enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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2nd entry - sorry - previous one shorter and funnier, this one long and even persnickity in places. FOrgive me!

I just went for a run. Phew! I wasn't going to and then I decided to and of course it was the best decision.

I loved running with Am over the winter but I'm glad that I cut myself free from that for now. I really didn't want to be scheduled to run long tonight and to also have to wait around on Sundays.

I know I waffle on this a lot, but I've really decided that I have no honest desire to compete anymore. I'm happy as I am, being a slob, maybe running when I feel like it a couple of times a week. My cycling group, too, has been talking about meeting in the big wilderness park on the Quebec side of the river (10 minutes away by car) on Saturdays. I think that that could be good - I can take it or leave it as the weekends go. I kind of like having a major workout first thing on Saturdays, because then one is free for the rest of the weekend!

I think a big part of this process for me is going to be figuring out what I really want to do and what I do because I feel I *should*. I love to run but I've often done it in a *should* fashion.

TOday we went out for lunch to celebrate my boss's promotion to his current spot, which was recently made official. He is a brilliant and capable guy and for sure he deserves to be in that position. It's just too bad that he and I don't communicate on the same wavelength. No worries, not important.

We went to an Indian buffet. I LOOOOOVVEEE Indian. Needless to say I was quite depressed about not being able to eat the Naan. But by golly I was *going to get my money's worth* from the buffet, so I ate a huge, huge pile of meat and lentils and rice. It was fantastic! Oh and I had a chai. I wasn't sure about that given the milk thing, but it seemed to be OK.

So anyhow we were sitting in our group meeting about an hour later and I was thinking, "Gee, I feel kind of sleeeeeepppy. Hmmm...Pay attention! Pay attention!"

I think I ate more than the guys did.

I feel like I'm making up for the last few months of not being able to eat well.

What else?

Oh! I bought at trench coat for $50. It was an impulse purchase. I'm trying to avoid those. I went to the mall for some underwear and I saw this coat at a cheap store, tried it on, liked it, bought it. I have a good trenchcoat already at home, but it's BLACK.

There's really nothing worse for me right now than the feeling of donning black when it is not the evening. This one is tan. I'm happy with a cheap one since in my view a trench coat in Eastern Canada is a fashion item. In my world fashion item = buy cheap.

A trench coat is a fashion item in Eastern Canada because we say that we have a spring but really we do not. We have winter until it is suddenly not winter, and then every now and then in the not winter part it decides that it actually still likes winter and you have to go around in a gale to look at the blooming daffodils and tulips in a down parka. A short down parka but a parka nevertheless.

This trench coat is the kind of short, useless thing that one will only be able to wear 3.42 times per year in the big O, and maybe 4 times on my trip to Italy. It is short and belted and small enough to roll up into a nice little ball in my suitcase. I'm kind of into that kind of small.

Oh! And I suppose I can wear it to Vancouver, which is coming up from June 5 -8. Incidentally, for anyone who might meet me there, I think I might be more intelligent in writing than in person. I realize that that is not saying much. :)

Ahem!

SO I was having a conversation with the computer scientist guy about these algorithms his friend gave him to consider in the circumstances of a hockey draft - and let me reiterate, just because I have the opportunity to do so, I LOATHE HOCKEY - and I started thinking about the G@le-Shapl3y algorithm.

I once took a whole game theory course on matching models from the most arrogant economist in Canada. If you've never met him you simply cannot imagine. I wanted to strangle him by his imagined fastidious little pink neckerchief.

Anyhow it struck me as odd today that I took this entire course and yet could remember almost nothing of it (suppression you are my friend), except the very first matching algorithm that we looked at. This is typically - or at least originally it was - applied to the marriage market.

Now I'm going to say something controversial right now, but I'd never made this connection before and did so today and so will again now. A friend of mine once told me that all of the best marriages that she knew of were ones in which the guy was crazier about the girl than the other way around.

Now I don't exactly know what her definition of *best* might be, but the situations in mind struck me as potentially the most *stable* marriages from a female's perspective, provided that the female was at least achieving her reservation level of satisfaction from the match and that there's too much cost for her to transfer her affections and her whatever else to someone else.

So I'm really babbling here - and we all know how much I know about marriage, and about economics, frankly - but I realized all of a sudden - eight years later, good one...ding ding ding - that that is exactly what the G@le Shapl3y algorithm in the marriage market (it's also used in matching hospitals to interns) is all about. Men propose and women accept. And when a stable match arrives it is the highest still available match for the man, and it's more like the best of the worst for the woman. I mean, not the worst, but it's basically the one she accepts because she can't get her preferred options. :)

I'm really making a muddle of explaining this, which is why we will go to WIKIPEDIA! (Academic literature now, no.)

They even call it the stable marriage problem...

problem.

And here's the bestest part:"The pairing generated by the G@le-Shapl3y algorithm has a number of interesting properties. In particular, one may prove that, in some sense, the Gale-Sh@pley pairing, in the form presented here, is male-optimal and female-pessimal (it would be the reverse, of course, if the roles of "male" and "female" participants in the algorithm were interchanged)."

I mean, obviously I'm just blowing things out of the you know what, because in so many ways it is not really men offering and women accepting in real life. It is women creating the outcome of men offering. :)

I'm really losing it. What else was I thinking about today? Well I was thinking about..hmm...oh yeah, running. We've come full circle. I was reading an article in the Gu@rdian by a guy who ran a marathon and then only wanted his mummy or something like that. And it completely cracked me up because in some ways it is completely true. THe first time that I ever watched people running a marathon I actually consciously thought, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? This is crazy!"

And then of course I started loving marathons, but I am so done. I don't know what it is. Oh yeah, I don't actually think that I need to hurt that much again, even if it is only for two hours or so.

10:54 p.m. - 2008-04-08

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