September was a rollercoaster. It started with a road trip to the parents' new house in North Carolina over Labor Day Weekend. I waved good-bye to the trusty Mazda, played some golf, and actually relaxed. In retrospect, I should have spent a lot more time that weekend studying for my Series 7, considering what happened immediately after I got back ( Read more... )

4 weeks into the job and I still don't know what it is I do. If I had known, before starting at JSC, that I would be saying this, I would have been alarmed. But now I've accepted the fact that if a total noob to the financial system (me) could internalize that which makes JSC successful in 4 short weeks, then those tools and ideas would be known by ( Read more... )

Compared to my apartment in OB, where I lived for nearly 5 years, my new place in Brooklyn is an overpriced dump. It was an impossible goal, finding a place as good as my OB pad. Finding it from 3000 miles away, and on short order. I settled, and I'm getting what I paid for (once you adjust to New York pricing ( Read more... )

Okay, now that the laundry is done and I'm moderately inebriated, this is about as good a time as any to run down the past few weeks ( Read more... )

I'm nearly two weeks into my new job -- my actual, monies-paying, not-a-summer-camp job. The stress of packing up my shit, driving cross-country through sweltering southern states, the welcome respite at my parents' new home in Pinehurst, the ensuing madness of driving to Brooklyn and moving in to my cruddy apartment, the wonder of exploring a new ( Read more... )

Breaking news, I guess: there was a mix-up with the movers' contract. My agent and I had agreed on Friday but he had written down tomorrow's date on the final contract. I didn't look too closely (lesson learned) and signed off on the incorrect date. The truck is coming tomorrow morning, which means I won't be hitting the road hella early, but ( Read more... )

I'm sitting on my couch in my apartment. Both of those objects are mine for but a few hours longer. Aside from the couch and the TV (which has the Open on), everything else is an unholy mess. Boxes are everywhere, and in a few hours United will come by to load up the sum total of the stuff I felt was worth keeping after 5 years of living in Ocean ( Read more... )

I placed over a dozen 'for sale' ads on craigslist today -- the first time I've ever tried to sell anything online. I spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with a torrent of follow-up emails asking about the various pieces of furniture (mostly IKEA stuff) that I'm hoping to unload prior to the Big Move. Some of the respondents are either auto- ( Read more... )

I got back to SD on the 4th, after 2 days on the road. Except for a massive holiday traffic jam in Denver, the drive was quite relaxing. The afternoon I got back Don was waiting for me at the apartment. He cooked up some absolutely delicious steaks on the bbq outside and we had a fantastic dinner. It was the perfect way to settle back in to the ( Read more... )

I've gotta head out in a moment to teach "Counting in 2 Ways", which may contain my least inspired problem set of this year's MOP. I couldn't find any truly clever counting problems that weren't immediately susceptible to other means, so I may have trouble getting students to foresake other proof methods and focus on bijections ( Read more... )