Sometimes I feel slightly cheated when I tune my harp but then don’t play it before it goes out of tune again. Several points against me here: one, I should have played it after tuning, or at the least the next day when it’s still in reasonable tune; two, it’s good for the harp to tune it every day even if I’m not playing it every day–the more regular the tension of the strings on the wood, the more likely it is to stay in tune longer/require less involved tuning; three, those were actually the only two points against me and I misused the definition of several. Though in adding the third point, I corrected my definition of “several,” which then negates the third point…so essentially, this is a feedback loop of lies (and wouldn’t *that* be a good title for a Lifetime Original Movie about an audio engineer who’s cheating on her husband).
A friend introduced me to an app called Three Wins. It’s a simple conceit: type in three things that you want to accomplish on a daily basis, and check them off as you complete them. I save my paper lists for weekly tasks or ongoing projects and I don’t always get to check them off, so to have an app that presents me with a burst of confetti if I–1) harp 2) Duolingo 3) wash face–daily is reliably exciting. Originally I had “writing” as one of my three tasks, but that was too intimidating. And yes, I need a small digital incentive to actually wash my face with face wash and water at least once a day instead of relying on face wipes that smell like cucumber.
I enjoy having things that staple me to different points in my day, my week, my year. (months feel less predictable to me. They each have such different characters.) It’s always nice to have a structure to hang things on.
(I once had a dream that someone stapled me to a wall–by my clothes; nothing violent–so that I was just sort of hanging there, and it was incredibly soothing).
Today is pi day. It’s 3/14, 1:59 pm! Pi day was always one of the two days on which we were allowed to eat in the lab during chemistry in high school (I say always because I had this particular chemistry teacher for Chem and AP Chem and then was a lab aide for his Chem class during my senior year; also, I’ve already abused the definition of “several” in this post, so I might as well be consistent in my disdain for the accuracy of time words). The other eating-in-lab day was Mole Day, less frequently known as Avogadro’s number day. Conveniently, no matter which nomenclature you prefer, both titles lend themselves to punny dishes that have to do with avocados or guacamole.
