Friday, February 15, 2013

counting

A few math problems for you, to keep your brain cells sharp:

First of all, if Isis spends 80% of the day napping and Ed spends about half as much time at napping, how many wakeful hours do I have with either one of them? (Assume I sleep about 7 hours per night and that my sleep hours overlap with Ed and that I work for the better part of the time before dinner.)

Second question: how many photos of breakfast did I take to finally end up with these -- of a breakfast partially set...


DSC09944 - Version 2


...and of a breakfast ready to be consumed by my breakfast companion (who is really into his Toasty-Os lately)? [5]


DSC09946 - Version 2


Next: if, in the last twenty or so years I have never owed additional taxes on April 15th, what are the chances that I'd owe this year?

I'll give you the answer to the last as it's fresh in my mind, having completed my tax returns just today: 100%. It has something to do with no longer claiming deductions. I don't really object to taxes in principle, but I do object to being surprised, nay, shocked by a bill for anything that exceeds $100 and yes, my liability exceeds $100. So that's a bummer.

I offered this deal to Ed: I would chip away the ice on the path to the sheep shed in exchange for him picking up my tax liability. He politely declined.

Still, it is a sunny (coldly so!) day and as I walk the farmette lands to lift from my shoulders the preoccupation with the almighty dollar, I think how it really is so very sublime when the winter sun has finished three-fourths of its journey across the great Midwestern sky.


DSC09959 - Version 2




DSC09958 - Version 2




DSC09962 - Version 2



At home, the sun lingers on the bouquet of colorful rose buds and this, too, is such a fine moment that I nearly forget about all those math computations.


DSC09965 - Version 2



Just one more arithmetic query then: how many suppers can I make out of one head of cabbage? Especially if I supplement it with salads with roasted beets, just to put some color into the package? [3]


DSC09967 - Version 2