Stop Looking At Me

So I heard on the radio some "Mathlete" guy talking about a different way to do math that sounded interesting.
Basically his thing is to look at numbers more like a computer scientist 0-9 rather than 1-10. basically you have 10 fingers and you call them digits so you would count 0, 1, 2, 3,....9 rather than 1,2,3...10 as 10 is a 2 digit number. His theory is everything returns to 9. So take a 2 digit number, lets say 34. 3+4=7. Then subtract 7 from the original 34, 34-7=27, and 2+7=9.

His other theory is to change how we add numbers. Traditionally we are taught to start on the right side and add everything in the ones column and carry the numbers over and then add the tens column. His theory is start on the right side first. So lets take a few two digit numbers

25
21
19
12

So his theory is to start on the left side, just as we read from left to right. So to do this all in our head.
Think of it this way 20+20=40+10=50+10=60+5=65+1=66+9=75+2=77. No carrying numbers. Just going straight down.

I have no idea who this is but apparently he has been keynote speaker at a bunch of math conferences trying to change the way they teach math in schools. I would like to find out more about this guy as I find this all very interesting.

Poof!

The weekend saw us up the I-5 corridor to the Seattle metro area. We dropped the big dog off at the sitter and headed north.

Our first stop was to pimp the wife's ride. I have a friend through a car club board(yes I am or at least was a car club geek) who has openned up his own tinting and performance part shop in Auburn. The wife decided on limo tint for the back for that extra gangsta look. After a dropping the car off and the 1/2 mile walk along the railroad tracks and a crazy busy road we ended up at a pizza buffet. Gorged ourselves and walked back to find the car almost completely finished. I was amazed. They have one of these cutters that look like a poster printer hooked up to the computer and it cuts the film to match any car made in the last 30 years. It used to take him 3 hours to tint a car cutting stuff by hand, now he can do a car in less than hour. I was very impressed.

After that we took advantage of the diamond lane and zoomed past which I can only think of as perpetual Seattle gridlock to my sister's place in Lynnwood. My neice met us at the apartment as my sister was going straight from work to her volunteer position calling Bingo at her daughters old Elementary catholic school St. Alphonsus'. We drove down to bingo and it was a huge mess of families and kids running around. You bought a packet of 7 cards, 3 games per card, for the night, and then they come around to sell for the 8th round blackout game. I came so close in about 5 of the 7 games, and I leaned I the wife's shoulders and proclaimed "I didn't win a damn thing". And then came the all important "blackout game". This is where you have to fill up the entire game card to win. I was getting closer and closer on one of my cards and then I saw the last number put up on the closed circuit tv before it was announced. I was so giddy. It was finally announced and I was able to scream those magic words "BINGO!". It was all mine. $45 was my prize, which the 3 of us promptly blew on food and drinks at the bar immediately after.

The next day found us in the capable hands of a nurse and doctor. No, no we were not hurt. These are our friends C and A would spent the day with us hanging out in Seattle proper. No silly suburbs for us. We had an amazing brunch at a place called the 5 Spot. Our server was a dead ringer for Ron Perlman(City of Lost Children, Alien 4, HellBoy). Seriously this guy must have been 6'5" easy. Anyway the restaurant changes themes and seasons and is the second time we have eaten there. Fantastic. We then went to their apartment which has this amazing view of the space needle and the Sound. Then it was off to the locks and salmon fish ladder, a little frisbee at Gasworks park which is half park/half superfund site as they have left the hulking gas refinery left sitting in the park thus leeching heavy metals into the soil. Fan-frickin-tastic! Oh yeah this is right next to the lake. Then off to Whole Foods for rations for the rest of the evening. 4 different kinds of cheese were procured along with apples, figs, and pears. This made for wonderful snacking through the rest of afternoon through evening. Alaskan black cod and veggies were also purchased for dinner to come later. This was also fantastic, C covered the cod with a balsamic, soy, garlic and scallion reduction. Very tasty. The evening was topped off with warm cookies and vanilla ice cream. We can't thank them enough for such a wonderul evening.

The exciting nerve racking bit of the evening is when the scrabble board came out and C and I locked horns for battle as the womenfolk watched episodes of Sex and the City on DVD in a boggling out of order sequence. C played REVELING for a bingo(different from the bingo above and I did not have to pay him money) which I challenged as I thought it had to have 2 L's. Well both spellings were good. Losing my turn, we were over half way through the bag and now I was down over 100 points. I was able to play a bingo of my own with RETAILER, for a weak 59 points but was able to draw the q and the z from the bag and had triple letter squares to drop them both and I was back in the game. With the board crazy tight in the end I thought for sure I was going to lose as I had both c's on my rack. Were both were able to play only one or two tiles off our racks each turn and it was getting close. I ended up winning in the last as he tried to play a phony which I challenged off and won 396-388.

