Emily and Aiden collected a trick-or-treating hatrick disguised as a witch and a dinosaur.  They started Sunday at the Lil Zoo Boo at the Potawatomi Zoo.  Then they traversed the Haunted Halls of Saint Mary’s College on Thursday.  They finished the trifecta with a circuit through the neighborhood on Saturday.

Aiden as a T. Rex at the Lil Zoo Boo

Emily as a witch at the Lil Zoo Boo

Professor Alex Himonas‘ Elements of Calculus I OpenCourseWare course was published on the Notre Dame OCW site.  I am grateful for the experience of producing the course.  This course is truly “Calculus for Everyone” as Prof. Himonas likes to say, and the presentation of this course is rich, interesting and it makes it possible for students anywhere in the world to learn calculus.

This OCW course has received a lot of attention and has been viewed by people in more than 33 countries.

Our little Emily started “big kid” school this year. She was Student of the Month at Perley in her first month of school!

Emily is ready to walk into Mrs. Wander's classroom on her first day of school.

Here is a pretty and intuitive interactive demonstration I made that computes the area of a hyperbolic triangle on the Poincaré Disk.

My son Aiden turned 3 at the end of June.  We went to the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo (which is awesome).  Aiden’s big present was a Diego bike, which was very difficult to hold back until his birthday, since every day he would say, “Daddy, I need a bigger bike.”  At least fifteen times.  Every day.

Aiden compares his hand to the lion's paw print at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.

Aiden astride his new Diego bike, preparing for its maiden voyage

Karen and I took a kid-less vacation on O’ahu in early June. We stayed in Waikiki, went kayaking, snorkling, horseback riding, luauing, toured the Iolani Palace, the USS Arizona memorial and the Polynesian Cultural Center, hiked to Manoa Falls, had an AWESOME dinner at Sansei and even had a few random walks on random beaches.

Karen and I on the flat island near Kailua, O'ahu

I wasn’t there, but it was my graduation.  I had to endure the weeks of protest and so forth.  My commencement was the day before Obama arrived.  The commencement of the Graduate School was decidedly less controversial, but I still managed to get hooded and shake hands with the president of the university.  Thanks Demirhan for the pics!

I was selected as the winner of the 2009 Graduate Student Union Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.  This award is given to one TA at Notre Dame each year.  John Hess was awarded the GSU Outstanding Graduate Instructor award.  John and I sat next to each other and discussed St. Louis Cardinals baseball at the Graduate School awards banquet on May 15.

Karen accompanied me to the awards banquet.  Fred (my advisor) and Joana Xavier met us at the banquet.  A good time was had by all.

I passed my defense, and now only need to submit my dissertation to the graduate school.

I’ve accepted a position as a visiting assistant professor at Saint Mary’s College.  Saint Mary’s is a women’s college in the South Bend area.  It is a very nice school and I am very pleased to be starting at Saint Mary’s in the fall.

Le Mans Hall Tower