• Missing persons report.
• Incoming from all directions.
• The realization of a dream in a swamp.

I suppose the first missing person is me. I know where I am, but just like I have missing persons, I must be a missing person to some people. Last Saturday was the 21st ICTM State Math Contest, and for the first time since the 1990 contest (when I was in 8th grade), I was not there. I don't know what happened. I'm sure some people noticed that I wasn't there, but I don't know who would have done that. My absence, I would think, should have been conspicuous to more than a handful of coaches and other people. There are probably some softball coaches around the DuPage Valley Conference who have thought the same thing. Rob Williams from Naperville North isn't one of them, nor probably is Donna Proctor of West Aurora, but a few others. I have purposely avoided looking for the softball scores in the paper; I don't know whether the Huskies have fifteen wins, fifteen losses, or something in between. I might get it together and go to DeKalb in June for the State Finals (that way, I'd have a State Final for this year), or I might just give it a miss for 2001.

There are other missing persons, too: the people I miss.

• Tournament Challenge.
• Square One.
• The dissemination of information.

I've been involved in a discussion group on Yahoo! about Square One and Mathnet. Things are really flying in there, and we are all learning something. You can see the group here and see what we've been discussing. There were 13 messages before I joined; today alone, there were 30.

It has come to my attention that the Town Crier (a.k.a. Tim Bruns) did not do as good of a job as I had thought in telling people that I had resigned from West. Additionally, I've been getting a few questions here. So here is the message I sent out to, well, lots of folks, trying to explain what happened. I hope this alleviates some confusion.

• Pardon me while I freak out.

1. My father is in the hospital. They transferred him out of pediatrics, but he's still in the hospital. (I thought it was pretty cool that he was in pediatrics, but what do I know.) He's supposed to have an MRI this morning; on espère que they can find out what's with the headaches.
2. I have to go into the city on Thursday. Why is a matter of some debate, and I will let that go until I can more fully discuss it.
3. This is the last day of the month. Sound the general alarm. If I were still at West, I guess I'd get paid today.
4. There are other fans of Square One who seem at least as weird as me. This is cool.
5. Since I've been uploading images to my web site, I thought I'd better start commandeering space. (Images are big, although that Nebraska file is big, too.) I may eventually port the old versions of JEBHP to another site, sort of. AT&T gives me 10MB under ~bendaje to work, but they also let me have up to five satellite identifiers which also have 10MB. My fictitious sister has one, ~jenniferracine. My mother has one, ~coldshot, which doesn't have the web page feature activated yet. That leaves three. I've reserved (and activated) two of them for myself, ~nn26376 and ~katemonday. Both of those currently bounce to my current home page, just like the 9-ball. Someday I'll actually use all that space, maybe, now that I've got 30MB. Besides, I always wanted to be Kate Monday. (At least I got to be a mathematician, sort of. I got a degree in mathematics, anyway.)
6. I ordered new checks. Not that I have any money with which to write checks, but I've only been out of checks for about eight months (actually, I had one that I wrote in November). I ordered checks with the New Jersey Devils logo on them.
7. I've got to get the plumbing fixed. The basement reeks, although the floor drain hasn't backed up for over a day now. Maybe I plugged it by stuffing the Shop-Vac nozzle in it. The laundry tub is where it all backs up now. It's not like the drain is completely clogged, either; I get some drainage, just not nearly enough, fast enough. I just don't like hauling feces-infested sludge up the stairs and out into the back yard. That stuff is heavy!
8. Everyone still exists, I think. My roommate's web page seems to have vanished, but I think he's still alive in Nevada. Mara's old inch page is gone, but Columbia still lists her with an office location. I assume she's still there; I haven't talked to her or heard from her since the day I got offered the job at West (in July). Patterson updated her front page for the first time in about two months, but another of Jeff Lin's Endorsed Sites has moved. Emily Schafer was a linguistics major at Rice. Sure; I find this out now. That is really cool. I took a course in linguistics at Lewis. I had to talk my way into it, since it was only open to English majors and I was a math major. I stuck it out anyway and earned an A. Of course, I have no idea where she is now. I'd love to know; I'm reminded of her every time I drive past the old Moser store at North and Washington that has been supposed to be the new DuPage Children's Museum depuis longtemps by now.

• Little marbles.
• My Noggin hurts.
• A solemn goodbye to #3.

