Working Out The Math, Part II

Okay, here's the thing.

One full week, Sunday midnight to Sunday midnight, is 7 x 24 = 168 hours.

Eight hours' sleep, seven days a week = 56 hours. That's good quality dreaming time there. Not to mention other things people can get up to in bed, but we're talking about sleep here. ;) Out of 168 hours, we're down to 112 hours.

Work. Let's say it's 30 hours. Spread out over five days, sure, but around 30 hours. Commute time there and back, one hour each way, tops. Another ten hours. A total of some 40 hours, bringing the total time left not sleeping and not working down to 82 hours.

So we can spend more time asleep than we do involved with work (that's the commute and the work combined), and more than twice our working life being wide awake and not working.

Okay, so take out one hour a day for lunch. That, plus work, plus commute, is 45 hours. We still spend more time individually asleep and dreaming, and still get more time not working.

In fact, working time is the briefest amount of time you spend - and all you get out of those hours of heartbreak and harassment is money. Which you can't take with you.

So you have 77 hours not sleeping, not eating lunch, not working, not commuting. Oh, if only I could get organised enough. The amount of words I can get written in that time ...

It's only someone like me, with zero status and therefore zero status anxiety, who can get unstuck enough from the rat race to think like this.

'Scope for Today

If your lifestyle is considerably different than others, resist feeling self-conscious about this today, dear Cancer. Try to remember that you chose the life you have for specific reasons. Even if you've come to a point where you are considering a change, there is no need to feel badly, ashamed, or embarrassed about where you're at now. Everyone has to make their own way, and if this conforms to the norm, that's fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too.

Also, in 1906 on this day, San Francisco was flattened by the Great San Fran Earthquake; and, in 1955 on this day, Albert Einstein died.

Edit: Date of earthquake brought forward to 1906. Error pointed out by nyghtshayde. Ta. :)

Status Update

Well, on a whim I decided to go to Chester today, while the sun was shining. And a glorious day it was, indeed.

I had a reason for visiting the Walled City: namely, I wished to get my hands on a Rubik's Revenge 4 x 4 cube that was on sale in a shop on the Rows. This shop, The Writing Place, sells kites, puzzles, games, gadgets and art supplies for the rich and the jaded. Other than the lack of jadedness, and money, it suited my creative mien just fine. :)

As I was just walking into the store, in a staggering display of prescience the Muzak changed to an orchestral rendition of the Star Trek theme tune. One long period of happy browsing later, I emerged clutching the coveted 4 x 4 x 4 Rubik's Revenge, determined to solve it before my next birthday (I haven't solved one yet!). The salesman was astonishingly persuasive, because he also convinced me to buy a three-in-one device: a pen for writing with (and it writes black), a blue LED torch and a red laser pointer.

Some more highlights of my day:-

1. Music I: Up by the old Town Hall building, I heard this powerful rhythm coming from Gods know where. Following my ears I saw this guy playing a set of bongos, and playing them really well.

2. Music II: On the way back down, a really pretty young woman had set up on a small chair along the road up from the Cross. She began playing tunes on, get this, a saw violin. For the uninitiated, you can take a good, honest handsaw, one of the big old fashioned kind, and by flexing it and by stroking the blunt edge of it with a violin bow you can create a musical note similar to that produced by a Theremin. It's a single note, with a pretty good range depending on how you flex and release the saw for tension. It was really rather soothing; and the young woman had a huge smile for me when I approached her to put change into her cap. I told her that I hadn't heard anyone play music on a saw in years. I honestly meant "decades:" the last time I heard a saw being played was on some old TV show last century, and this was the first time I'd heard one played live.

3. Closures: Half the stores I used to go to are no more. No Sayers up by the Northgate; no Odeon; Armadillo, the store in The Rows that sold prop swords for movies, has packed up and gone; and you can't even eat in in the Sayers in the Rows: the eating-in part of the store has gone, and it's now a pure takeaway service, which sucks because that was where I'd usually go to read my latest acquisition from Waterstone's.

4. Fun: I got to ride all the way home on the top deck of a double decker bus. Not recommended when the bus has to go over sleeping policemen. Talk about rough going. There was nothing about this on the Radio 4 weather forecast. Anybody got any Dramamine?

Anyhow, here I am, back home, sitting at this Rubik's Revenge. I've managed to get one side solved, but it looks as if I need to solve the opposite centres first, then corners, then permute edges so they once again match, and finally once the edge groups are together and permuted so they align correctly, I can treat the whole thing like a giant 3 x 3 cube and solve the thing accordingly.

I will let you know how I get on. I might even take pictures as proof. :)