"And all... that... jazz.."

I keep listening to "All that Jazz" and "Cabaret" and as a result I am now convinced I could work on the stage... or again, be in the 1920's. I am now so caught up in this that I can't actually believe I won't be working in a theatre. It is a shame I can't sing or dance and hate public performances that are not structured talks. Maybe I should wait for next year's "Nancy" Auditions for Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I have decided that whenever I feel a bit sad I will go on a run. So today I found myself wheezing around the local green belt. Due to my intense dislike for physical exertion I will just have to train myself to not feel sad.

I bought a diary today. My initial thought was to organise my life. Unfortunately when it came to writing things in it I realised I don't really have anything to organise. It may become too distressing for me to consult a diary everyday and just see the pages and pages of nothingness... I really ought to not have bought "a-page-a-day-diary".. that was a mistake. I definitely do not need a whole page a day. That was absolute madness on my part! Currently I have "go to Germany" written. This feels vague. I probably ought to do something about that. But right now, I am dangerously close to starting an Angel marathon. Maybe I'll pencil that in the old diary...

"Don't cry because it's over..

..smile because it happened." (Anon)

I am reminded suddenly of this quote this morning (technically this afternoon) as I wake up and feel a little sad.

Yesterday I graduated. It seems hard to believe (as I sit, pyjama-ed, looking around my overcrowded room whilst listening to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber's back-catalogue) that yesterday I kissed Bill Bryson and had my degree given to me. I am usually very hard to please but the graduation ceremony was lovely. Bill Bryson (our chancellor) gave a succinct, yet somehow inspiring speech. Summing up he said that one should always take the time to look around and appreciate all that we have and all that there is in the world and that we should always strive to achieve what we want. It was a wonderful end to a joyous university time. Yes, I am sad to leave but I feel that wishing to go back would be an awful injustice to the happiness and sadness I had there: all the people I met and all the friends I made. In short, all the memories that were made- I would change none of them.

Maybe it is because the CD has made it to "Any dream will do," or maybe because this is the only way I can think of to obtain some sort of emotional closure; regardless I continue with this arguably overly-emotional post.

In my first week I met one of my best friends Anna, and hopefully she will always remain so. She is blunt and she is witty and she is intelligent and beautiful and she is everything I would hope to be. I made my P-maths friends: Gareth, Sam, Mike and Ken. I could not have hoped to find such like-minded people. They are just super and I am very pleased to call them my friends and I have absolute certainty that I always shall. At the end of third year Sam, Gareth and Mike left for the big wide world and I thought that, given Ken was doing such different modules to me, the final year would be such an anti-climax. But I was wrong. Along came John, and for this friendship I am so thankful. We had the best project meetings.. the best Algebraic Topology and Algebraic Geometry homework sessions. I am quite hard to deal with and John did this all magnificantly. He let his friends be my friends. He is so intelligent and loyal and so many more things. I have a sheet that he made for me one rainly, and particularly stressful, Thursday afternoon and I have kept it on my wall all year: on it a check list of things I shouldn't do. I shouldn't hide, I shouldn't run away and I shouldn't be scared. And he is, as reassuredly as he generally was all year, right. These words have impact, and even if he doesn't remember writing them I will still keep them. I hope he will always remember "Polylogarithms."

So how could wish to take all of this back? I can't and I shouldn't and I won't. Afterall what is life without change? To paraphrase Lorne from "Angel" (superior spin-off to Buffy) you can hold a note forever, but after a while this is just noise; it is the change that we listen for and it is the change that makes music. So now is the time to make more music.

Human Nature

It is strange how you can spend a really short amount of time with some people, but end up telling them all sorts of things you've never told some of your closest friends. When a hug is so meaningful and it is so hard to say goodbye.

Ending

So it finally happened: results came out and I'm going to graduate. This worries and scares me. This four year section of my life is coming to a close and I am slowly coming to the realisation that I will not be coming back to Durham next year. Agghh

Toot toot.. ahhhhh... beep beep

Finally my MAPLE code yields something of use. Well, I say of use- what I actually mean is the code agrees with a combinatoric approach I thought of to write down a closed form for the coproduct of MZV. And by "agreemment" I mean they agree after I spent about 2 days deciphering each of the 86 matrix outputs by hand. Not a task I relished. I am however blindly trusting a code I wrote a little under a year ago that I can not quite remember for the life of me how I actually managed to write it...

I am obviously only able to test this for depth 2,3,4,5 and (oh yes) 6 (the newest result after having left my computer running for a number of hours!). But so far I have the desired corroboration. Plus I am happy that coefficients come in very beautifully predictable pairs (usually pairs but not always- but this is explainable) of products of binomial coefficients (or at least they do conjecturally).

I want to be able to write down this closed form. This does seem more possible now. I am just trying very hard not to become lost in notation.

I had forgotten over the past couple of months just how exciting this project is. There is nothing quite as simultaneously frustating and delicious as being in the belly of a calculation.

I am visiting friends this weekend. I really hope that I won't need my computer program while I am away. I can take the notepads but taking my laptop may seem a little anti-social. I could take the work sheets on a memory stick I suppose, but then one would run the risk of my friends not having the appropriate software on their computers- which would be quite irritating. Boo hiss boo.

I also can not decide whether to take a Poirot with me. It's not strictly necessary, plus there really isn't enough time to make an informed decision with regards to which one to take. I could just take a foreign language dictionary, or go crazy and only take my notebooks.