Lists

There's this thing I've been (nominally) working on for the past two days which I very muchly so do not want to be working on. In fact, there are many things I would rather be doing. Here is a random list of such alternatives that have come to mind:

1. Calculate π to a 1% uncertainty by throwing frozen hot dogs down the hall. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate how many thows this will require.
   
2. Visit The Federated States of Micronesia. I think the fastest way to get there from here is via Houston and then either Guam or Honolulu on Continental; it should take about two days. Then I could go to Yap! Don't worry; Micronesia still has about an order of magnitude more people than Vatican City, and almost twice as many as Greenland.
   
3. Go candlepin bowling, preferably at the bowling alley near the Alewife T-stop.
4. Fingerpaint in red wine.
5. Make a t-shirt where the front is the image to the right and the back says, "I believe!"
6. Have a free dinner of Indian food with today's speaker, even though I didn't go to this talk because I was supposedly working on this thingie. Note that I do not like Indian food.
   
7. Make a 3-D snowflake.
8. Play with my pet dragon. Or penguin.
9. Fill my office up with a house of cards. And then knock it all down.
   

Of course, what I'm working on isn't all that bad ... if it were, the above list would look more like the following:

1. Be gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.
2. Marry an axe murderer.
3. Gnaw my fingers off one by one.
4. Watch Gigli again. It's a painfully bad movie—and not in a good way.
5. Read all 3964 3671 messages in my spam folder.
6. Take a swim off of Revere Beach near Boston, MA, right now at night in the cold and rain and mist.
7. Sit at my desk with a stopwatch, staring down the hall, and measure—repeatedly—just how long it takes for the motion sensors to allow the lights to go off.
   

It's interesting to note that #6 on that first list was the only one of these I've actually done, and the item on the first list most likely to make the second as well. I had garlic naan and a mango lassi and some lamb. I don't know what that means, though.