Fare Thee Well, August

 

So, so very much has happened these past 31 days that I am at a loss to organize it. Yet I feel I have to get it “out there,” for “posterity’s sake,” so, well, here it is, in something of a list format.

(It really was, I believe, the most eventful month I’ve had in a long, long time.)

First, Little One left for college on the 19th. True, she’s been back last weekend to do her laundry and buy up some supplies for her and her roommate, but the ache at her being gone is only now very slowly starting to subside.

Second, our almost-brand-new car was stolen on the 24th! From an office park, no less, in broad daylight. And we moved away from New York City, in part, to be safer. Oh well. Waiting on police reports and insurance checks. In the meantime I’ve surrendered my beloved Accord to the Mrs. as her job takes her all over and I’m basically still remote.

Patch started High School – High School! – three weeks ago.

She took an online course and spent four hours one Saturday training to be a soccer referee to make some $ this Fall. She also babysat for sixteen hours this month.

We had her sign up to start some Confirmation classes.

Since her big sister is now gone, at least Monday through Thursday, I’m trying to spend more time with her. We watched Despicable Me a week ago one night upstairs in “the apartment” and drive out together to the library every now and then.

As a final, end-of-summer celebration, my daughters and I watched Train to Busan, the 2016 South Korean zombies-on-speed flick that was the talk of cinema a while ago. Fun family times!

To keep busy with Little One gone and now that I’m here at the house without a car, I resumed work on my Grand Obsession, my Great Project. The novel to end all novels. Sunk in an additional nine hours over the last ten days alone. Slowly but surely this literary masterpiece is growing from a behemoth to a leviathan, and shows no sign of slowing down. My goal now is to get it finished before Little One completes college and Patch halts High School. (Flag on the play – abuse of alliteration!)

I put away a lengthy fantasy re-read from my youth (disappointing) and a lengthy generalized musings on World War II (slightly less disappointing).

I’ve been deeply fascinated with the music of Yes – downloading and exploring albums I never listened to growing up, learning bits and pieces of their music on my guitar, even reading up on the band. I haven’t been this musically charged in a long time. When I’m walking the dog, it’s generally Tales from Topographic Oceans on the headphones.

Went to Confession. Go. It’s good for the soul.

The wife and I are working our way through a re-watch of The Sopranos, the first time we watched it since the series ended back in 2007. We’re somewhere in the middle of Season 4 right now.

Work for me has been the same – except I’ve been nominated for the Passion Award for August! How’s that for being a productive employee! Hopefully that comes with a gift card, as I don’t think they give substantial bonuses for such winners of awards. It might make me a bit for layoff proof, for whatever that’s worth (not that I think I’ll be laid off).

And on, and on, and on.

Like I said, eventful.

Fare Thee Well, August!

Next stop: September, birthday month here at Chez Hopper!

 

The Great Pyramid and Tau

 

Okay, I read about this a month or so ago and wanted to post something but haven’t had the time, energy or inclination. Now, lucky reader, I do.

Did you know that there is a relationship between our favorite mathematical concept, π, the irrational and transcendental constant, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, seen here:

 

 Yep. There is.

But first, let’s review a simple formula. The circumference of a circle:

 

C =2πr

 

C stands for the circle’s circumference, r for the radius. This 2π thing is also known, to those in the know, as “tau.” It has been trendy in recent years, from what (little) I understand, to push tau over π, arguing that it makes mathematical formulae easier. I don’t know if that’s worth all the effort to overthrow centuries of mathematical foundation, but let’s consider tau for this discussion.

 

Tau = 2π

 

Now, π = 3.14159…, so 2π, or tau, = 6.28318…

 

Roughly 6.283.

 

All well and good – but where does the Great Pyramid come in?

[This is really cool!]

The height of the Great Pyramid is 481.4 feet. Its base length, the length of one of the four bases along the ground, where the pyramid meets the desert sand, is 756.4 feet.

Got that?

Since there are four base lines at the, er, base of the pyramid, the total base length is 3,025.6 feet. 4 x 756.4 = 3,024.6.

So let’s take this total base length and divide it by the pyramid’s height:

 

3,024.6 / 481.4 = …

 

Ready?

 

3,024.6 / 481.4 = 6.28292548

 

Or rounded to the thousandths decimal place:

 

6.283

 

And tau, from above, equals, roughly, 6.283.

