By the Numbers

Truly excellent sunrise this morning, though since my iCloud storage is full and I'm too cheap to pay for more storage, this photo is crap--intentionally degraded, thank you, iCloud. But I digress ...

 I like numbers. Not in a number-cruncher or a mathematician kind of way, just the visual and relational aspects of numbers--patterns, strange sequences and cool stuff like primes, Fibonacci, Fermat's theorem, Da Vinci's symmetries, that kind of thing. In the low-hanging fruit category, I pause when I write the date while journaling in the morning, looking for patterns, and on 8.16.24 noticed this is an 8x1, 8x2, 8x3 sequence, something we’ll see with 9s next on 9.18.27.

I know, nerdy.

I’m not compulsive about counting but when I’m doing tasks involving multiple trips or efforts or if I notice something repeating, I will keep track.

Since you didn't ask, here is a snapshot of my last seven days, by the numbers:

Number of days with >25,000 steps: 7

Number of pickup loads of tumbleweeds removed from the yard: 23

Number of sunrises I watched in full: 7

Number of days past the “promised by” date my chainsaw sat at the repair shop (and still did not get repaired): 6

Number of nights with automatic rifle fire lasting longer than 20 minutes: 3

Number of cuss words uttered while trying to wrestle a 1500-gallon tank up a hill and onto platform: fuzzy math on this one, let’s go with >100

Number of hummingbirds at the feeders one fine morning: 11

Number of trips to the arroyo to the south to salvage with a handsaw the wood from the juniper tree the neighbor pushed into the arroyo when he flattened the lot: 17

Number of rattlesnakes living under the last of that juniper’s branches, causing me to stop at 17 trips: 1

This is a ridiculous post, I know, but I don’t have the typical means of accounting for what I do all day—like I can't just say “I spent 10 hours at the office and earned $21 per hour plus benefits,” or something everybody would understand. And when people ask what I do all day or what I did last week, I never really know what to say.

What did I do?

I guess I counted.