7 Quick Takes – Yet Another Week in Review

I’m writing this Quick Takes post on Thursday evening. Hubby has some friends over so I said they could play games I don’t like for a bit while I came to write this. They also have the baby, so I am uninterrupted (well I was until he crawled in after me of his own accord )

1. I guess I’ll start the quick takes with the most recent thing, so as not to end on a sad note. Thurs morning my mom called to tell me that her cousin passed away I’m sad because she’s sad but I also knew him too, we saw them every summer. My mom and brother are driving to Massachusetts for the funeral but with a little baby and other commitments I can not. This also makes me sad.

2. My Lenten resolution is not doing so well. For the first few days it was always on my mind and I could usually stop myself before complaining. That’s one now and I find I keep having to put money in my little jar.

3. I had a midterm on tuesday for my class. It was actually very easy, I was surprised. When I read over the exam think I almost made a sound out loud in shock of how short it was. 2 diagrams and a really easy question that takes about 2 minutes. I don’t expect to be perfect but I’m quite sure I passed and then some.

4. On Saturday evening DH and I are going to dinner theatre. I haven’t been in almost 10 years cause it’s not cheap so I’m looking forward to it. His work is paying his share plus my ticket is half the normal price, so combined it’s like we’re paying a quarter of the price.

5.

Last Saturday WiTS had our Supernova event. We had 60 girls age 9-13 come to CS to learn more about IT. We had them program robots, play a computer game and we even showed them how to put together a computer from the individual components. The girls learned a lot and had a blast. One of my groups made a robot that play s a warning and runs into people that don’t move out of the way. It said ‘watch out’ over and over and had a hazard symbol displayed on the screen. another group made a little bomb, basically it shows a bomb on the screen, then counts down out loud from 5 to 1 and then shows ‘boom’. I had a lot of fun also.

6. This week WiTS had another big event, we had 2 speakers come from CRA-W. This stands for the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research. One was from Academia and one was from Industry (IBM). The talks were ore interesting than I had thought, and I also understood more than I expected to. It was also cool just getting to know these 2 women. Both were mothers with 2 daughters almost the same 2 ages. One was form Georgia Tech and one was from Austria. After the 1st talk we had dinner with the speakers. The next day we had the 2nd talk and lunch (both were paid for). After that we had a graduate discussion panel on why to attend grad school and finally a reception. We had quite a bit of food leftover so I have some easy snacks in my fridge.

7. The highlight of my week was the dinner with the speakers. We had it at Saege, a very tasty restaurant that is anything but cheap (we’re talking $10 desserts). I’ve been there before and I love it, it’s also very prettily decorated and with the green and purple looked very spring like and which complemented the warmer weather we’ve been having. The best part was that we didn’t have to pay for it, (if we’d had to I wouldn’t have been going, we can’t afford that kind of fancy dinner at the moment) but because it was also the dinner for the speakers and we are hosting them so they pay nothing, the Faculty of Computer Science paid for it, all. I could work out the cost but there were 7 of us so it was well over $200 for the main course alone.

I guess I was glad it wasn’t Friday, though I didn’t actually get anything with meat, but I’m SURE glad it wasn’t Ash Wednesday So as not to be a glutton I did not order the most expensive thing and took my lead from others on what was acceptable: appetizer, dinner and dessert , and I didn’t waste a bite, all my plates were clean.

So, even though my expectations were high the evening did not disappoint. The food was excellent and so was the conversation. 7 women all sitting around a table chatting for 3 lovely hours