November 15, 2010

Growth spurt and jeans

At the beginning of seventh grade, my mom took me to buy clothes for the new school year. We bought three pairs of jeans, the typical amount we would purchase year-to-year. By January, though, my growth spurt had hit, and I no longer fit in any of the jeans purchased in September. So back to the mall we went, and bought three more pairs of jeans that I could wear until the spring. By March I had outgrown two of these pairs. I was left with only pair of jeans that fit, and my mother surely was not going to buy more jeans at this point. So I wore that same pair of jeans everyday until mid-April when it got warm enough for shorts.

Everyday going to school, I was certain that everyone who saw me snickered amongst one another, "There goes the boy who never changes his clothes. He wears the same jeans every day! Poor guy got hit by puberty at the wrong time of year."

November 10, 2010

Rationing Halloween Candy

Throughout my childhood, I ate candy very methodically after Halloween. Upon arriving home from trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for 3-4 hours, I would dump my pillow sack of candy onto the living room floor and begin to sort it. I would pile the candy by type together, and group them based on how delicious they were. I then filled a large metal bowl with the candy, starting with the my favorite candy (Snickers, Milky Way, Baby Ruth) on the bottom and progressing to my least favorite candy on top (Smarties, Skittles).

With the bowl prepared, I would leave it in the dining room on one of the unused chairs. Every morning when making my school lunch, I would grab precisely two pieces of candy from the bowl and put it in my bag. No more, no less. On days I did not have school, I would only eat two pieces of candy. Through this process, my candy lasted typically until early April. Throughout the cold winter, I would live through the least favorite candies and progress onto the better ones. By the time spring was poking its head, I was on to the best candies of all. Every day was a better candy day than the last.

I felt, and still feel, this fully maximizes the potential of Halloween.

November 9, 2010

My thesis length

The first draft of my Master's thesis was 314 pages. It was unintentional, but I was real glad that it was 100*π