Day: May 5, 2023

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — By the Numbers

Fandango6 Comments

For Friday Faithfuls this week, Jim Adams has challenged us to respond by writing anything about Math or Science or whatever else we think might fit. Let me start out by saying that math is not my forte. I like numbers in and of themselves, but I tend to get lost in high level mathematics. But don’t worry. This post has a lot of numbers but almost no math. With that caveat out of the way….

Like all other human beings I have four limbs. But as of 3.67 months ago, only 50% of them were functioning at 100%. I busted my left hip and fractured the humerus bone in my right arm at the shoulder as a result of falling off a ladder. So now I’ve got only two fully-functioning, working limbs, my right leg/hip and my left arm and shoulder.

Since that ominous event in mid-January, I spent two weeks as an inpatient, six weeks receiving in home physical and occupational therapy, and seven weeks so far receiving outpatient physical therapy three times a week.

I was hoping that by now I’d be further along in my rehabilitation process. I thought, three months into this process, I’d be able to walk with a cane instead of with a walker. But I’m still using the walker because my left leg and hip are not ready to take on 100% of my body weight, but when I try to walk with just a cain in my right hand, it puts too much pressure on my gimpy right shoulder. So I’m back to using the walker.

Overall, I think my left hip and leg are at about 75%, but my right arm and shoulder are only at 50% at best. If all goes well, I may be out of therapy for my hip/leg by the end of May or mid June, But I think it might take another month or longer before my shoulder is fully rehabilitated. Or full seven months after the accident.

See, I told you. A lot of numbers but no math.

Fibbing Friday — I’ve Been Invited

Fandango11 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, in honor of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla tomorrow, Di has invited us to a fictitious major event. Here are her questions for us.

1. What would you do if you found yourself seated next to a disgraced member of the family?

Shake his or her hand and ask if it was worth it.

2. How would you react if you were subjected to ‘Hatgate’? That is someone with a monstrous hat being seated in front of you.

I’d whip out my trusty, portable Dirt Devil vacuum and suck that monstrous hat right off of her head.

3. Photographs are not allowed, but you have a plan to take pictures. What is it?

I’d have a sophisticated, miniature spy camera affixed to my lapel that could take a photo every time I tapped it.

4. The person on your left has fallen asleep. How would you wake them discreetly?

I’d whip out my trusty air horn and blow it in their ear.

5. The grand entrance occurs and something is not quite right from your point of view. What is it?

The king has no clothes on.

6. After the service, it’s time for the buffet. Not quite sure where you’re supposed to go, what do you do?

Check Google Maps.

7. Making small talk over the canapés is awkward. What do you do to make it less so?

I’d stuff so many canapés into my mouth that I couldn’t talk and if someone says something to me, I’d shrug my shoulders and point to my mouth.

8. Time for the speeches and they seem to go on for hours. What do you do to keep awake?

Stick my Apple AirPods into my ears and listen to a good audiobook.

9. You are suddenly asked to say a few words at the podium. How do you react?

I’d point to my mouth full of canapés and shrug my shoulders.

10. It has been a tiring experience and you catch 40 winks in a quiet corner. When you wake up, the venue is in darkness. What do you do?

Look around to see if I could find any leftover canapés. They were delicious.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — May 5th

Fandango15 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (5th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on May 5, 2018.

It’s About Time

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What time does the clock in the above image say? Can you read it? Of course you can.

I was watching “Jimmy Kimmel Live” the other day. Well, I wasn’t actually watching it live. I was watching it from my DVR recording. But either way, I was struck by a segment where one of his staff went out on the street and asked a number of kids, some as old as teenagers, to look at an image of an analog clock and say what time was on the clock. Remarkably, only one of the those asked could do it.

Along those lines, I read about a recent study that showed that only one in ten Oklahoma City kids ages 6 to 12 owned an analog watch. And only one in five knew how to read one.

I also just read that British schools are replacing analog clocks with digital clocks because of students’ inability to read the analog ones. The deputy general secretary at Britain’s Association of School and College Leaders said, “The current generation isn’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations are.”

What is going on? I remember a few years back when a number of school systems were dropping the teaching of cursive from their curricula. The rationale was that people today don’t bother to write and mail handwritten letters. Instead, they sit behind their computers, at their laptops, or on their smartphones and type emails, send text messages, or post all kinds of, um, fascinating tidbits on Facebook or Twitter.

And yes, I admitted in my post earlier today, that my cursive is so illegible that I don’t handwrite letters anymore either. But does that mean we should abandon teaching cursive handwriting to our kids?

And now they’re talking about removing analog clocks from schools and ceasing to teach kids how to read them? Hey, I have an Apple Watch, but the watch face I use is an analog face. Because when I’m looking at my watch, it’s more often to tell what time it’s not than what time it is.

If teaching cursive and how to read analog clocks in school are wastes of time because people no longer write in longhand and because they use digital clocks, perhaps schools should stop teaching math, as well. Doesn’t just about everyone use calculators to add, subtract, divide, and multiply? Even smartphones have built-in calculators. And since everyone is so adept at using keyboards and computers, can’t we just teach students how to use Excel to perform a wide variety of sophisticated mathematical functions?  Who needs to learn math?

In fact, perhaps schools and teachers are obsolete. All anyone needs to know is how to Google. From there they can get answers to virtually any question, information about any topic, and even self-help, do-it-yourself instructions for just about any project.

And if they can’t find what they’re looking for on Google, they can always text someone.

FOWC with Fandango — Chicanery

Fandango9 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “chicanery.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.