There was much rejoicing!

My coed 1st team won on saturday. It was a nice not feeling defeated and going over those mistakes in the game too much in my head. Yeah, I think I like this winning stuff. Also our team is now being sponsored. Our goalie owns his own company and is now going to sponsor us. New jerseys and team fees all paid for. Does this make me semi-pro?

And my local team, The Portland Timbers, beat up on Vancouver on live national tv sunday 3-0 to win the series 3-1. They take on The Atlanta Silverbacks(some kind of gorilla supposedly) this weekend, and our again featured on live national tv sunday. This works out well because I work sundays at an indoor soccer center, so I start my shift at 5pm and the game starts at 5pm. Oh happy day.

Today is the wife's birthday. I made a yellow cake, her favorite. I have yet to frost it as it has to cool. We are headed out for her birthday pizza. And later with the birthday presents.

I played fix it man this week. Cleaned filters, replaced glass in storm window, and fixed a door knob that would only turn one way. Home ownership is fun. Oh also played sanitation engineer for the dog. There is a humbling job.

So after all that, it was movie night. We headed to our not so local cineplex and dropped $9.50 a ticket to see "Shoot 'Em Up". Thinking about it now, it was meant to be a grindhouse film. This was just a ridiculous mess of action from the get go. Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti running around shooting each other, large body count, cheesy lines and gratuitous nudity(not a whole lot but still). The wife doesn't get to pick movies for a while in any case.

The new diet plan is in full swing. We have been eating smaller portions and watching calorie intake and even made it to the gym once this week. Trying not to push too hard on the fitness portion of all the fun as the wife is still recovering from the pulled hip flexor and we don't want to aggravate it again.

My own soccer exploits are piling on top each other. I had a game last night and another one to happen in about an hour. Two completely different teams. Coed 4b which I feel like I can do a lot more as I have more time, and Coed 1 where I am just hanging on trying to make decent passes and trying to block shots. One should make me a better player in the other, I hope. I don't which is which.

The other soccer news is the local team the Portland Timbers are in the midst of the playoffs and will be on national tv on Sunday for the second leg of the first round at home here in Portland. Check it out on Fox Soccer Channel at 5pm pacific/8pm eastern. They are down 1-0 on aggregate.

We are having dinner with Betsy this evening. Her husband, my freshman roommate, is hanging out in the big desert trying to build roads and what not. This will be a grown up night as her 2 wee ones will be with grandparents. She has been here six months and this is the first time we have gotten together. See I am a bad friend. Anyway back to the narrative, we are going to Apizza Scholls. This is one of the best pizza places in the country. They make the dough fresh in the morning open at 5pm and close when they run out of dough. The line starts forming about 4:30 and not everyone in line gets seated. It is New Haven style. Which means you have to spend some time on wikipedia looking that up. Never the less yummy.

One day I will learn to embed links in my stories. Until then you are SOL.

So I had a game tonight at 10:15. I hate having these late games. I come home and have to sit around for hours before I shower. I have tried taking cooler showers. Cold showers just don't sound like fun. I spend half the time running in and out of the spray. On the plus side, I shower and then I go to bed worn out.

To the grocery tomorrow. The fresh fruit and veggie section intimidates me. There are the familiar things like broccolli, green beans and potatoes. But then there are the 80 different bastardized permutations of the plum or apricot or nectarine. Cross-polinated with each other or other fruits to make uber-fruits. Would these fruits fall under the category of genetically modified and/or processed foods that we should avoid or should we look at is as more of a sweet sweet blend like those fine people at Ocean Spray put out with their many Cran-tations?

Sleep would be a good thing, must go stand under the water first.

So Monday starts the new diet. The, get me to a reasonable weight where I can run around on the field and not be tired and zoning out after a few minutes, diet. The wife and I are going to sit down later and talk menu and workout plans. Should I suggest borderline vegan? veggie? no red meat? She is a pizza junkie and I am a burrito junkie so this is going to be interesting. She doesn't like a lot of green veggies and I am not a good enough cook to make veggies interesting. Oh well, once more into the breech.

So I am watching Euro qualifiers today. That is soccer for the layfolk. It is a bunch of big teams versus a bunch of little teams. Not very interesting but it makes for good background noise.

We have had a lot of out of towners in lately. I would think I would not have a lot of out of towners. I am not very good at keeping in contact with out of towners, hell I am pretty poor about talking to in towners. Well they call and come anyway. I think I must have been more interesting in college. I am not witty in groups, I am not the most attractive person I know, I don't have children to ogle over. It must be my wife, they like to see and talk to her. She is beautiful, intelligent, funny and easy to talk to. They have heard all my stories and dumb jokes, she keeps me in good graces with the OOTers.

We will be heading to Seattle in a couple weeks. Stay tuned for that.