Tau = the base length of the Great Pyramid divided by its height!

 

Wow! Are you honestly not blown away by that? More than a coincidence, no? Has to be, right?

 

Indeed …

 

Dementia-proof

 

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here in these electronic pages before, but I’ve been thinking about some personal inevitabilities lately. Now that my two daughters attained significant milestones – oldest entering college, youngest entering high school – I’ve been musing about my later years. Specifically, my health.

Now, I’m a bit overweight, but I know how to lose poundage: Keto, walking, and weightlifting. It’s just a question of motivation. Which comes and goes in bursts. I’ve had some other minor dings and dents to the frame, but a trip to the doctors office should take care of those. Nothing major, and nothing to worry about. Since my heart issues a dozen years ago, I’ve been lucky to be fairly healthy.

It’s my mind I’m concerned with. Specifically, keeping it intact. The brutal reality is that I can probably expect 20, maybe 25 more years of lucid thinking before the dueling dance with dementia begins. How to gain a proactive advantage, how to start strengthening the mind, how to prevent senility from gaining a toehold, early or not?

“They” say you need to keep the mind active in your older years. Engaged. Curious. That shouldn’t be a problem for me. I’m curious by nature. Engaged somewhat, depending on my fascination du jour. But what would be the best course of action for me specifically to take?

It should be no surprise to anyone who’s read the Hopper to know that Hopper likes to read. Maybe a little too much, if it can be argued that too much reading is a thing (I’m not sure). So I thought back, meta-like, upon my reading habits.

Read a lot as a kid, but the quantity went down significantly as a teen. In my twenties I was focused on music, friends, partying, that sort of thing, and didn’t read much. Maybe a half-dozen books each year, if that. Then, in my thirties, I started reading again. Re-reading great stuff from my youth, exploring other works of great fiction first-time, and a lot of science, some religion.

My reading took off in my late 30s / early 40s. Broadly – very broadly – speaking, my nonfiction focus was primarily religion and philosophy. Why am I here blah blah blah. Then, curiously, my reading habits morphed into history over the past ten years or so, heavily into history since I turned 50. Still enjoy it, and still read it. Have three WW2 books on deck, a book on the JFK assassination, a book on the Crusades, one on Christopher Columbus, and am looking for definitive works on the Holy Roman Empire and the Great Schism of 1054.

All well and good.

Now, and I know I’ve written about this before, every Fall when that crisp chill gets in the air (happens late September in New Jersey, late November in Texas), I get the itch to investigate some math. Yes, I know I’m weird. But I did go to school for this stuff 30 years ago and continually kick myself for not finishing with it. So the brain conflates the September nip with the first days of school and exciting new classes. I absolutely love chipping away at higher math, whether it’s calc, number theory, transcendental numbers, infinite series, you name it. Truth be told I’m horrible at it and forget half the stuff I learn a few days after I learn it, but it excites me in a “thrill of discovery” sort of way.

I’ve joked about this with the wife, but the idea has somehow crept from the absurd to the practical. When I turn 60 I decided to buy either

A)    The best all-around college math textbook I can find

B)    My calculus textbook from my Seton Hall physics days

C)    Both

and truly, deeply, delve into the mysteries of math and try to completely understand what I learn before I move on to the next concept. This experiment could last a week or it could be my new obsession, like military history has been to me since 2012. I’ll only know when I cross the threshold into my seventh decade.

Good Lord, “seventh decade”! Where does the time go!

 

Sudoku

 

Yeah, I realize I’m about ten years late to the party. But Little One downloaded a Sudoku app onto my phone and now, 24 hours later, I’ve played 37 games and my best time is 4:24.

Oh well. Another addiction to manage. At least this one, I think, should stave off the dementia that’s lurking a dozen or so blocks away beneath that burnt out streetlight on Time Boulevard now that I’m (hopefully) entering the final third of my life.

Supermoon or UFO?

Taken last night from the backyard looking southeast around 10:30 pm.

 

This blob of light is either one of those supermoons or the Mothership from Close Encounters descending from the cloud cover.

 

Oh, what’s a supermoon? It’s the Moon observed at perigee, the closest point in its orbit to Earth, while it’s also Full. They say tonight’s one is the last occurrence in 2022.

