Today's bits

[susandennis]

My friend, Scott, who lives in Wellington (New Zealand) but is currently working in Sydney has a birthday on the 16th. I cannot do time zones. It's all I can handle to get that Mom is at dinner when I leave work. Extrapolation makes my brain freeze. Every year I struggle with Scott's birthday. My goal is to have him a birthday email when he opens his inbox on the morning of the date. In the decade that I've known him, I think I've hit it once - and that was an accident.

He truly doesn't give a shit and is probably only moderately aware that I even remember but it is a point of pride with me. So I've just spent the last 30 minutes in the annual hunt for the perfect 'send' time. Yeah, I know, it does not change year to year but that's an intellectual 'know' not a working 'know'. FYI - my current plan is to hit the 'send' button about 9ish tomorrow morning. There's a chance he's back in Wellington for his BD and 9ish will cover my, I think.

I've revamped the makeover page - http://www.susandennis.org/makeover - I'm not done but I've got the bones. This weekend, I need to update my spreadsheet of costs and get the final tally. I've been purposefully avoiding this. I carefully categorized all of the expenses in Microsoft Money, but I've only pulled the report once - about 3 months ago. I've now paid all the bills so it's time to see how much the damage was. And, yes, I'll tell. No reason not to and if I were looking at doing something similar, I'd sure want to know.

The Mariner game last night was spectacular. It is fun being spoilers. Last night we were tied in the bottom of the 9th. Guy on 3rd. 2 outs. They intentionally walk the big gun to get to the rookie. The rookie hits a line drive to bring in the run and the win. The Angels look like they had been bitch slapped (they are actually a decent team and this was the second time in a row we'd beat them). The Mariners got into a major love fest of butt slapping, hugging, body passing and general mayhem on the mound. It was fun to see. We have not seen much of that in the past two years.

Comments

[jawnbc]

Send from here first thing, morning of the 15th.

In technical terms Sydney is 17 hours ahead of us, but it's always been easier for me to think "7 hours behind" (across the Pacific, less counting) but a day ahead.

If you send it 7:01 am or thereafter Seattle time, it would be arriving in Sydney at midnight, just minutes into his birthday.

[susandennis]

In technical terms Sydney is 17 hours ahead of us, but it's always been easier for me to think "7 hours behind" (across the Pacific, less counting) but a day ahead.

See??!!! It's sentences like this that make my brain cells get out their little hand guns and start shooting.

But, what really gets me is that people like you (and Scott) just know this stuff. It's not fair. (But, I did get a chuckle out of your 'sent from here' line.)

[jawnbc]

I was a travel agent for a decade (prior to become an effete intellectual snob). The technical term is elapsed time calculation. As in "how can I leave Sydney at 10am on Monday, fly for 14 hours, and arrive in LA at 6am...on Monday?"
mwah ha ha ha!

[susandennis]

ahhhhh now it's all coming clear.....