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Woot!



I'm taking a few weeks off to prepare for my upcoming exam (on the 17th of June), so It was good to get the promotion before I went cold turkey. Note also in the background that I'm ranked #4 in my division. Woot!

If I get sick of studying and need a break in the next two weeks, I may create a blog post about how I got back to diamond. Maybe creating a blog segment called "strategy corner" or something stupid like that. I may be forbing myself from playing, but who says I can't write about playing?

andrew is the best **warning, contains mild thor movie spoilers**

last night andrew and i went to see thor in imax and 3d. it the first imax-3d movie we had ever seen and we pronounced it freaking awesome. we ate delicious burgers at this joint downtown called "uburger" and our only mistake was not also ordering a chocolate "frappe." altogether, a most excellent date night.

on the walk home from the porter t stop i asked andrew to help convince me of an afterlife. ever since i went through a period of fainting spells, i've had trouble believing in the afterlife. i want it to be true, and i hope it is with all of my heart. but for some reason, the absolute black nothingness i felt when i fainted has continued to haunt me. i cannot forget the disorientation of waking up from fainting, the gasp of breath and frantic pounding of my pulse as my body suddenly remembers it is still alive. in those moments it felt like i had ceased to exist, and according to my cardiologist, my heart was pretty convinced of that fact as well. so subconsciously i am convinced i know what death feels like (and perhaps birth?). since i'd much rather have unfailing belief in an afterlife, i routinely demand andrew comfort me and spread the warmth of his belief blanket around my subconscious. maybe if i believe in andrew's belief, i can somehow trick my subconscious back into believing that our souls will go on while our physical forms lie rotting in the earth. morbid much?

so andrew, being a good husband, always complies and tells me about why he thinks there is an afterlife and all the fun things we'll get to do there, like hang out with unicorns and hobbits. so last night i brought up that if he died before i did (god forbid) he must send me a sign that there is an afterlife (a similar bargain to what houdini and his wife struck). andrew said that still wouldn't convince me because i wouldn't realize that the sign was him. i said, well, what if you send me a butterfly in november, then i'll know it's you. in the end of thor, he cannot return to earth like he promised his love, natalie portman, because the road back was destroyed. and in response to my demand for a sign, andrew said, "but what if my way back to you is destroyed, and i cannot send you a butterfly?" and it struck me to my core because that is totally believable, i just saw that happen on thor! and i realized that just like in thor, we would both have to work hard to find the road back to each other but that eventually we would find one (hey, it happens in the sequel, right?).

so thanks again, andrew, for providing comfort to my conscious and even harder, for reaching my subconscious with pop culture references. i only hope that someday when we die it will be as in the notebook, clasping each other in our old age, one of us slightly demented, but our love allowing us to die at the exact same time.

quality time together

i granted andrew one birthday wish this year, in my attempt to make his birthday special and exciting. the birthday wish had some parameters: it had to be something i could do, not too extravagant, and just reasonable in general.

andrew decided his greatest reasonable wish was for me to play 2 hours of starcraft under his guidance and tutorial. i thought it was sweet that he wanted to spend time with me, but to be honest i wasn't super hyped about it. so on sunday we sat down together in front of his computer, me with my diet coke, andrew with a gleam in his eye, and we opened up starcraft. luckily for both of us, i have played early versions of warcraft and so real-time strategy was not a completely foreign concept. nevertheless, it was soon apparent that starcraft proficiency did not run in the family.

i played on casual, and actually advanced three levels (woot!) with andrew looking over my shoulder and basically micro-ing me. it was surprisingly enjoyable, mainly because andrew and i were there sort of working together. we might play a level every sunday just for kicks.

i also got a bit invested in the story. jim raynor is this bad a** rebel who is fighting the evil emperor of the universe. he had this hottie girlfriend who was infected by bugs and is now the bug queen, destroying worlds and attempting to eliminate humankind. i don't see a happy ending for raynor, but who knows, maybe joss whedon is not writing for them.

the "western outer-space" theme was prominent, and has been a favorite of mine ever since firefly. i do wish they had some more female marines and characters. the whole thing just seemed too male dominated for me. all the medics are female? all the marines are male? lame. i bet a woman could be as powerful in that huge space fighting suit that the marines wear.

in fact, i even dreamed about starcraft last night. i was with the ladies from our ward on an outlying planet. the zerg were fast approaching and raynor was calling all of us ladies in to fight the zerg or run simulations. it was up to us to save the planet, but we were still unsure if it was going to be possible. i woke up just as flying zerg thingies were entering our atmosphere.

i can't decide if that means i should never play starcraft again or if the dream was a prophecy for the future, and i need starcraft to hone the skills necessary to fight off bug like aliens who can infest humans...

What am I constantly studying?

Sometimes people ask me what I could be spending so much time studying, after all didn't I already graduate? I came across this sample exam problem that I thought I'd share to give you all some insight to problems actuaries are charged to solve.

For a tyrannosaur with a taste for scientists:

i) The number of scientists eaten has a binomal distribution with parameters q=0.6 and m=8
ii) The number of calories of a scientist is uniformly distributed on (7000, 9000)
iii) The number of calories of scientists eaten are independent, and are independent of the number of scientists eaten

Calculate the probability that two or more scientists are eaten and exactly two of those eaten have at least 8000 calories each.

Apparently actuarial science is just as much about dinosaur dietary habits as it is about financial models and life contingencies.

Drat

A new season begins and I get demoted. Makes sense because I lost my first 10 games in the diamond leage. At least I can tell my kids someday that I was in the diamond leage (even if it was only for a few weeks).

andrew's birthday celebration

andrew's birthday was a lot of fun! i started out by wrapping all of his presents. i've become a better wrapper in the recent past, and i find i like looking at the gifts as much as watching them being opened...



i also cooked, which is pretty rare in our house. we ate our csa pork chops with homemade apple sauce, asparagus, hollandaise sauce, potatoes, and a delicious strawberry and romano salad. the pork chops were a bit dry, but everything else was delicious. andrew and i pretty much could spoon hollandaise sauce into our mouths and be happy.



andrew getting ready to dig in, below.



i also made some oreo/cookies and cream cupcakes. i figured i'd go the cupcake route b/c then i could control portions and how much was made better. these cupcakes were rich and creamy and delicious! frosting and oreos make anything taste good.




looks disgusting, right? not so, quite delicious, even though the cake was too moist. i am still looking for the perfect chocolate cake recipe that is idiot proof, so if anyone has suggestions, send them my way!!



after cupcakes, andrew opened gifts. it was basically a starcraft themed birthday for him. my brother adam and his wife alissa got him this super awesome terran old school t shirt, and i got him a gaming mouse and dual sided gaming pad. andrew says the difference is noticeable! although he has yet to break it in with some serious playing, i'm pretty sure his t shirt and gaming pad will bring him luck.



we also watched tangled for his birthday, which was cute but no lion king. the music was so stupid i wanted to stab elton john for not writing it.

all in all, i think it was pretty good. here's to more great birthdays!!