 

Here’s a marginally better pic, taken from my driveway a few minutes later:

 

 

 

It’s not the late afternoon Sun taken with a filter over the lens. No, it’s just an ol’ supermoon, captured with your average iPhone, never a good piece of photographic equipment to memorialize the heavens.

 

Sadly, it’s not a Mothership, either.

 

PS. Look for the Perseid meteor showers later tonight in the northeast. They’ll be fighting with a Full-ish Moon for your eye’s attention, but if you’re far from other sources of light pollution you should see ’em.

PPS. Also note canine at the bottom of the first pic, sitting there hypnotized by that supermoon. 

Mature

 

This young lady:

 

 

A mere tadpole in her mom’s belly when this blog began, has transformed into this beautiful young woman:

 

 

Who is just now suffering the agony of the first day of High School.

 

A lowly freshman, she has to undergo the indignity of first period gym all year. Although it’ll be held during the coolest part of the day, and although they’ll be primarily focusing on the sport she loves best, soccer, she’ll have to deal with being sweaty for the remaining six hours of the school day and not being able to apply her makeup to her demanding best.

 

I can sympathize. With the hate-being-sweaty part, not the makeup part.

 

I, too, put in my time in teenage purgatory oh so many years ago. In my day (says me all grandpa-like), physical bullying as a Freshman was a very real, almost daily occurrence. She has to deal with a far more insidious form of bullying, however, psychological and pseudo-sexual bullying, to which her generation, especially certain female members, are quite nasty at dishing out.

 

I wish her all the best. I know she’ll do well, and overcome all obstacles. It’s what she’s done in the past, and what she’ll continue to do.

 

I’m not going to say that I feel old today. Mature is a better word. Very, very, mature.

 

Good luck Patch! Love you with all my heart!

Rain

  

We’ve been living a little over the past year about thirty minutes north of Dallas. Initially, the biggest sticker shock was the heat. Right off the bat last year we experienced 21 days in a row of minimum 100 degree weather. About three weeks back we had a string of days around 107, 108, 109. But I have to admit this second summer is much easier on me and the family. Our bodies have somehow acclimatized.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a very, very dry summer. I can’t remember the last time we had a thunderstorm. Had to be early May or April, I think. Since Memorial Day, we’ve only had a half hour of rain. And I know this because since Memorial Day I’ve been reciting that statistic, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out.

My lawn is taking a beating. It’s on life support: dry, yellow, brittle. Thousands and thousands of tiny blades of grass are undergoing near death experiences as I type. Perhaps forty percent of my lawn is in this bad shape. Part of me is concerned because I’m waiting, just waiting, for one of those snide letters from the HOA. However, it’s not just me; the entire neighborhood lawns are suffering.

And not only is the grass suffering, but cracks are sprouting up in the dirt patches at the edges of my yard. Deep cracks that look like miniature Grand Canyons to me. If I suddenly flashed back to the age of ten, I’d have a field day with those cracks and my green plastic Army soldiers.

Yeah, the house came with one of those in-ground lawn sprinkler systems, set on a twice a week timer, but I think it needs adjustments and overhauls, and I’ve been lazy in getting someone out to look at it and fork over the coin to get it adjusted and overhauled. So the past week I’ve been spending about a half hour a day watering my poor Bermuda grass manually, hose in hand, ten minutes on the front, ten minutes on the side, and ten minutes in the backyard.

It seems to be improving, very, very slightly.

What we need, what Texas needs, is rain.

Not a Texas-sized thunderstorm. Not torrential downpours that whip though the plains. No, we need a nice, long, thorough but mellow raining.

Water is very, very expensive down here. My water bill is thrice what it was up in New Jersey. It might be the one thing that costs more down here than the Great Tax of New Jersey – I mean, State. So I don’t want to quadruple that bill because I’m doing the necessary leg work that Mother Nature isn’t.

I’m writing this as I sit at my work desk at the home office. The second floor window looks out over a park directly across the street. Above that park are very heavy, very dark, and very ominous storm clouds, stopping by the neighborhood somewhat indecisively. Thunder booms in the distance every ten minutes or so, rattling the windows a bit, and I caught a flash of lightning out the corner of my eye a few minutes ago.

What we need right now is rain.

Lingering rain.