Intimations of Mortality

More notes from the library:

After I stopped laughing about the lusty Germans* I started thinking about all the books in the library. 13 million of them. That's a lot of books.

I started sort of idly calculating how many of those I could read. Now I'm no math whiz, but the answer was something like: not that damned many.

If I read 150 books a year (which is optimistic) and live another 40 years (even more optimistic), that works out to be 6,000 books. Which is a lot less than 13 million.

Factoring in that sometimes weeks go by and I don't read anything longer than a dirty limerick, and that I reread books I like, often several times, well the number shrinks even further. Maybe 4,000.

Now it's not like I thought I was going to live forever, but this puts the whole "all flesh is grass" thing in pretty stark terms. What the ratio of 4000 to 13 million? Pretty damned small.

So I've been taking stock of how I've spent my time. It's not exactly what I want written in my obituary.

Sleeping: 12 years

Vacuuming: 32 hours

Listening to "Fear of Music": 1 day

Listening to "Fear of a Black Planet": 1/2 day

Listening to "Fear": 1985

Listening to the "Law and Order" theme music: 11 hours

Smoking: 100 days

Thinking about smoking since quitting: 4 years, 2 months, 17 days

Watching Buffy: 2 weeks

Making lists: 13 days


ugh, I hate taking stock.

Well, I better go. There's Firefly marathon on the Sci-Fi channel.

*yeah, I know it's wrong to perpetuate cultural stereotypes. I'm sorry. For penance, I will kiss the next German I come across. Especially if it's Jutta from the front office. Rowr.