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Expectations Met

I have a wait at the airport for the first leg of my flight home.  It's been a strenuous but satisfying three days at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Assocation of America here in Alabama, at the University of North Alabama in Florence.

I had a narrow range of choices for flights arriving on Thursday so I arrived long before my hotel room was ready. I had a chance to drive around the campus a bit in the sunlight which made wandering around by foot later much easier.

Thursday night I was a guest of the Executive Committee (the officers of the Section) at their usual dinner meeting the night before the conference begins. There were various reports and discussions. I clarified the bylaws revision process, mostly for the newer folk, that I am leading and asked for a bit of input for presenting the revision at Friday's Business Meeting. I climbed into my hotel bed about 23 hours after I had gotten up out of my bed at home but I spent time with friends of several decades in discussions of issues that I care about so, yeah, that was good.

The next day I went to a number of good talks, plenaries on many different topics and a bunch in the session containing my talk, Recreational Mathematics (part I on Friday, part II on Saturday). After the last plenary on Friday afternoon we began the Business Meeting.

I have been told that I was born prematurely responsible. I am the type of person who goes to Business Meetings and likes to hear about the nuts and bolts involved in making a professional assocation run. It helps that I know most of the thirty or so folk who feel the same way and were at the Business Meeting. I did a (short) summary of the intent of this revision (to help make the section more governable as well as be more inclusive in its officers and award recipients) and it passed unanimously, the result of several years of work that I led. (The revision now moves to the national MAA for approval or a request to tweak if they spot something that could be done better.)

This morning, Saturday, we had a plenary by the outgoing president of the national MAA, Tensia Soto. Tensia supervised my work as Chair of the national MAA's Committee on Minicourses (offering professional development at our national meetings) when she was Associate Secretary. She's one of those special people, an award winning teacher and scholar with warmth and good humor in her interactions---the type that remembers what each person in a room did when she talks with them. She gave a pedagogical talk that was impressive in its depth and creativity.

Then I gave my talk on the Surreal Numbers, a short talk. I've always enjoyed talking about number systems and talked about the Hyperreal Numbers a bunch when I was younger. The Surreal Numbers are (jargon here) the largest ordered field, and they arise in the theory of two-person games, unexpectedly. It's a cool topic and I hope to give a variation of this talk at MathFest in August.

But I need to get back to North Carolina first and teach my classes on Monday. It's been strenuous getting here but it was worth it.

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