up some of the living room. I have now purchased a lovely walnut coffee table and end tables², which at least takes up some space, but the room still looks pretty silly with just tables and no place to sit.

This week, however, I will be getting a few key things that will make my place more livable. First up, Tod is loaning me an extra couch that he has, as well as a lamp that he’s not using, so that will mean I can sit on something other than my desk chair in the living room and will actually have enough light to read³. On Thursday I’m getting my new mattress, which I bought for half price at Sleep Country⁴. I wasn’t planning to buy a new mattress, but after I moved my old mattress into my new place, I discovered that it smelled pretty musty. Which I’m sure I just couldn’t smell in my old place because the whole place was pretty musty. I figure that breathing in must and mold 6-8 hours every night can’t be good for me. Hence the new mattress. In preparation for the new mattress, I’ll be going to Ikea to buy an actual bed, as I’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor for the last three+ years. I tried checking out a few other stores for beds, but they are all either unbelievably expensive and/or take a month (or more) for delivery. I am both cheap and impatient, so Ikea it is. While I’m there, I think I’ll buy a wardrobe, because my bedroom closet is way too small for all my clothes.

There are also a couple of other things that I’d like to get that I’ve been having trouble finding:

• a room divider – I’d like to get one of those Japanese rice paper room divider thingys to block off my desk from the rest of the living room. You know, so my living room will feel more relaxing without my work stuff looming. I have no idea where one would buy such a thing.
• a small table to put by my front door – I want some thing is tallish⁵ and thin that I can have by my front door. You know, like a place to throw my keys and such. I’ve looked at a few places and haven’t been able to find anything even remotely like what I’m looking for.

If you have any idea where I could get either of these, I’m all ears!

1. I did pick up those Olympic cups and a few glass jars from Ikea to put stuff in – since I have so much counter space, I figured I could make it look pretty.
2. got them used from someone who was downsizing and gave them to me for a really good price
3. the room has a light fixture in the ceiling, but it’s not very bright
4. yeah floor model! Only $600 for a $1200 mattress!
5. like, say, 3ft tall

1. incidentally, it was one of those that I used to get divorced. World’s. Cheapest. Divorce.

I generally like giving books a chance and even if a book isn’t very good, I have this irrational need need to finish it. But not this time. I actually quit reading this book on page 5, when it told me that I should take up smoking if my boss smokes.  Seriously.  How does s&#$ like this get published??

As it turns out, I’m not even going to be at my office today as I have to be at a visioning session in Abbotsford all day, something I hadn’t remembered when the potluck discussions were going on in the lunchroom last week.  But that didn’t stop me from trying out the recipe!

Here’s the dough rolled out:

The orange stuff is cheddar cheese and the darker stuff is potato skin (because I leave the skin on my potatoes when I mash them).

Here’s the dough cut into wedges:

Not exactly evenly cut, but close enough.

And here’s the cooked product:

I may have tested a piece of the one on the bottom left of that photo.  And they aren’t very well browned because I’m not yet used to my new oven³.  So while they don’t look that great, they tasted awesome!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

1. in fact, I don’t know of anyone else but me, though, admittedly, I don’t actually know everyone’s ancestry. But Caucasians are the minority, so I’m thinking that means not too many Irish people
2. almost everything on the potluck list is decidedly not Irish, but rather decidedly green.  Seriously. Guacamole and spinach dip are not, to my knowledge, Irish cuisine
3. my old oven cooked waaaay hotter than the temperature you set it for, so I’ve gotten in the habit of cooking things for shorter than the recipe calls for or else I’d overcook them. These were cooked through, but not browned and I figured it was good enough for the first time

Anyway, I guess I should start looking around to see what sorts of volunteer opportunities there are. Because now that I’ve realized it’s been so long since I last did volunteer work, I realize that I miss it!

For the uninitiated¹, Pi Boxing Day is the day when one traditionally boxes up all the uneaten pie from Pi Day. Except, of course, that you ate all the pie. Which makes Pi Boxing Day the best holiday because it requires absolutely no work. And you are full of pie still.

I told you that I liked to celebrate Pi Day by being irrational.

Image Credit: Posted by slayeh on Flickr.

1. where “uninitiated” = everyone except Kalev and I, who invented Pi Boxing Day last night

Many people celebrate Pi Day by eating pie. I prefer to celebrate it by being irrational.
-Dr. Beth

In honour of Pi Day, I have hounded demanded of nicely asked my Official Statistician & Tattoo Consultant for some wise words about pi to share with you, my lovely readers¹  So here, my friends, is some info on the wonder that is pi, from the wonder that is Almost Dr. Dan:

Not only is Pi irrational (i.e., it cannot be expressed as the ration of two integers), it is also transcendental.  That is, it cannot be a zero (or root) of a polynomial equation with integer valued coefficients.  For example, while root 2 is irrational, it is the solution to the following polynomial: x^2=2.

Other interesting Pi tidbits:

Indiana once had a ‘pi bill’ up for legislative discussion.  Turns out an amateur mathematician thought he had proved how to square the circle.  Sadly for him, it had already been shown that this was an impossibility in 1882 by von Lindemann.  Strangely enough, people still to this day try to prove that you can square the circle.  But I digress.  The pi bill indirectly asserted that pi was in fact 3.2.  Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill for full details.

I’ve also heard of other laws (but couldn’t verify the info) that had pi set to 4 (yikes!).

One of my favourite representations for pi is this rather simple looking infinite sum.  It’s credited to Gregory and Leibniz.

As well, in honour of Pi Day, I give you this photo of Dan’s pi tattoo:

1. After all, it is his first anniversary as my Official Statistician & Tattoo Consultant!

• sledge hockey was created in the early 1960s by two men from Sweden who wanted to play hockey despite their physical disabilities
• Canada’s first sledge hockey team was established in 1982
• sledge hockey was first played as an official Paralympic event in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway
• women were allowed to play on the men’s sledge hockey teams for the first time at the 2010 at the Vancouver Paralympics, but none of the teams chose to have any women on their rosters

The sledge is made of a metal frame with two skate blades on the bottom.

The sticks look like half of a regular sized ice hockey stick with picks on the end that are used to propel the athlete across the ice.

The goalie’s glove also has picks on it to allow the goalie to move him- or herself across the ice. I couldn’t find a picture of a glove that I can use on my blog, but here are a couple of links to a photo so you can check it out.

Image Credit: Picture of an ice hockey sledge is from the Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.  The picture of the sledge hockey stick is also from the Wikimedia Commons and is also in the public domain.

1. on TV, not live. I’ll be watching live sledge hockey on Wednesday night

Here’s a poor quality photo I took of Jen on my iPhone at the Cactus Club, where we went for celebratory drinks tonight.

Congratulations, Dr. Jen!  I hope you are enjoying your new life as one of the club. You deserve it!