Hello all. I'm finally here again. It seems that some 'ones of us' were cold last week, and now more than 'one of us' will be snowed in tomorrow. Quite a winter we are enjoying. How beautiful our storm will be. I just wish we could stay here and enjoy the storm a little longer, but the sunny south is calling! I can't wait to see everyone, (Emilie, we will miss you!) and that is well worth leaving our winter wonderland. John, you told me you were part of an experiment, but you didn't tell me how horrible it was. I wish you had hand written in every answer just to protest the absurdity of their system. I don't know what they were trying to prove, but it just goes to show how worthless so many statistics we hear are. Well, I'm going to stop there after saying almost nothing. It's bedtime, and I just wanted to say hello. Annie

At Home for Christmas

Mother is downstairs practicing piano (and believe it or not, I have been too lately, working on some phantom of the opera pieces). Laura is off at school, Dad is off to work, and David is asleep somewhere. It's been so wonderful being at home, I'm very proud to say that my family has finally reached the point where apart from Laura and David, there really is no nonsensical fighting. Reid John and I will sometimes spar over whose job it is to do the dishes, but I predict that that will continue forever. We have such a good time together these days, even choosing to go on errands to keep each other company. Gmama, much thanks for the post, I certainly think graduate school could be in my future, but we'll have to see how everything pans out. The ring I received that signifies my "Buchanan" manhood finally fits...I don't know if anyone was aware, but my family is doing a ring at manhood policy, and when I received mine my fingers were too small, but I have fattened up and it now fits securely, and is even difficult to get off at times. Christmas fast approaches, as dose the time our wonderful family gets together and I can barely contain my excitement. I'm off to do some work that hopefully someday will pay off (assuming any of this Eastern Europe stuff ever becomes profitable), eat a healthy breakfast, and chill with Mom and Dave for the day.
-Ben

Hooray for our second college graduate!

Congratulations to Ben, who overcame boredom, poor teachers, misinformation about how many hours credit he had, and all other impediments, to graduate from the Univ. of Albany!!!! And with a wonderfully high GPA. If all his other plans for the future don't pan out, I would love to see him really challenged at a hard graduate school with other conscientious students so perhaps he could go back to breathing normally and not force the teachers to "finagle" the curve so other students can pass. Thank you, Ben, for keeping in touch, so we who have blogged with you could enjoy your activities and the feeling of being closer, even though distances keep us all apart. I, for one, have high hopes for your future endeavors and look forward to seeing all the good things I know you are capable of doing and becoming! I'm proud of you Ben, and love you and all the Importants very much. GMama

An Outlier??!?!?! ME!??!?!?!

So apparently that's what I am...nothing but a lowly outlier....whose grade will not even count towards the curve...can you all believe it?

I went to speak to my economics statistics professor before our exam, for no particular reason other than just keeping in touch as I do. While in his room chatting with him another student walked in who had lost his review guide for the final exam. The teacher was looking around trying to find some printer paper so he could print the student out another exam, I jutted in and offered the student my copy of the final review. I told him that I wasn't going to be studying anyway so he could have it. The teacher knew I was a good student, but still made a comment attacking my boldness. He said "let's see your grade, I know your one of the top students but not studying for the final?" He checked on his grade sheet which happened to be on his desk, sure enough I was the top grade in the class...with a 97% average....the next highest average in the class was 84%. He gave a little chuckle as he shared this information with the student and myself, at which point the student scoffed and made a comment about how I was going to ruin the curve for the class. Then the teacher calmed my nervous compatriot's nerves..."I don't count the outliers when I do the curve" he said..."I always have a few students who get 0's on exams they have skipped or who blow off the course but forget to drop it or something, and I do not count their grades when calculating the curve, so I figure I won't count Ben's grade either." I'm not really sure what method he uses to curve grades or if he really isn't going to count my grade, but funny situation eh?

In defense of my fellow students intelligence, I am a math minor and have taken multiple statistics classes...this is an entirely math based economics class, the teacher...while nice...is not very good. So, I'm sure there were some smart people in this class, but I'm pretty sure I was the only math minor.

Doesn't Everyone Hold Their Breath In Class?!?!?!?

