11 March 2012

We were tantalized with a taste of Spring this week, enjoying temperatures in the 60s and 70s.  Helen staged an impromptu concert on the lawn Sunday afternoon last week.  We're back in the 40s with rain today.

Our big event this week was driving to Corvallis for the state Mathcounts competition which was held at OSU.  Most of the competition was closed to spectators.  We watched the countdown round, a speed version with "easy" questions.  Here's a sample question:

What is the product of all integer values of x for which the value of | x(squared)-9 | is a prime number?

We might be able to solve that problem if you gave us a week, but the top competitors had the answer before the moderator finished asking the question. The photo shows Sofi with her teammmates, from the left, Ben, Tannar and Lance.  Sofi was the top finisher from her school in the individual competition.  Their team came in 8th place.

 

While Sofi was working away at math problems, we walked around the beautiful city of Corvallis.  It's a college town along the Willamette River, with old houses and a cute downtown.

Becky was mystified that all the ash trays along the river front had flowers planted in them.  She isn't sure if this is to discourage smoking, to disguise the cigarette butts or if everyone in Corvallis has stopped smoking and they needed another use for the ashtrays.

After Sofi was finished, we met up with our friend, Emily.  Emily was our first babysitter when we moved here and we're good friends with her family.  She's currently a senior at OSU studying microbiology.  She gave us a tour of the campus and showed us her lab where she is studying a single cell ocean organism called SAR II.

Last year the Liberal Arts College built giant twisty, twiggy structures on campus.  They plan to leave the structures in place until they decompose.  The sculptures make wonderful forts.  We've learned that college campuses are great places for kids to play-- no traffic, lots of variations in landscaping, interesting hardscapes to climb and jump on, lots of space to run.

Gib lost his shoe in the mud a few times.

We met Emily's husband, Jason, for dinner at a nearby restaurant named Nearly Normal's that specialized in gonzo cuisine.  We don't know what gonzo cuisine means (even after looking it up when we got home,) but it was a tasty vegetarian dinner.