Showing posts with label minting statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minting statistics. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Apnea



Ok, someone needs to help me figure this out, because I swear that I’m not a math nerd.

It’s physically impossible—I haven’t even taken a math class in almost seven years: I was always proficient, but it’s not like I really got math. When I had to take the compass test at UVU, I couldn’t for the love of Dr Pepper remember the slope formula.

In fact, anytime I want to put myself into a there-is-no-spoon existentialist dilemma, all I have to do is think about the 360 degrees in a circle and wonder why the hell some Greek guy came to that conclusion and somehow brainwashed humanity into thinking it was a truth (360? Could there be a more random number?).

I have a delightful sense of humor, I listen to rock n roll, in many cases I believe that the form of something is infinitely superior to any function. I’m able to carry on interesting conversations with others. All of this points to the conclusion that I am nothing akin to a math nerd.

I should be more comforted by this, but there’s unfortunately some more information that I haven’t disclosed that might leave you less than persuaded of my innocence.

Like the fact that when I was counting up my spare pennies to turn them into larger coins for soda consumption, I did things that no self-respecting non-math-nerd would do. 

First, I sorted them into piles according to the decade they were minted. I then recorded the number of pennies in each respective pile. Before I even added them all up for my grand total, I first found the percentage increase of pennies per decade (i.e. there is a 600% increase of pennies minted in the seventies compared to those minted in the sixties, but only a 50% increase from those minted in the eighties compared to the seventies). It was only after I had crunched the available data in every conceivable form that I got around to finding my grand total of pennies and turning that total into soda purchased.

Do you understand the significance of that? I was more intrigued by the stats than I was in replenishing my soda supply! I’m gravely concerned.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT ever bite down on a big chunk of peanut brittle with your front teeth. They just weren’t built for that kind of abuse.


In my down time at work I was reading someone’s reflection on Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” (my favorite of her novels) and my eyes started to well up. 

I was alarmed, thinking a) I cannot start crying at work, that's both awkward and unseemly. Plus I work with women who would probably try to, I don't know, talk it out with me or something. And that is not the Shurtz women way. b) this is very disconcerting, I feel like I'm having an out-of body experience, because I don't feel particularly sad for Anne and Captain Wentworth's plight right now. Am I that out of touch with myself that my physiological responses are this drastically out of sync with where my mind is?  

Then I realized that the welling of the eyes was due to the fact that I needed to sneeze. Emotional crisis averted.