Lately, I think a lot about math. Although I have never gotten high marks in math at school, nor have I previously felt any desire to actually do math for fun, I have thought about it a lot, particularly in the last year or so. Because I have thought about it for so long, I now think that perhaps I ought to write down some of the things I've been thinking about. I doubt very many people will find my math thoughts useful or even interesting, but maybe someone will be irritated enough by my mistakes and poor reasoning to offer corrections. Otherwise, I only hope that by writing this stuff down I will discover for myself the problems in my thinking that presently hold me back.

One trouble I have already, of all the things I've been thinking about, which one should I write about first?

The pilot was
a loaf of bread
which is why
all perished

when the plane
fell into the Atlantic
crashing
so tragic

Forgive us
he seemed so confident
during
pre-flight

1. Chop a sweet onion into long thin strips
2. Dust with salt, stir it up to mix and coat, then let it sit for a half-hour.
3. soak in apple cider vinegar for an hour.

Possible tastebud and mind explosion. Eat with caution.

I have been able to control my dreams ever since a series of nightmares I experienced when I was young. Now, I usually prefer to not dream. However, when my subconscious needs to work stuff out in a nightmare, I let it run its course. That's usually more fun. If it gets really bad, I just wake up.

I used to think of myself as a creative person but I've been disappointed in my efforts for years (over a decade, now that I add them up). A busy daytime life doesn't leave me with a lot of time to actually practice. So now I'm thinking about using my dreams to exercise my imagination and try some stuff out in.

I needed some light reading so I checked this one out of the library. Fun!

Around Thrial, a star a million light-years away from any other, turns the planet Golter, where on a beach of glass, on the eve of ten millennia of human civilization and war there, Lady Sharrow meets her cousin, Count Geis. Geis warns her that agents of the Huhsz church, the family's ancient enemies, have recently received permission to hunt and try and kill her for the next year and a day. The Huhsz can be placated by her death, or the return of a mysterious weapon, the Lazy Gun, hidden by her grandfather. A clue to the weapon's location may be in an ancient book, Universal Principles location also unknown. Geis offers to help. He can use his vast wealth and means to protect Sharrow from the Huhsz, to find the book and the Lazy Gun. Sharrow declines. She has her own resources.

And so begins an adventure, a quest and many capers. Banks has written a ripping yarn of exotic locales, lost treasures, ancient technology, friends and enemies, new and old, betrayals, intrigues, sex, murder, decadence and war.

I finished rereading Vernor Vinge's "Zones of Thought" which is a short story, The Blabber (1988) and two big novels, A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999). The others are computer age space opera set 40,000 years ahead of our present era, but A Deepness in the Sky is something altogether other, even though it has deep parallels with A Fire upon the Deep and others of his novels.