When I was around 10 or 11 (I think), I got braces like many other kids in the 1980s. For those of you born well after me, you may not have had to deal with the early iteration of braces that I had to deal with. You had access to invisible braces that probably didn’t require a night guard but instead sang you to sleep at night.
I hate you.
Braces meant difficulty eating certain foods, which, in turn, meant giving up certain foods. I had to say goodbye to my beloved Marathon bar.
I’m not sure if it was the right decision. As I type this, I could still take it back, change my mind — no, I did the right thing. And by the time this blog post goes live, it will be over.
My beloved typewriter [sniffle] will be on its way to a landfill! WAAAAAAAH!
It was time; it was way past time. The typewriter has “lived” in the basement, perched on a couch for about 5 years. Who knows when it was used last. Continue reading
Day 25 of the 30 days of giving thanks. It’s a Friday and if you know the slogan “Saturday is Zern’s day and now we’ve added Friday,” we may have passed each other on the sticky floors of Zern’s Farmer Market one weekend in the 70s or 80s.
For those of you not from the Gilbertsville area, Zern’s (open Friday and Saturday nights only) offers a hodge podge of butchers, bakers, candlestick makers (seriously), quasi-antique stands, produce, camouflage gear and tons more. I don’t think they hold a livestock auction anymore.
It was a regular destination during my childhood, making it an appropriate recipient of thanks today. Penny and I would accompany our dad for the weekly run. He’d pick up sticky buns for breakfast the next day, and Penny and I would get cotton candy and comic books. I grabbed Supergirl and Batgirl, and I think Zern’s introduced me to the George Perez run of Teen Titans.
Those things alone earn Zern’s several thank-yous. But what I remember most about the trips is Speed Racer. Continue reading
An irrational number is any number that cannot be expressed as a fraction. You can try, as in the case of π, but it won’t be accurate. 22/7 gets you 3.1428571 …. π, as we all know, is 3.1415926535… So the number is irrational.
The other key to an irrational number is the digits to the right of the decimal don’t ever end and don’t repeat. For example, 1/3 yields 0.3333 …. It’s rational. The square root of 2, on the other hand, is irrational.*
Another irrational number is 6103260317.
Not because it can’t be expressed as a fraction. It’s a phone number. And I can bravely post it on the blog because it’s not real anymore.
The number’s irrationality lies in the sentimental attachment I have to it. Continue reading
Memory is a weird thing.
One day you can suddenly remember the Eagles game you went to at Veteran’s Stadium. You can see your view of the field, feel the chill in the air. You can see friends and family there with you. You remember the idiot a couple rows back who, upset at something the Eagles had done, threw the remnants of a soft pretzel at the field, but hit you instead. You clearly remember the piece of pretzel had mustard on it.
Even though it never happened.