I have Digital Cable now, so I get to watch Noggin. This is both a blessing and a curse, as it has seen me glued to my TV at 5:00 am on Saturday and Sunday just to watch the wondrous Square One TV (hooray for Beverly Leech; I think I like Kate Monday even more now than I did when I was 11, which is hard to believe). I get to watch classic Electric Company (hooray for Judy Graubart), and some pre-Elmo Sesame Street (singing along with some truly classic sketches). I even knew the tour of New York signage on EC cold, and it's been at least 15 years, I think. I used to have a lot of Sesame Street stuff on vinyl, but it became lost sometime shortly before we moved to Naperville (over eleven years ago (sigh)). What bugs me about Noggin, though, is how they slight Square One. Read my messages to Noggin for more about that. Please, if anyone reading this cares about math or quality programming, write Noggin and tell them to stop slighting Square One. There may actually be some power to sending a little e-mail message; more to come about that.

There are many days I remember in my life because two things happened, and those two things will forever be intertwined in my mind. 28 January 1986: I had to stay home from school that day because I was sick. I watched a tape of the Bears winning Super Bowl XX. The tape was on when my father came home unexpectedly, turned off the tape, and put on ABC News's coverage of STS-25. The vehicle had exploded; all seven aboard were presumed dead. 19 April 1995: I had to go meet Angela at 2:00 so we could go talk to her CHEM 110 TA. I called my mother at 1:40 from the ISR computer lab, and she told me there had been a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. I logged on to clari.news.top and read the early AP flashes, then printed one to show Angela before I went upstairs. She came down to meet me, yet seemed groggy. She took me up to her room, took off her jeans (proving once again that she had pink underwear on; for some reason I had known that before she took her jeans off), and climbed into bed and went to sleep, leaving me stranded. I watched her sleep for about an hour (about as eventful as watching concrete set) before I crawled onto the pile of junk under her bed and went to sleep for four hours, the only time I ever slept in Wardall Hall, an all-female residence hall at UIUC. 18 February 2001: I was watching the Red Wings and Stars on ESPN when Joe Nieuwendyk got hauled down on the power play and was awarded a penalty shot. It was the first time I had ever seen a penalty shot while watching a live game, and I immediately sat up on my grandmother's couch and stared unblinkingly at the screen. Nieuwendyk beat Chris Osgood high to the glove side, following a beautiful deke, and the Stars led 1-0. I had already seen the crawl go by by then, across the bottom of the screen, right after the college basketball scores: "Dale Earnhardt Sr., 49., dies from injuries sustained during last-lap crash at Daytona 500."
I didn't watch the race on Sunday. I watched the Gatorade Twin 125s on Thursday, while I was trying to run phone wire in the attic. I saw one of my favorite drivers, Mike Skinner, edge Dale Earnhardt, Jr., by 00:.004 to win the second twin. I was happy. Dodge had secured the top three positions in the field for the 500, and the #31 Chevrolet was next.
I first started following Skinner when he was a green Winston Cup driver. I mainly liked him, I think, because he was running for Richard Childress, which meant that he was a teammate for the #3 car. Tough assignment, I thought, having to depend on help on the track from the toughest, most competitive driver in the field. But Skinner made the most of it and showed that he could be a successful driver in Winston Cup; most people, myself included, didn't even notice when he got a little help from ol' #3.
I've watched Winston Cup since, oh, I don't know when. My favorite driver was Cale Yarborough, when Cale drove the #27 Hardee's car. Whenever I went to Springfield, I always had to go to Hardee's, because that was Cale's sponsor and we didn't have Hardee's around here. (Don't tell me sponsors don't have power.) My father's favorite was Harry Gant, in the #33 Skoal Bandit. (I'm glad I didn't pick that sponsor.) I remember Dale Earnhardt driving the Wrangler car, this ugly yellow job, long before he became the driver of the feared black GM Goodwrench #3. I remember Bobby Allison at Atlanta in the Winston 500 when he turned around, got airborne, and took out about 80 feet of fencing above the wall in the frontstretch. The race was red-flagged for over two hours, and NASCAR put little flaps on the roofs of the cars to keep them on the ground in reverse. Bobby walked away clean, though, and went on to race again. Not so fortunate is every driver. I can't see the Havoline #28 car without thining that Bobby's son Davey should be in it. Ernie Irvan drove both the #28 Havoline and the #4 Kodak car until he hit the wall at Michigan; I'm not sure if he's dead or still driving, but it's one of the two. But then came Sunday.
We've all seen it now. Racing about three-and-a-half wide into Turn 4, the #3 battling for third and trying to hold off the Dodge of Sterling Marlin, the only threat to a 1-2 finish for Earnhardt as a car owner. Suddenly, the black Chevrolet gets a little loose in the front end, dips, then careens right across the track and into the wall. The #36 car of Ken Schrader has no place to go but into the side of Earnhardt's ride; unbeknownst to Schrader and the world, the Intimidator never even feels the #36 hit him. The #3 is now a hearse, and Dale Earnhardt has run his final Winston Cup race. For the record, he finishes 12th, credited as a lap down for never making it the last half-mile back to the line.
It was "a racing accident". Accidents are the unfortunate part of racing. They are the planned happenstances, to a point; every crew hopes for a yellow at one time or another, as long as their cars are still running at top speed when the yellow comes out, not sitting in a charred heap in Turn 2. Everyone plans for a yellow. The yellow is not supposed to take the driver with it, particularly when that driver is Dale Earnhardt. I don't think Earnhardt's final-turn mishap even warranted a caution; there's no reason to race back to the line on Lap 200. Indeed, it looked like only a mishap; oops, #3 is in the wall. He never came off that wall.
Dale Earnhardt was never my favorite driver, but he was probably the driver I respected most. He also made the sport far more than it had been; most people I knew had never heard of Winston Cup racing before they heard of Dale Earnhardt. Bill France said that NASCAR has lost its greatest driver. To measure greatness by accomplishments in a racecar is not, I believe, to rate Dale Earnhardt the greatest. (See: Petty, Richard.) But to find the greatest impact of any driver who ever lived, one need only look at Thursday's first Twin 125, at the man who led after Lap 49, behind the wheel of his trusty black #3.
It has been said that other drivers can take solace in the fact that Earnhardt died doing what he loved to do and did best: being on the racetrack. I'd like to go several steps further.

