I’ve noticed that most of my waking time these days is spent doing what is traditionally known as the three Rs – Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. I don’t like the term “three Rs” though, for the obvious reason that only one of the words actually starts with an R*. It’s very cheap. To make it even worse, you could actually get a legitimate acronym from the three Rs, two of them, RAW and WAR. I prefer RAW, because WAR is already used for a baseball-nerd stat (Wins Above Replacement), so that’s what I’m going to use from now on. It’s a shame this didn't catch on earlier, because the posters in my elementary school would have been great. I’m envisioning Mr. T sitting at a desk, with a writing pad in front of him, holding a calculator in one hand and a book in the other, and the caption is “DON’T BE A FOOL. UNLEASH YOUR RAW TALENT.”**
Anyway, on to my RAW.
Reading
I’ve been reading books a lot more lately than I usually do, because I read on the bus to and from work each day and in bed each night, and I never buy the newspaper or magazines here. I recently finished a great Bill Bryson book about Australia called Down Under. *** Now I’m going down the goodreads Best Books of the 20th Century list. It’s not that I have any great desire to complete this list, it’s just that I don’t have any better ideas on what to read. Plus, most of these books are probably decent and will be available at the library. I’m allowing myself to skip books on the list if a) I’ve already read it, b) It’s over 600 pages (The Gone With The Wind Clause), c) It’s part of a series and I haven’t read or didn’t enjoy the predecessors (The Harry Potter Clause). Based my rules, I actually started at book 8 on the list, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. I’m almost finished with it. Up next is The Little Prince which is very short, and then One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m a bit wary of this one because I thought Love in the Time of Cholera was overrated, but I’ll give it a go.
Arithmetic
Well, I’m not exactly doing arithmetic, but I am doing some math. It’s going pretty well. I’m working on two problems – my main problem and then a side problem. I like my side problem more, but the main problem is really what I’m being paid to do, so I have to spend the majority of my time on it. There was already some work done on the side problem, but I showed that it basically was all wrong, so now we’re reworking things. The ideas were loosely there, but the formulations were just flat out incorrect. It’s bittersweet to prove a bunch of work is wrong, because on the one hand, it usually requires some smarts, so you feel good about yourself, but on the other hand it means that you can’t use it now. It's like you simultaneously accomplished and un-accomplished something. To any event, I’m finding the problem quite interesting.
Writing
I’ve kept this blog going pretty consistently since I started it and I don’t plan on stopping now. This particular entry however I am stopping now.
*This is similar to when you see people, full grown people mind you, at sporting events holding signs that spell out the initials of the broadcasting company, but not all the letters in the initials begin the word. It’s sort of sad, really. That's the best you could do? It’s like seeing an adult working on a book of word searches. That’s your mental challenge?
**Also, by calling it RAW, I have a reason to link to this clip from Eddie Murphy Raw. Note, this is not suitable to watch at work or near kids. It’s toilet humor, literally.
***In the States it’s called In A Sunburned Country. I’m not sure why it’s different here. Is sunburned an offensive description?
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