Not about you

That's one of the lessons I've learned as an adult, but have to go on re-learning: "Sometimes it's not about you."

As I said a while back, that can encompass different things: either it's "not about you" because what you're doing is more important than whatever hurt feelings you may get (whether those hurt feelings are true and justifiable, or if they're arguably you being too sensitive). Or that sometimes people do and say stuff that is not meant personally.

I'm in a crabby mood today. I can tell it, and I know exactly why:

1. My allergies are bad. I spent a bit over an hour in the field yesterday with students, then spent time outside after Youth Group watching the littler kids run around.

2. In that hour in the field? I got slightly sunburned. Yeah, I didn't expect that either or I would have worn sunscreen. (At least my face and neck didn't get burnt because I was wearing my big, broad-brimmed hat that I wear to keep from getting headaches when I'm out in the field). If it remains cool enough that I can keep on the little sweater I wore over my dress, no one need know.

3. Youth group remains a challenge. I don't think I relate well to the girls in it right now, and I don't think they relate well to me. I am so not about the "sharing" and that seems to shut down discussion. I tend to approach things intellectually - I was talking about C. S. Lewis' writings last night. And that may be the wrong approach. But I can't quite do it any other way. I don't know; we start a new series of curriculum next week and maybe it will be better. (But also: after youth group the adults stayed and planned the summer programs, and one of them is going to be a girls-teen-night lock-in. And one of the other women said, "Let's specify just for high school girls...so we can talk about stuff that we couldn't talk about around the littler girls." And I can guess what that stuff is....and, beyond The Talk About Where Babies Came From* and perhaps a whispered "my first period started today" to my mom I didn't talk about that stuff when I was a tween/teen.)

 Really, what we need? Is about a dozen more willing volunteers so these things don't fall on the same five people. I already feel bad about saying I had to bow out of some of the summer activities - but I am on campus from 7 am until 5:30 pm most days in the summer, and I just CAN'T.

(*I was ten. I suppose that's about the right age for it but I remember being moderately horrified that the activity described therein was something my parents had apparently engaged in twice, seeing as both my brother and I existed. And that it was something I would have to engage in at some future time if I wanted to have a baby. Which is why I'm kind of blown away when I read of 12 year olds having babies, thinking of the mindset I had at that age.)

4. The only email I got this morning that was flagged with a "hey, this might be a 'real' e-mail" highlight (Gmail does a little yellow arrow for things that seem to be 'real' e-mail as opposed to bulk ads) turned out to be from some guy/some bot wanting to place ads on this blog.

I don't know if he's reading - probably not - but THIS BLOG DOES NOT TAKE ADS. I will not "monetize" or whatever disgusting verbed-noun is used for it now. I'm a bit of a crank about that, and I know, I know, there are people all over the world making entire PENNIES every day by having pimped out their blogs...but that is something I will not do. I don't generally have problems with people who advertise on their blogs, but it's just something I won't do.

(And now, watch the spam comments about advertising-on-your-blog flock to this post. Feh.)

Part of it is just the disappointment: "Oh, wow, a personal e-mail" and then finding out it's a crummy commercial. (Son-of-a....)**

I don't get many "real" e-mails to my personal account. And most of the ones to my campus account are asking for extra credit, or extensions, or something like that.

5. I'm just worn out; Wednesdays are generally awful days where it's even a struggle to find 50 minutes to practice piano.

(** Yes, this is an obscure movie reference. You can see the original here)

***

I did, however, "reward" myself at the end of the day yesterday by opening one more of the blindbag ponies. (And yes, it did help, a little.) I got Rarity. And I was happy to see that, despite how they're pictured on the little "collect 'em all!" flier that comes in the box, the Mane Six are apparently not given a different finish; they don't have that weird dipped-in-wax-and-then-buffed look like they do on the flier. Or at least, the Rarity I got didn't.

And then I got to thinking: wouldn't it be funny if out of the eight blind bags I bought, I got the entire Mane Six in one form or another? (Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash all come in two different forms: standard and glitterated. I got the glitterated Rainbow Dash from the first bag.)

And then I thought: What's the probability of that? And I tried to figure it out, but didn't get very far, because of a complicating factor. For one thing, you'd have to have sampling without replacement - so your chances of getting ANY of the Mane Six in a random blindbag grab would be 9 out of 24 (Nine, because three of the ponies exist in two forms). So, with a random blindbag, you have a 37.5% chance of getting one of the Mane Six. (Huh. I thought that would be lower before I did the math on it). There's a 1 out of 24, or 1.47% chance of getting one particular pony...so, say you were wanting a Rarity, you'd have a 1.47% chance of getting it.

But. When you begin to look at "I have x blind bags that I'm going to open one after another" and try to figure out the probability of getting a full set of the Mane Six, it gets more complex - because there's sampling without replacement there (the blind bags get used up), there's conditional probability of a sort (if you got Applejack on the first blind bag, you wouldn't want to get her on a later blind bag...). If you could figure out the probabilities (and I got hung up on the fact that three of the Mane Six exist in plain and glittered form), it would probably be a simple case of multiplication rule (each blindbag represents an independent event), but I admit I'm weak on that sampling-without-replacement-conditional-probabilities thing...if I took some time and looked up related problems in my stats book, I could probably figure it out.

If it were just the basic Mane Six, it would be something like 6/24 x 5/23 x 4/22 x 3/21 x 2/20 x 1/19, which would be something like .00007%. If I'm doing it right.

Of course, that all presupposes that each individual pony has equal representation in the population, and I don't know that for sure...I can see manufacturing justifications for both "seeding" the population with more of the well-known characters (keep the customers happy) or withholding them (keep them buying blind bags in the hopes of getting what they want).

At any rate...I used to buy Skittles and use the colors in probability/population-vs-sample exercises with my stats class. But I think blindbag toys, though they'd be a lot more fun, would be much too hard on the budget for a standard-sized class. (And I don't feel comfortable spending the taxpayers' money on things that could be called frivolous, so I would be buying them out of my own pocket).

(All of that probability stuff aside? If by some random chance (heh) I happen to get two Lily Blossoms, I think I'm going to delve into an attempt at repainting and see if I can make one a Derpy Hooves.)

***

Another thought I had when I was contemplating all of this: This is a bit like Schroedinger's Box in that you don't know what condition the pony is until you observe it. (Though for a real Schroedinger's Blind Bag, you'd have to have something that was either (or both) a fun toy and a disgusting thing you don't want, and you don't know unless the bag is opened.)