Tacky Sweaters and Infinite Loops

This past weekend I went to a tacky Christmas sweater party. I tried finding a tacky sweater at Goodwill, but apparently a couple of other people had that idea before me. So I decided I could probably bring out my younger (and tackier) self and decorate one on my own. So after a trip to Hobby Lobby, I started making the sweater Thursday night.

I bought some glittery green felt, some pom-poms, jewels and.... wait for it.... real glowing battery-powered shirt lights!

I told a couple of my students about the sweater I was making and they first didn't know what tacky meant. So I explained what it meant and they said they understood. Then they asked what the sweater looked like and I told them. And when I was done they said, "oh that sounds so cute!"

I'm still working on getting the meaning of tacky through to them.

When I finally finished making the sweater, about five minutes before I had to leave for the party, I decided that what my Christmas tree was missing was a trunk. In fact, without it, it looked like a be-dazzled elf hat. But hey, that's still festive (and tacky)!

The party I was going to was at Emily R.'s house. She lives with a girl that is in grad school at UT and is working for her doctorate in mathematics, and she had invited her fellow program/doctorate/mathematics friends to join the party.

Now I imagine you have a huge stereotype in your head as to how the mathematicians are when they party. And the truth is... you'd indeed be right with that stereotype (for the most part). But they were a lot of fun to hang out with and I would definitely hang out with them again!

But, for example, when I walked in and only saw two bottles of liquor and one bottle of wine I thought, "that's not enough for a party."

But when one of the mathematicians walked in, he said, "WOW! Y'all have a lot of alcohol!"

(Turns out there was more alcohol, just in other places. But we did still have to make a middle of the party alcohol run. I mean, just in case you were worried about how the alcohol situation turned out.)

We did a White Elephant gift exchange. They did have to explain the game because some of the people had never heard of it, and those people were literally from other countries. But before she got to finish one of the mathematicians pipped up with, "Well, we really need to put some parameters on this game because otherwise there are a number of infinite loops that we could get caught in."

So they fixed the infinite loop problem and we were on our way. Now, I truly thought I had brought the winning $5 white elephant gift with my Billy Madison DVD from Target. But apparently, the one thing REALLY smart people don't like is movies about REALLY dumb people.

Huh, who knew?

And who knew the winning prize would be one of those bells you would ring for service if there was ever a business anymore that didn't have a person always out front of the store. And here I have one of those sitting in my desk in my classroom, didn't know it'd be such a hot commodity!

Next, no one could decide which of the white elephant games to play: Jenga or the Seinfeld trivia game? So I pointed out that there was really no need to pick one or the other, why not do both? First ask a Seinfeld question, and if you get it wrong, you pull a Jenga tile. It was actually a much better way to play both games, if you ask me.


The rest of the night was filled with lots of rock band and Seinfeld Jenga. They had a prize for the most tacky sweater, which I won! Haha, I seriously didn't even know there was a prize I was working for. But I won these awesome socks out of the whole deal!



Last, just before I left this guy came up to me and said he liked my sweater and asked if I was an electrical engineer. Those mathematicians are so sweet to think that I could wire together some Christmas lights without electrocuting myself and that I would do all of that for some Santa socks.


Oh, and it was also sweet that he thought I was smart enough to graduate with an engineering degree. I mean, unless they start handing out engineering degrees for planning amounts of alcohol for parties and/or coming up with new drinking games, I am probably out on that one, haha!