Saturday 16 December 2017

As this year grinds to a welcome conclusion let us pause for a moment to reflect on its primeness. We will not enjoy another prime number year until 2027. There were 6 ordinary ones since the last and we'll only have to wait 2 after the next. 2017 is both a Friedlander-Iwaniec and a Heath-Brown prime. If you understand what that means or scored a perfect 800 on your math SATs you're weird and should not be allowed in public. Otherwise ignore all above. On a completely practical level, however, if you are having a party for 2017 people you can cut the cake to serve each person exactly one piece with exactly 63 straight cuts.

After a few months of guitar lessons I am able to not play several of Jimmy Buffett's most popular songs. Heretofore this inability was merely an untested supposition. As lessons continue and music for additional tunes is acquired this number will no doubt increase apace. It would help to cover the miserable playing by singing along except that would entail multi-tasking (I'm a boy) and anyway few of Jimmy's better tunes are enhanced by the sound of a squawking cockatoo. Meantime Jan is getting excellent use from her noise-cancelling headset.

Except for Monday and Friday, when yoga girl has us going later for her 0900 group, and Sunday, which provides an excellent rationale for torpidity - that "day of rest" thing (as an aside, we also observe "fish Friday" just in case we decide to become Catholic, the church reinstates its meat prohibition and makes it retroactive.. this would be more meaningful if we didn't love fish), we drag our saggy butts out of bed each morning at 0600 to bike 20 to 35 km around Darwin. This is a remarkable concession by Jan who does not do sunrise. The theory is that if you can't see it during setting, you don't need it. Anyway, temps are marginally cooler then and until we can get back out on the ocean the exercise reduces entropy and keeps us from turning into the gelatinous blobs of goo to which our bodies so desperately aspire.

Jack