We mean to go on and on

Work, oh god, I've been working and it feels so good. Life is back on track, panic systems to power down starting now.

This morning I spent a hard three hours with my old MATH 207 notes, MATH 206 notes, and the sneak preview of today's lecture [which Chris did indeed send me - he's good like that]. By the end of that time I'd figured out what was going on with all the mysterious notations for ODEs, and done the handwritten parts for the first two questions of assignment 6. There remains a little Maple to figure out for question 2.

Somehow, the lecture seemed eerily familiar after that. All the explanatory asides were useful, however, and the words "involutary automorphism" came up [this is one of Chris's standard jokes when dealing with complex numbers]. The people directly upstairs seemed to be having some kind of dance contest, or possibly pole-vaulting or indeed sprints, but it provided no more than a temporary distraction from the lecture.

Now to get the mechanical part of assignment 6 out of the way as quickly as possible so I can get onto the more interesting questions 7 and 8.