Frenzied Daddy

Five technically legal signs to put up in your library. Man, that “Patriot Act” annoys me.

The TT drew these critters last night. Her sister was spending some ill-gotten easter cash on art supplies, and so the TT didn’t feel left out, I picked her up a dollar’s box worth of crayons.

The one in the middle is a wolf. I’m not too sure about the pink things, but I adore their feet.

I know Sam Raimi directed Spiderman 1, 2 and 3. And, having read If Chins Could Kill I know that Sam Raimi and ( one of my favorite actors ) Bruce Campbell are long-time friends. I didn’t realize that Raimi also directed Xena and Hercules, but maybe I did know that and just forgot. Anyway…

Sam Raimi, director of Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, and director for the Xena and the Hercules series, has signed with Disney/ABC to bring 22 episodes of “Wizard’s First Rule” to the little screen!

Well, ok. I’m not a huge fan of these books. But I am a huge fan of Sam Raimi and of fantasy, and so I’m eagerly awaiting this coming to the television.

“Daddy, doggies are like bongos!”

You’ve probably noticed the advertising over on the left; a few months ago I swapped out the google adsense for the BlogHer ads. No, I’m still a “blogHim” but they’re taking new members, including … ( wait for it ) … guys!

Anyway, they’re taking a survey to find out what makes my ( our ) readers tick; so please go over here and take the survey. Apparently you can win a free pass to a BlogHer event, and everybody likes those.

I hear BlogHer events are great places to pick up chicks.

OW OW OW OW

One of the things I’m happy about from my childhood is the math. Yeah, this is where I remind dad that he wouldn’t let me have a calculator until I didn’t need one. Math and I get along pretty well. It’s kind of odd that reluctance to do math contributed to my dropping out of the Chemistry path in college, though. I enjoyed science too- especially Chem but I got tired of doing the “where could the electron be” equations and finally gave up.

Anyway, the DQ was doing her homework last night and asked me if some large ungainly number like 23001 could be divisible by three. I told her that 2+3+1 was 6 and 6 was a multiple of three, so yes. I think I picked that rule up in Junior High. We were doing some sort of factoring exercise and the teacher showed us that rule. So we could do any number was divisible by 2, 5, 10, and now 3, 6, 9 too ( if it’s divisible by 2 and also 3 then it’s divisible by 6, if the numbers add up to a multiple of 9 then it’s also divisible by nine ). I could never remember the fairly complicated rule for sevens, though. “Sevens are hard” I told DQ last night.

Ms B was surprised to learn that rule of threes. She caught on quick though because she’s a smart cookie. She agreed that sevens are hard.

So in my daily news reading, I was surprised to come across this article: “Is 91 Prime?” . One of those strange coincidences of the world.

Here’s their answer to the sevens conundrum:

Is 8638 divisible by 7?
863 - 2*8 = 847 (subtract twice the last digit)
84 - 2*7 = 70 (subtract twice the last digit)
70 = 7 * 10, which is divisible by 7 -- therefore 8638 is divisible by 7

That seems like too much work to me. It’s actually faster in this case for me to look at “7 goes into 8638… goes into 8 remainder 1, goes into 16 remainder 2, goes into 23 remainder 2, goes into 28 even, so yes. Sort of a division only worrying about the remainder.

Anyway, that article actually explains why the threes rule above works. It has to do with the decimal system. I almost understand it. One of the comments was also very interesting about square roots: the difference of two square roots is not prime. So 91 is not prime ( sorry to spoil the ending ) because 1) seven goes into 9 remainder 2 then seven goes into 21 remainder 0 and 2) (10×10)-(3×3)=91.

Easy, huh? What about 133? Are there two squares that differ by 133?

The recent spate of sunshine here has brought some of the craziness in our house to the surface. The TT, for instance, asked if she could go outside and play in the sprinkler. Keeping in mind that it was only 65F and only partially sunny, I said “no.” Naturally she whined. I’m trying to tell them my reasoning more than not, so I went to the mat and told her the truth… “It’s too cold, honey.” She promised to wear her jacket.

Yeah, I laughed at her, and then we went for a walk around the block with her.

The DQ, on the other hand, went to a boy’s birthday party on Friday. They went out to play laser tag and had cupcakes and then were hanging out at the boy’s house with his mother. I was supposed to collect the DQ at 10PM but hey, she’s coming home at nine. My excuse was that I had to be on call early in the morning, but the truth is that I’m not ready to loosen the strings that much yet.

And then she called asking if she could spend the night. At a boy’s house. In a mixed-gender sleepover. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? Am I a nervous nellie? I said no to that too— I know that when she spends the night at Sage’s, they stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing games, and I’m not ready yet to deal with late night truth or dare OR spin the bottle OR elevator to paradise. Yikes.

It’s bad enough that when I went to pick her up they were playing truth or dare. Oh god. My heart rate doubled. The mother was around though, they weren’t getting too bad. But, the mother came up to me and said “Can you imagine? It’s been only a year. Last year they were playing video games and monopoly. A year later, just a year later, they’re talking about who likes whom and boy-girl stuff.” Gaah.

I’m really not ready for this. I’m just getting used to an eleven year old. I’m not ready for a fifteen year old.