Category: Daily Life

In 7 years my children will all have graduated high school.
In 11 years my children will all have graduated college.
In 12 years nobody will be able to find me.

It is a beautiful weekend…which I will be spending on the computer. And tax paperwork. And slipping in some cleaning. And medicating the animals.

I would like to be shopping for a new car, working on the yard, working on the house, gardening, adventuring with the children, etc. Such is adulthood.

I imagine our ancestors’ conversations went something like this:
Scientist 1: “We should explore the universe.”
Engineer 1: “How? It’s so large it would like multiple hundreds of lifetimes.”
Engineer 2: “We’d need a space ship. That could hold a lot of water. I mean like 71% water.”
Scientist 1: “Ok. What about food?”
Engineer 1: “The space ship needs to hold lots of food. Generations of food. Means that we cannot package it. Has to be renewable. That means soil, fertilizer, a lot that water. Oh, and animals. The animals are a food source as well as fertilizer generators.”
Engineer 1: “Damn this is going to require a lot of energy.”
Engineer 2: “That’s easy. Fusion!”
Engineer 1: “That would have the side affect of killing all the people, animals, and plants and contaminating or evaporating all the water.”
Engineer 2: “Not if the Fusion happens off of the space ship.”
Engineer 1: “Off the space ship? That would have to be like 92.96 million miles OFF the space ship!”
Scientist 2: “This sounds great but wouldn’t astroids pose a treat to our space ship?”
Engineer 1 and 2 in unison: “We’d build shielding of course.”
Engineer 1: “Is the Jupiter project still being researched?”
Engineer 2: “It’s ready for production.”
Scientist 1: “Jupiter project?”
Engineer 2: “Basically you take hydrogen gas and package it in an oblong sphere that is approximately 88,846 miles in diameter and gravity will pull all the nearby astroids into the gas cloud obliterating the treat to our space ship.”
Scientist 1: “How do we move the space ship?”
Engineer 1: “We predetermine a course. You will get one relatively straight line so chose wisely. This ship is going to have so much mass that changing direction will be implausible. We will use the fusion energy source as the engine to move the spaceship along.”
Scientist 2: “The energy source that is 92 million miles from the space ship?”
Engineer 2: “92.96 million miles. Yes. That energy source is so massive that its gravity will pull the space ship and the shielding along with it. All we have to do is start with a large explosion, a big bang, to move the energy source along our predetermined path.”
Scientist 1: “Can we have two space ships?”
Engineer 1: “Sure! Tell you what. We can configure them slightly different. And call one Earth.”
Engineer 2: “And the other Mars! That way if one fails, our species continues to explore.”
Scientist 2: “Will the supplies last?
Engineer 1: “Just in case, let’s throw in 11 more supply ships. Each one can be responsible for a raw material that the primary two space ships may need for subsistence. Let’s call them Mercury. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Pluto, Hercules, Apollo, Zelus, and Priapus.”
Scientist 2: “Make it so number one.”

My head throbs because it is raining outside and I want to be putting down lye and grass seed. My head throbs because I want to go back to yesterday morning and do yesterday completely different. My head throbs because I need to be working on my client’s work but I want to be writing. My head throbs because I have not yet had coffee. My head throbs because I want to be cleaning my house and making repairs. My head throbs because I have dreams I cannot, will not ever fill. My head throbs because I want to be doing my taxes. My head throbs because I am thinking about anything except what I am doing.

Sometimes I see a little fantasy in purchasing a lottery ticket. When I do play, usually I buy a Powerball or Megamillions since the numbers are huge and the dreams match in scale. I rarely buy scratch offs. This week I purchased a $5 scratch off ticket. I enjoyed revealing the numbers needed to be matched and then uncovering the individual numbers. This ticket won $25! Great return on investment. Did I keep the money? An extra $20 in my pocket? NO! $5 was the cost of admission. I purchased a $25 scratch off. Who does that?! $25! I proceed to scratch off the numbers needed to match. Then I under cover each of the potential matching numbers. Sure enough one hits. I uncover the prize to reveal $10. But I’m confused. A friend once told me a winning ticket will never be less than the value of the ticket. Ah, a 2nd number matched! Another $10. Still less than the $25 cost of the ticket. And then a third hit. This $25 ticket turned into a $30 winner. $5 bonus. Wait, my initial investment was $5 so I’m $25 ahead! Do I quit? Of course not. I paid my $5 for this ride. So I turn the ticket in for a $30 scratch off. Alas, my luck ran out and no numbers matched. Was I disappointed? Initially but then I remembered I paid only $5 and received far more than that in the pleasure of playing the game. I walked away $5 poorer rather than $25 richer but I had fun and that is why I occasionally play the lottery.