• Dale Earnhardt died on the track.
• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR.
• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR, racing.
• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR, racing in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's most prestigious race.
• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR, racing in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's most prestigious race, on the final lap.
• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR, racing in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's most prestigious race, on the final lap, in Turn 4.

• Dale Earnhardt died on the track at Daytona, the most storied track in NASCAR, racing in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's most prestigious race, on the final lap, in Turn 4, protecting the two cars in front of him, both of which ran for his ownership team, and assuring that Michael Waltrip would, in his 483rd try, finally win a Winston Cup points race, as well as that his son, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., would finish second.

Goodbye, #3. How racing -- how the world -- how all the fans will miss you.

• December -- the week in review.

I still have the subtle panic of being discovered for my inadequacy, not just at West but in general, I think. This month I've had to confront a lot of things which I had either been ignoring or hadn't noticed, things I am powerless to stop. Foremost on that list, as always, is the passage of time. Back for a moment to the Morris tournament. As usual, Echo Lanes attempted to sell food to all the teams. As usual, their service was inadequate. Lemont's team went out in my uncle's Tahoe to Wendy's and ate; my aunt brought back foor for my diabetic grandparents. Echo Lanes has a policy against outside food in the establishment, although it did not appear to be being enforced. Apparently someone decided a good time to enforce it was on my 72-year-old diabetic grandmother and my 83-year-old grandfather in a wheelchair. This drew the ire of my entire family, especially my uncle who lives in Morris, and left a sour taste in all our mouths the rest of the day. It even crossed my uncle's mind to have the tournament shut down for fire code and occupancy violations, but none of us wanted to punish the 140 bowlers who were there that afternoon. In the end, what bothered me most was not that Echo Lanes had chosen to pick on my elderly grandparents who could not defend themselves, but that my grandparents were elderly people who couldn't defend themselves. My grandmother's drivers license expired in 1990; my grandfather last drove a car on 03 February 1997, after which he broke a hip. They are both infirm, at this point; so is her mother, my 89-year-old great-grandmother. They are dependent on other people, mostly their children and grandchildren, for a lot of things. It bothers me to see them that way, although all that has done that is the passage of time. So too has the passage of time weakened my own parents; my mother (51 years old today -- Happy Birthday, Mom!) now has difficulty on the basement stairs, and my father needs both his knees worked on again. It frightens me, the passage of time. I have to go to work tomorrow and face my colleagues and students. It frightens me, the passage of time.

I once said, "I miss all my friends, even the ones I cannot have." <breaks off>

• Panic.

A psychologist once said that being successful while having low self-esteem is like being an impostor living in perpetual fear of being exposed. This is the most accurate statement I have ever heard to describe how I feel about being a teacher at West. Every Sunday I delve into a deep depression, afraid of what's going to happen next. So far it has been 15 weeks, and I am still alive. I almost view that as an accomplishment, but not really. It has been 15 weeks and I am still in the classroom. I don't know if that is an accomplishment, either. I feel like I am just going through the motions, trying not to draw attention to myself, much like the impostor spoken about earlier. Clearly I will go in on Monday, whether I am really prepared or not. It feels like I'll never be prepared, really. I don't know.

I think I need a shower.