The Life of a Mathematician

It seems I only make posts anymore about Sunday School lessons. Probably because that's about the only interesting part of my life right now. For yesterday's lesson, I actually combined two weeks' worth of material, because one of the lessons was too short and I wanted to cut some stuff out of the other one. So we talked about the inauguration of the priesthood, the death of Nadab and Abihu, and the Day of Atonement. In addition to Leviticus 16 about the Day of Atonement, I read out of Hebrews 9, which also had a nice review of the stuff we'd been covering about the tabernacle.

Next week (starting tomorrow actually) I'm going to be visiting my family for Independence day, and Andrew is going to be in Canada. As a result, neither of us is going to be able to do the class. However, I talked to Kyle on the phone earlier and he said he can cover for us. That lesson will be about Leviticus 19, and after that we start in Numbers.

In other news, I've applied for a job as a junior high / high school mathematics teacher at a small Christian school in northern Idaho. The application process reminded me of applying to TMC. Lots of information to gather and essays to compose, but I've got it all done now. Not much else to say about that at this point.

I'm back in town after spending the weekend with my family. Thursday afternoon and Friday morning my uncle Fred and aunt Barbara were in town. They are the aunt and uncle who are deaf. My mom and sister have been taking sign language classes, so they were able to talk to them pretty well, and they learned a lot of new signs.

Sunday was Father's Day, and we had everyone over to our house for a barbecue. We played croquet golf, which has gotten more high tech since the last time I was there for it. We have numbered flags to mark the wickets, and a second croquet set so that there can be more than six players.

I haven't found out how Sunday School went yet. I didn't even get a chance to talk to Andrew before I left last week; I just dropped the book off with his brother John. But I noticed that Leviticus 1-7 is all miscellaneous laws; the kids probably thought it was boring. Telling them that I Chronicles is worse probably wouldn't help.

I forgot to mention something in the last post. When Moses was hiding in the cleft of the rock while God passed by him, God gave a description of His character. "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate, gracious..." I told the kids that even though Moses couldn't look directly at God, He was describing Himself. John was having trouble with this, because the attributes given were abstract things, not physical characteristics. The way he put it was, "It's not like compassion is a pink ball."

Well, I did Sunday School solo today, and there were ten kids. Three of the girls I hadn't met before doing this class, and they are all very quiet, so it makes it hard to remember which is which. There were also three boys instead of just two, and they are definitely not quiet.

The lesson was on the end of Exodus, chapters 33-40. We talked about the Tent of Meeting, Moses' face shining, and the actual construction and dedication of the Tabernacle, culminating with God's glory entering it. I talked about the connection between Moses' face shining, his inability to look on God's glory, and Jesus' transfiguration, and I played The Face That Shone by Michael Card for them, which talks about all of that.

Next week we are supposed to cover Leviticus 1-7. I told them they could read one chapter a day. Maybe someone will.

Today I went with Amy to something called uprising , put on by the Society for Creative Anachronisms. Basically it's a bunch of people in various styles of ancient armor and shields doing swordfighting with ratan sticks. It was very interesting to watch. They also have a milder version of the combat for kids; they have foam padded swords and wear football helmets. The kid who won that competition used two swords and no shield. One of the most interesting fights there was between him and a boy who used a two-handed sword.

When you are at the actual place you have to wear "garb" -- pre-seventeenth century clothing. Amy had her own -- she has friends who are members of SCA -- but they have some available in the sign-in booth for people who don't. It's kind of like playing dressup. I wore an Irish tunic, which has very baggy sleeves that are also adjustable to be short or long.

Most of the swordfights were single combats, but they also did a battle with two teams of ten or twelve. The rules in all the fights were that if you got hit in the leg, you had to drop to your knees, if you got hit in the arm you had to put that arm behind you, and a hit to an uprotected vital area meant you got killed. I listened to part of a class that someone was giving, and he said that their sport actually has more in common with chess than with combat. If you can handle 60 pounds of armor and swing a two or three pound stick around for a few hours, then you are physically able to play; the rest is strategy. In the battle, most everyone was killed within two minutes, and there were three guys left, two from one team and one from the other. That last man held out for another minute or so.

They also had shops and stuff, but those didn't interest me as much as the swordplay. :)

Brandon, John, and Steven -- three of my friends from college -- stayed at my apartment last night. I spent most of yesterday performing domestic tasks. Having houseguests reminds you of such things. Plus, I didn't know what time they were arriving, and I had forgotten that Brandon had a cell phone, so I didn't want to be gone from the apartment too much in case they showed up when I wasn't there. Brandon called me around 14:30 to remind me that he had a cell phone, and they actually got into town just after 19:00. I made enchiladas, which I hadn't done in a while, and I even assembled a salad. That's right; I'm not completely domestically challenged! Just partially.

After dinner we made a trip to Fred Meyer. Going to Fred Meyer with John and Brandon is an experience. Brandon got a blanket to replace the one he had left at Jason's house, while John found two Star Wars action figures that weren't available in California. I told him that we didn't have as many toy collectors in Idaho, and he said he could tell we had some based on which figures were missing from the shelves.

After we got back we had pie and ice cream, and then played LOTR Risk. (Or should I say LOTRR? Or maybe just LR to make it a nested acronym like AIM?) Brandon would have one if we'd played the game out to conclusion, but since we cut it off at 11:30, Steven won with a final desperate grab for territory, and I was in second place by one point, despite having been in the worst position for the whole game. John would have likely wiped me out halfway through. Oh, we had an interesting plot twist -- Saruman completely conquered Mordor, while Sauron vacated and took over Arnor.

This morning they took me out for breakfast before heading out of town, which was very nice of them. They'll be back home sometime this evening.

In other news, my coteacher for the Sunday School class just had a change of plans and is going to be out of town this weekend, so it looks like I'll be doing the lesson solo. Just watch; 15 kids will show up.

Today was my first time teaching the 5th and 6th grade Sunday School class. Six kids showed up, and they said there are typically more like nine. The lesson was on Exodus 32, and it went fine, except I ran out of material in about thirty minutes and had another forty-five minutes to kill. We did Bible trivia games. The same thing happened to Andrew last week, so we are going to work on preparing more material for next week.