July 2013

I asked a simple question: “What size is the (spare) room?”

The response: “12-by-15”.

This began a discussion about math, more specifically, how we individually solved the simple multiplication of 12×15.

I’m not one to carry numbers over and do the whole swing the digits over to the left as necessary. Too. Much. Work. I get something to zero, making the whole affair much easier to figure out in my head. So, faster than you can say “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally!”, I think: 12×15 = (12/2) * (15*2) = 6 * 30 = 6 * 3 “plus a zero”.

Yes, that’s the way I do multiplication in my head. I always get something to zero somewhere. Same thing with addition. I was the fastest student in Mrs. Delaney’s third grade class (room 205) when it came to solving simple addition problems. Given something like “7 + 6”, I would say, sometimes out loud, “7 + 6, 8 + 5, 9 + 4, 10 + 3, 13!” I would do this in a rapid fire kind of way, which would either startle my opponent in the game to the point that they couldn’t even find their fingers to start counting or else some sort of mutant weirdo gene would be showing its superpowers, thus guaranteeing my victory.

I was smug.

Earl has looked at me since the very first day he heard me do the divide/multiply thing to get multiplication or addition to a zero number to make it easy and tonight he finally asked me, “what are you doing?”

“I’m solving 12×15. It’s 180.”

“How did you get there?”

I explained to him my algebraic way of doing this.

He then spouted out, “15×10 + 15×2 = 150 + 30 = 180”.

Oh. My. God.

He takes a different avenue to get there but he does the “get to zero” thing also. He then admitted to me, for the very first time in 17 years, that when posed with a question such as “what is 7 + 8 + 9?”, he “sees” in his head 8×3, thus 24.

I then asked him what color of the stoplight he crosses the street on and he told me the dreaded red. I cross on the green because I cross with the traffic. He crosses on the red because that means the cars in front of him are stopped.

Two paths, one direction. That’s what it’s about, baby.

It’s has been raining on and off today. This isn’t particularly newsworthy, except that it’s been doing this for over the past week and there has been a lot of flooding in our area. Luckily, The Manor has been high and dry, but getting to the nearest village (on the other side of the river and canal), has been a challenge because of all of the flooding.

Our little inconveniences don’t compare, though, to folks east of us in the Mohawk Valley. This is the parking lot across from the radio station I used to work at.

This is rural route in one of the many gorges in the area. This was a common scene.

Earl and I drove through the village of Herkimer on Saturday and were surprised by the number of side streets that were still underwater. I couldn’t bring myself to take photos; just as I witnessed a year or two in Owego, there were a lot of folks cleaning up what they had left and trying to salvage what the flood waters have left behind.

I’ve asked a couple of people if they remember this kind of flooding ever occurring at this time of year and most people don’t. It must be a new cycle of the climate or maybe it’s just an abnormality.

Driving to work this morning was interesting as well as there were several convoys of DOT trucks head somewhere east and the shoulders of the Thruway had been eroded away in several spots.

Heavy rain is predicted for tonight with more rain predicted through the week and thunderstorms coming in just in time for the weekend.

Stormy weather, indeed.