(no subject)

1. On Saturday, it was sunny and warm and I ran errands in Boston that had me outside for 2 hours and 5.5 miles, and then later another mile and a half (in the dark) (and laid fucking 18 metal strips), and I got a sunburn and a serious case of 'why does everything hurt when I move?' On Sunday, I spent 9 hours helping out run a fencing tourney, followed by a trip to IHOP in which we made several bad route choices (worse that last time. And last time we were drunk.) resulting in a 2.5 mile walk and more of the 'why does everything hurt when I move?' but I spent an hour outside at night in jeans and a tshirt. Today, it is snowing. BOSTON WHAT THE FUCK. and I still can't walk.

2. I kept score for the finals of women's epee yesterday, where 'keeping score' means 'attempting to coordinate 12 fencers and 3 refs to finish 66 bouts as fast as possible'. That was kind of cool, although totally stressful until I got the hang out it. (It got off to a bad start - I got to my strips to find the fencers there but no refs....because the Bout Committee forgot to assign some.) The fencers were much nicer than I expected (I mean, it's in their best interest to be nice to me (although they were nice to me afterwards, even, when I had to chase them down to make them sign the scoresheet, and they offered me brownies for my trouble), but they were even nice to each other - when one girl got a really bad leg cramp in the middle of the bout, there were people offering to fetch trainers and bananas and water). The coaches were much lower key than I'm used to (I think it's an epee thing - you don't need someone at strip yelling "Parry-riposte?!?! Are you blind?!?!?" in epee.), but mostly totally failed to walk to fine line between "polite and friendly" and "sketchy and/or patronizing." (Seriously, it's not that hard. If I'm not in the middle of something, you can see the scoresheet - I'll even offer it to you if you approach - and then you take it and look at it and say thanks and walk away - no other comments needed.)

2a. My favorite moment of the tourney was when they had three fencers tied for two positions advancing to the next round, and no one knew what to do. First, they came to the Bout Committee, and he didn't know. They paged the Head Ref. He didn't know. Then they paged Columbia's coach. (Presumably, he did know, since they managed to fence it off.)

2b. My second favorite moment involved watching the close of registration time tick closer and closer, with only one WS fencer not checked in. Since us doing check in are all WS and we recognize all the names, we're like, "her team is here!" "i saw her this morning!" "I know she's in the building!" followed by "oh, look, there she is warming up. Should we tell her that she needs to register, or do you think the fact that she's been called on the PA should have been enough?" (Someone eventually did go over to her and go, "uh, you know you need to check in, right?") (Second favorite registration moment - the squad that checked in as a unit, then informed us that their fourth was not attending. You mean, not attending this tourney that has a three person per weapon per team limit? yeah, we worked that one out for ourselves.)

3. We gave our presentation today in my project class, and they told me that I had beautiful proofs. BEAUTIFUL PROOFS! TAKE THAT, WORLD!