Morning all and Happy Monday. Are you ready for the last full week of August? I am not, but here it is anyway so lets jump in. Timers set for fifteen minutes and lets see what we see.
I’ll be honest, this wasn’t quite what I expected when I sat down to write. I also think there is going to be a vortex. Or at least something strange involving knitwear.
Monday, August 24th: It was icy.
It was icy. After so long living in a semi-tropical environment, I found the concept strange. I understood it was January and that temperatures here had been well below freezing for several days, if not weeks. But my brain was still having a hard time excepting the icy pathway.
Still, I had to walk it. I certainly wasn’t going to drive in this, especially not when I had only half a mile to go between my temporary living quarters and the office. I bundled up. Over the past month I added to my collection of layers, the clothing I arrived with completely inadequate for the location. I was fairly certain they didn’t even sell these items where I lived. There would be no use for them.
‘Maybe for a picture.’
I could see several people I knew purchasing the garments like the hats, scarves and gloves, then adding them on top of their shorts and t-shirts for a family holiday photo before taking the sweltering garments off and boxing them up until the following year’s family photo but beyond that, they would be fairly useless.
Here they were vital. I had coats that were more insulated than any sleeping bag I ever possessed and I was fairly certain the scarves were multiplying on their own. They seemed to keep appearing. I knew I purchased a few and a couple were welcome gifts when those I interacted with realized how completely unprepared for winter I was. There were still more scarves than I could account for.
I knew that others talked about losing their scarves and gloves often and I was beginning to suspect my residence was the secret depository for all lost winter gear. I’d certainly found extra gloves with no matches lurking in corners. The scarf I wrapped around my neck before tucking the ends into my shirt and then adding a fleece vest followed by the coat was one I didn’t think I had ever seen before.
As I braced myself for the cold and stepped out into the icy blast, eyes on my feet to make certain I didn’t slip on the icy sidewalk, I contemplated the arrival of new items in my apartment. It kept me from dwelling on the cold as I made my way down the sidewalk. As the temperatures were lower than my refrigerator, I did not see why anyone would willing step outside until it warmed up, but I seemed to be in the majority. I thought hibernation seemed like the most sensible plan.
As I walked I contemplated the odds of a scarf and glove sucking vortex dropping items in my apartment. It was statistically unlikely, but I was far more comfortable with numbers than I was with the cold. I started from a position of accepting such a vortex existed. Adding int the probability of it’s existence would make all of my other numbers pointless. I figured as there would be many other icy walked before the spring thaw I would get an opportunity to figure out the statistical possibilities around the creation of such a vortex.
‘For now, we assume this is a world in which it exists.’
With that thought in my mind and my gaze glued to the ground to watch each step, I let the math scroll through my head. I took in the number of buildings in the city and figured out the probability of it being my building housing the vortex. Then I eliminated any non-residential building thinking that perhaps the vortex couldn’t be centered on a commercial building.
Ten til Midnight 