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Week Notes 45

General #

Quoting from our newsletter

18 Years of Love

We went for our first date on Saturday February 2nd 2008. At the time, we were living in Peterborough and went to the Only Café for lunch after a Calculus 3 exam. We were 19 years old.

Now, we’re living in Scarborough, Parker is teaching Calculus 3, and we have a two-year-old and a five-year-old.

Today, to celebrate our anniversary, we went for a quick date at the Heron Park Community Centre. Auntie Rose watched the girls for us. We got a pair of Kit-Kat bars, a coffee, and a bottle of water. We learned to play Schnapsen, the national card game of Austria, before running home to make dinner for the girls. Times certainly have changed!

It’s been an incredible eighteen years; growing, learning, and living together. The last five years, parenting side by side with the girls in our lives, have been such a blessing. We are grateful for the love we share, the life we’ve made together, and the community that surrounds us.

We’ve never been more in love than we are now.

Parenting #

Mira asked: “Will the world ever end?” What a question! We had a good chat about it. The girls have been healthy all week long.

I’ve been walking Mira to school most mornings. Sometimes, it feels like a hassle to watch her climb all the snow mountains by the side of the road. But, then again, what would I rather do? If a walk to school takes a half-hour, then it takes a half hour. It’s a very entertaining half-hour, if I decide to laugh along and have fun.

Reading #

This week, I’m continuing to read La Kunularo De L’Ringo. The translation by Auld is so fluent and colloquial. I find that I’m gaining speed as a I read it. It’ll take me a good long while to finish it, but I’m in no rush.

In my morning reading, I came across a story that has consistently fascinated me through out the week. I’ve been turning it over in my mind like a fine gem. After a few years of these readings, I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Writing #

My MAT D92 student and I are gearing up to write a piece for Bridges. We’re going to submit a workshop somewhat similar to the workshop at EMF. It’ll be about string figures, braids, etc. The usual Parker shenanigans.

Playing #

We learned to play Schnapsen during our anniversary date. It’s an elegant card game. Trick-taking, folky, tight, strategic. I understand why people play it seriously in tournaments; there is a lot of depth here. I wish we’d learned it sooner since it really suits our tastes!

• Parlett, D. (1990). The Oxford Guide to Card Games. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
• Sackson, S. (1981). Playing Cards Around the World. United States: Prentice-Hall.

We learned it first from Parlett’s very concise description, and then read Sackson. Sackson felt a lot more straight forward but, at that points, we already knew the game. Of course, BGG and Pagat have good information too. (I wanted to muck around with the game, and split off my notes about that here.)

I put together a little video¹ showing Koura with the Osage extension.

The construction is as follows.

1. Form Opening A.
2. Rotate the little finger loops a full turn towards you.
3. The thumbs pass away from you, over all intermediary strings, and pick up both strings of the little finger loops. Return to normal position.
4. The index fingers pick up the lower far thumb string. Release thumbs and return to normal position.
5. Navaho the index loops.
6. Turn the little finger loops a half-turn away from you.
7. Perform the Osage Diamonds extension.

Links #

• VisualPDES: A few years back, I asked a colleague if they knew a good source for animations like these. And today, I stumbled on them by total chance. Amazing!
  • The Heat Equation
  • The Heat Equation
• The Technium: Six Selfish Reasons to Have Kids: An interesting and insightful read by Kevin Kelly. I enjoyed his Excellent Advice for Living, and even e-mailed with him about it. More thoughtful stuff.
• Cloud Hands: Meditations for a Better Life
  1. Get the self-monitoring habit
  2. Question your thinking
  3. Remind yourself that “it’s a cup”
  4. Don’t get hung up on status and reputation
  5. Radiate goodwill
  6. Don’t be too optimistic
  7. Think about death (but not too much)
  8. Consider the bigger picture
  9. Use common sense
  10. Be quiet

I find a lot of these via my RSS feed which is my new algorithm these days. I love the randomness. Not completely random though… folk I follow generally have similar deeper values so although interests are varied, their values will underpin the sharing of found gems, so I appreciate that. — @to… | zkbro

Published: Jan 30, 2026 @ 00:01.
Last Modified: Feb 7, 2026 @ 08:19.

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