Brain-numbing number nomenclature

I've always had trouble with being able to say high numbers in Chinese especially past 10,000.  The English language, of course, groups its numbers by sets of three digits, separating thousands from millions, billions, trillions, etc.  Not until last week when Evangelina and I were reviewing facts about Taiwan from Operation World (2010) did I realize that Chinese numbers are grouped by four digits, so that Taiwan's projected 2020 population 24,437,503 is literally translated "two thousand four hundred forty three TEN THOUSANDS, seven thousand five hundred three."  The number in Chinese seemed to strike Evangelina as a kind of poem, so that even now she remembers it!

Cars Evangelina’s customized in Rebel Racing

YES IT'S NOT

Last night our 11-year-old daughter & I thought of a fun idea for a poem, & before she went to bed, she helped come up with a list of rhyming words to include. I stayed up to put it together, & the photo you see is our 16-year-old son in glorious "double-barrel snotgun" pre-pandemic panache (c.2008)! Enjoy our silliness!

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YES IT'S NOT

Some have claimed the blame for all the trials life has got

Lays squarely at the feet of nasal mucus we call "snot."

But is it true that snot is what made famine, greed and blot

Of war, and all the world's disasters with which we are fraught?

It's not!

Others take a limited line of reasoning and thought,

And blame snot only for bodily woes: diseases' dread onslaught.

So is it true that snot's the cause of all forms of cancer and clot,

Stroke, AIDS, hormone imbalance, gout, depression, and gunshot?

It's not!

All the same without blame in case our race has honestly forgot:

What keeps moist our inward parts for the purposes they're wrought?

What traps dust and smoke and soot to eliminate the rot?

What do you think it is that captures colds before they're caught?

It's snot!

Market Matters

Mom and I were discussing gold prices and how it's so important to buy when the price is low, though the timing can be tricky.

Evangelina couldn't resist chiming in with her own question, "Why don't you do what you do with Costco?"

(She was referring to Costco's generous policies that allow us to get partial refunds if products we buy later drop in price. If only…)

Literary Allusions for Avoiding Literal Illusions

This evening in the car ride home from dinner at the mall, we had a discussion about George Orwell's 1984, in which the Big Brother of government plays an oppressively controlling role in the lives of ordinary citizens.  Later on when Evangelina started doing her homework online, Mom knew that sometimes our little one has a little window of cartoons on her screen filled with larger, unattended windows of school material.  Mom sternly reminded her, "I'm going to be watching you."

"OK, you can be Big Brother."

Proportionary, my dear Watson



Last weekend at Crossroads Church the pastor mentioned something about dehydrating as we get older, that the proportion of our body weight that is water decreases with age. Evangelina and I decided to put it to the test.

Watson formula for men

2.447 – (0.09145 x age) + (0.1074 x height in centimeters) + (0.3362 x weight in kilograms) = total body weight (TBW) in liters

Sid

2.447 - 4.39 + 18.28 + 23.6

Height 67" = 170.2cm

Weight 154.4# = 70.2kg

Age 48y

Tbw 39.9L

56.9% water

Watson formula for women

–2.097 + (0.1069 x height in centimeters) + (0.2466 x weight in kilograms) = total body weight (TBW) in liters. [confirmed with various sources: age not a factor!]

Evangelina 

-2.097 + 14.6 + 8.24

50" = 137cm

73.4# = 33.4kg

Age 11y

Tbw 20.7L

62.1% water

At first I miscalculated my own percent body water to be 69%, admittedly to a great deal of self- satisfaction especially as it exceeded Evangelina's. Alas, on rechecking my work I found I was wrong.  It makes sense of course: fat contains less water than lean muscle. 

it's begun

my "little girl" asked me yesterday on the way to gymnastics: "I don't have anything on the right side but there's a bump under the left one that kinda hurts when I push it."

driving tomorrow?

college the next day?

wedding bells?

motherhood?

life stops for no one, does it?

Why can’t she just leave behind a glass slipper?

Evangelina on the way to the bathroom

Wedding Night Woes Caused by Wedding Night Prose?

Our daughter is so adorably naïve at times.  One of the delights of parenting our children is writing little notes to encourage them, to explain something important to them, or just to make them laugh.  It's also a sneaky way of furthering their learning of Chinese (for Evangelina) & Spanish (for Jadon)... and of course a challenge for my own learning these languages as I write the notes to them.  

Recently I drew some pictures of a horse stopping, an eyeball, and a knee joint as a way of expressing the Chinese equivalent of "I love you" ("Whoa," "eye," "knee"), and when she finally figured it out she gushed a little: "Daddy, when I get married, that night I want you get all the journals that you wrote to me & read them all to me, OK?"

Chuckling inside, I queried, "Aren't you going to be busy at that time?"

"what do you mean?"

Avoiding the obvious BUSY-NESS of the marriage night, I explained, "Well, that's going to be such a busy day for you with a lot of things going on."

To that, she corrected herself, "Well then you can read all the letters to me the night before the wedding."

[Don't worry Beautiful!  I won't hold you to it!]

WordSMITHing of Biblical Distortions

Lately Evangelina and I have been reading about the last kings of Judah before the Babylonian captivity. Always enjoying different ways of playing with words, Evangelina shrewdly remarked that the Chinese race may have descended from the family of King JehoiaCHIN, while the Korean race may have descended of course from the family of King JehoiaKIM.

Contemptuous Commendation and Laudatory Libel,

A recent conversation in the car:
J: Evangelina's farts stink!
E: Jadon's farts stink!
Dad: Oh yeah? Well, my farts smell GREAT!
E (without missing a beat): …ly bad!

Uno, dos, tres, my counting is a mess!

While on a recent weekend trip to San Diego, we rented a surrey & peddled through an outdoor marketplace.  Evangelina was interested in getting a fidget popper (a two-sided rainbow-colored rubber doohickey with "buttons" you press from either side), but all of them were being sold for $10-15.  Some of the vendors were Hispanic, so big brother Jadon was put in charge of the haggling.  

He dutifully asked, "Cuanto cuesta?"  (How much?)

The vendor answered, "Diez dolares."

Evangelina looked at Jadon and asked, "So how much is it?"

Jadon, seeking to encourage his little sister in her abilities, said, "You know what that is.  You can count."

Evangelina looked down & said to herself, "Uno, dos, diez!" then turned to JJ with excitement, "Mommy!  It's only three dollars!!!"