So, in my last Wednesday night marathon of the year (it's a three hour class, and one of the driest I've ever taken), I was bored, as usual. So bored in fact, that normally interesting things didn't even seem interesting. Normally I can get lost thinking about stocks, the economy, trying to come up with a new way to evade taxes, or simply thinking of how wonderful life will be starting in just...and counting down the seconds till the end of class. This night, however, boredom was more stark than usual, so, I resorted to my normal resortation, holding my breath. I probably hold my breath in about 1/3 of my classes, with nothing else to do I just figure I might as well try and expand my lung capacity. Normally I can keep it under control, and not have a huge breath afterwards, but tonight I slipped up. I was counting...1 minute...1 minute 5...1 minute 15...1 minute 25...and then comes a girl, decently attractive, into the classroom. She was about 30 minutes late, and she happened to sit right next to me on my left side. Right as she was sitting down, I hit my target, 1 minute 30 seconds. BREATHE I DID, not dramatic in sound, but not subtle enough to stay under the radar. The two gentlemen in front of me chuckled, as they knew what I was doing, but the girl next to me must have thought it was something she did, for she gave me a look of worry/confusion. She must have been trying not to alert the teacher to her late arrival. I didn't stop my breath-holding exercise there either, and I was careful to not make any sound from there on out, but I couldn't help but squirm a little bit in my chair, and I think she noticed. As I had no where else to look whilst holding my breath, I simply looked in the direction of this girl to see if she was going to catch me holding my breath again, I was going to see if I could do it without being caught. My guess is she never figured out what I was doing, and I hope it to be that way, but...clearly, she didn't belong to the club of those who hold their breath in class, else she would have known my secret.

So, Family poll...How many people held your breath in class to pass the time?

At long last our final "holdout" has blogged and what an interesting blog it was! It confirmed my suspicion that Yankees are a whole different species who often beat their wives and, not content with that, try to indoctrinate innocent freshmen, who know only the gentle ways of Southerners, to follow their example. Imagine not even giving as a choice "never"! As the year draws to a close, perhaps we should vote for the "Blogger of the year 2008". It will be a very difficult decision and I doubt if I will ever be able to make up my mind. I have loved every one I've ever read for one reason or another, and three cheers for Ben for setting it up to try and keep us in closer touch. No matter how close they may start, people tend to drift apart if there is never any contact. Let's not let that happen to us. Love to all bloggers! GMama

A Post for the Family

Due to demands from relatives (mainly G-mama and Ben) I have finally broken down and decided to post on the blog. I however do not have much to post about... but I do have a semi interesting story about being the "guinea pig" of a psychology experiment. The reason I was willing to be the "guinea pig" of the psychology experiment is quite simple it was required for my psychology class. Now this particular experiment that I had signed up for was one to test stress levels based on factors involving parenting and other related things or so it said. When I actually showed up for this experiment I was forced to take several survays which involved questions like "Did your mother ever beat your father?" and "Did your father ever beat your mother?" the answers included 1) all of the time 2) frequently 3) once a month 4)once every 3 months 5) a few times a year. Seeing as how I was fortunate enough to grow up in a house were it never occured I could not answer the questions for the most part. Well after spending a good hour answering questions similar to the 2 listed above I was lucky enough to be one of the "guinea pigs" that got hooked up to a couple machines and by a couple I mean 4. These machines where used to measure the rate at which my heart was beating, the sweat on my fingers, the rate my eyes were blinking, and the last one I honestly dont remember why I was hooked up to it. While hooked up to these machines they allowed me to watch a slideshow which had some very nice photographs of landscapes and playing children. That was the first slideshow it lasted for about 15 minutes. The second and final slideshow I got to watch was about twice as long and consisted of men threatening their wives with knives, broken bottles, guns, and about 10 minutes of men beating their wives with their fists. Oh yeah I forgot to mention they had a camera filming me the whole time I participated in the study. After the slideshows i got to fill out 1 last survay which allowed me to express how those slides made me feel... it lasted for about 15 minutes and was again full of questions with many answers which really didn't give the participant any chance to give any true/real oppinions on what their impact was. Well G-mama I hope you enjoyed my little story (its all true I really had to sit through a half hour slide show of men beating women biggest waste of time ever) and I hope whoever else reads it enjoys this post to some extent.

-John