So, I think I channelled my dad this morning. You see, my dad was a numbers man. By numbers I mean, number facts. Like, who travelled the farthest to get to a wedding. Or, how many steps it would take to walk to my sister's house in Northern BC. When I was living in Utah raising my little family of two, my parents were home in Canada putting together a family cookbook. My dad figured out the following: Each book took 96 sheets of paper for 210 books =20,160 sheets or 40,320 single sheets of paper altogether. Typing: 384 pages in each book@ 20 minutes typing per page =7680 minutes or 128 hours. The length of the assembly line for collating the book was 136 feet. Total feet travelled was 28560 feet OR 5.4 miles OR 9520 steps. And, my favorite little tidbit he figured out was about the binding of the cookbook. He figured that it took 17 pulls of the lever to hole punch each book which equalled 3570 "pulls" to produce all of the books.
See what I mean? He loved trivia like this. Whenever he would expound this "knowledge" to his
captive audience, he would end with a super fact to see if you were really listening. For example, after telling us his astounding facts about how far people had travelled, or how many steps it took for everyone to arrive at some family gathering, he would say something like "Now, if ALL of those people were laid end to end around the world, they would all be a lot more comfortable!" Ahhhhhhh...Dad!
Which brings me to my "channeling of my pops" this morning. The sink in my bathroom has been leaking for some time now. Every time I see it I think "I've really got to fix that thing because I'm really wasting a lot of water." So, today I figured out just how much.
I placed a quart jar under the drip and set a timer. Here's what I found out:
It took 8 minutes 35 seconds to fill my quart jar.
Which would mean that it would take 33.4 minutes to fill a gallon.
From there, I found out the average size of a bathtub (42 gallons by the way). Which means that it takes 1670 minutes to fill that tub meaning that I am filling up my bathtub approximately once every single day (every 23 and a half hours!) What a waste of water and money. I was shocked.
There was a certain satisfaction that came from figuring out this bit of information.
I get it Dad. I really get it. Yet one more reason why I loved/love him so much.
3 comments:
You ARE like your dad! It was just a little drip. Dad always could see the big picture.
Sara, that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me! The world would be a better place if everyone were more like Dad.
My husband decided to teach our kids recently about how much pancake syrup they are throwing in the trash. I make our own syrup from our berries that we grow and pick. The kids pour their syrup on their plates dipping their pancakes and then leave a ton for the trash. He showed them how just a TBL. of syrup wasted added up to a bottle and how many berries and my time went into a bottle. :D
Kind of eye opening when you look at the big picture and realize how much is going down the drain..
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