My Brain

Until a couple years ago, I used a small paper day planner to keep track of my appointments, "to do" lists, phone numbers, and so on.

I called it my "brain" because it was what I used for remembering stuff.  I kept it in my back pocket, so it had to be small.

"When it comes to brains," I would say, "the smaller the better!"

I sat on my brain for most of the day.

My brain expired every year and I had to swap it in for a new, empty one.

My brain cost $8, and it was worth every penny.

One day when Sienna was about 5 years old, she opened my little planner, looked through it, got a twinkle in her eye, and said, "I'm reading your mind!"

Pi Day Friday

For the last several years we have been celebrating "Pi Day" on March 14, because, of course, it's 3/14, and, as everyone knows, pi (π) begins with "3.14".  And this year, it even rhymes, because Pi Day is on a Friday.

We always try to find a way to eat pie on that day, often with our fellow nerdy friends the Carlsens down the street.  (Did I mention that their son got a perfect score on the ACT? He missed one question the first time he took it, and commented, "I can't imagine which question I would have missed!")

Linette's favorite pie is banana cream.  I like apple with ice cream.  Chocolate cream is good, too.  Graham cracker crusts always go over well, as do Oreo crusts.  Berry pies are good.  Pumpkin is also tasty.  In fact, I'm trying to remember back to a time when pie wasn't just darn tasty.....Nope, none come to mind.



When our daughter Sienna was just learning to talk, she used to call me dadDY (with the emphasis on the last syllable).  So I called her "sweetie PIE".  One day I walked down the hallway with her, pointing at the pictures of each of the kids in our family, and asked who it was.  "Ah-hee" for Kelsi; "Dumb-ba" for Adam; and so on.  And then we got to her picture, and I said "Who's that?"

She thought about it for some time, and then finally said, "Pie."

Well, that was the most adorable thing ever, so her nickname has been "pie" ever since.

Here she is at our Pi Day celebration in 2010, contemplating cannibalism:

Each year we enjoy visiting the "Pi song" web page.  It's a catchy little tune.  If you're bummed that they stop singing before you're done listening, you can always visit the Pi Day page that has one million digits of π (if you keep scrolling).  And you can watch the "Mathematical Pi Song" on YouTube, or this guy, playing the first 100 digits of pi on a saxophone.

Did you know that pi continues forever without repeating? That means that every single sequence of digits you can think up exists somewhere in pi.  Woah.  Don't believe me? I'll bet your 7-digit phone number appears somewhere in the first 200M digits of pi.  Search for it on the pi search page.

So I hope you all have a wonderful and tasty Pi Day Friday this year.  And may you have 3.1415926 pieces of pie.

Next year, of course, will be the Big One, because it will be 3/14/15.  Party starts at 9:26:53 a.m.

Update:

Our 2014 pi Day Celebration was a great success. We celebrated "Pi Day Friday" at the Carlsens.  I wore a tie dye T-shirt so it would be a "tie dye pi day Friday", which is sort of hard to say.

Upon posting some well wishes for the upcoming pi day on Facebook, my niece-in-law said, "Randy, what if I made you a square pie?"

I replied, "First of all, that would be inconceivable!! But, upon further reflection...I guess that would be 'Pi Squared'." (Ugh.)

Here is a picture of our family celebrating Pi Day.  There are 8 pies shown here, with one more arriving shortly (and this doesn't count the chicken pot pie that they had for dinner).

At the end of the celebration, I waved to everyone and said, "Good-pie!!"