Party...Math Style!

Last night my husband and I went to a baby shower at our friend Adrian's house. Can I just say "nerd fest" right now and get it over with? My husband and Adrian are both math professors, but I like to think they're the "cool" ones...the guys who have a life outside of math who are capable of carrying on a normal conversation about things unrelated to their work. (Let me just interject that I am oh so grateful for that too.) Anyway, last night I met some new science people they know and I spent a good deal of the night thinking, "Hmmm, am I that much of an ass or what?" I have too hard of a time talking to these people. Among my favorites from the party were 1. being flat-out denied a handshake when meeting one of these new people as if I were the rhesus monkey from the movie Outbreak responsible for annihilating the world's population with my monkey disease, and 2. later trying to talk to this same person again to tell him about my conversation with his wife (who was normal and nice to talk to) and getting literally no response after 10 seconds. Face-to-face, no confusion at all over who I was talking to. Just an expressionless stare. I even stopped for a moment mentally and thought to myself, "I don't have a weird accent. I know I'm speaking English. I know he speaks English too. I swear I heard it. I haven't dropped the F-bomb or said anything overtly rude or embarrassing. What the hell?" What the hell indeed.

Sometimes I think science people should be forced to wear shirts that say "Socially awkward is my middle name" just so the rest of us know what we're getting into.

Among other interesting tids and bits from last night, I discovered math/science people should not be allowed to drink more than five beers in one evening, or else they think their math jokes are waaaaaaay funnier than they actually are. (For the record, they're never funny. Sorry, guys.)

Jokes that had the math people on the floor last night include but are not limited to:

"Is that a NORMAL distribution?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Y=X squared! Graph it on Yal's graph paper shirt!"

"I said Bezel Functions, not BASIL Functions! DUH! Harharharharhardyharhar."

I could go on, but you get the idea. It hurts me inside.

My dear husband did indulge me in one of my new favorite things at the party yesterday by doing for everyone else what he did at home all day prior to going to the party. That, my friends, is revealing the "secret ingredient." To understand this reference you need to know the popular Food Network show Iron Chef (or, for our purposes, Iron Chef America). Here's a Cliff's Notes synopsis to bring you up to speed if you're not familiar. The show originated in Japan and has been brought to the U.S. Every week a "challenger" chef comes on the show and faces off against one of the Iron Chefs (well-known chefs who are considered masters in their field, although I disagree because Bobby Flay is in the American version and I have an unnatural dislike for him, but that's beside the point). Anyway, the challenger and the Iron Chef must each cook 5 dishes in an hour to be reviewed by a panel of esteemed judges who are basically glorified food snobs. Each meal must include the "secret ingredient." The "secret ingredient" is revealed to us each week by "the chairman," who is a Japanese man who does karate moves and bulges his eyes to a frightening degree as he screams the name of the secret ingredient with unnecessary intensity For example, last night's secret ingredient that had to be used in every dish was chile peppers. So the chairman threw his arms out and screamed, "CHILLLLLESSSS!!" as he revealed a cart full of chiles to the chefs.

Anyway, my husband delighted in this yesterday and decided to spend a good part of the afternon going around the house and introducing things like they were the secret ingredient on Iron Chef. So he'd be in the kitchen and would run into the living room where I was and yell, "The secret ingredient is....ORZO!" Or I'd say, "Quick, what's the secret ingredient?" and he'd have to pick something to identify and announce it like the chairman. "The secret ingredient is....BULBS!" Too funny. So what delighted me more was that he did it at the party last night and indulged me and his friends every time we asked him to do it.

"Yal, quick, what's the secret ingredient?"
"GUINESS!" (It's very important to remember the arm gestures here.)

Ohhhhh it was good. You probably had to be there, but if you're reading this (all three of you that do read it) and you know my husband, you know why I love it so much.

Finally, on to today's quote of the day, which comes from my husband also. (Sorry, but I don't have a lot of contact with other people these days.) We were watching the news, and the weather man has his "Three Degree Guarantee." When he gets the forecast right, a home viewer wins a prize. The prize this week was (I swear) a case of RC Cola. Let me just interject at this point that if I won a case of RC Cola I would call the station and be like, "Ummm...nevermind."

So anyway, this lady wins a case of RC Cola (yes...yes you MUST always say "Cola" at the end...it's vital), and Yal says, "Oh good! She can shake it up and spray it on her friends because it's undrinkable!"