It was skis

Yup, the package waiting for me was the replacement skis. That was FAST. (I ordered them Wednesday, the package arrived here Saturday but I wasn't home when the mail was delivered).

The place I ordered them from is nordicparts.com, in case anyone is wondering.

And yeah, for "used" skis they were certainly in good shape. One of them showed evidence of the footstrap being replaced or at least removed (it was off for shipping and I had to put it back on) (Durr, now I see how I could have done that with my skis - used the good strap as a template and get someone to cut me a piece of heavy-duty two-sided vinyl, and then drill holes in it for the screws that hold it in place. Oh well). The replacement skis ARE in much better shape than my old ones were so the action is a lot smoother and it's not so noisy. (I'm wondering if they came from an earlier-gen machine than the one I have; the first old "Classic" machine my family had - my father originally bought it to work out on but he never used it, so I eventually appropriated it - lasted a solid 20 years, though for perhaps 10 of those it didn't see heavy use. The second machine I bought lasted from 2000 to about 2007 or 2008....and this one is going on maybe 5-6 years and is really showing its age. I think the older machines were better made. I KNOW the machine we originally had was made in the US; the current ones are made in China.)

But, oh well. If the $100 outlay allows me another year or two on this machine before I have to replace it again, I'll be happy. (I wonder if a person could write off part of the cost of an exercise machine as a "necessary health expense." Maybe if a doctor wrote a prescription for it....)

I'm really happy - I had never heard of the place I ordered from before and generally went by a couple online recommendations to be sure they weren't a huge scam, but at least the dealings I had with them were very satisfactory.

***

I had a burst of energy yesterday afternoon and managed to get the red and aqua quilt laid out (Well, there aren't that many different layout options). I pinned all the individual blocks together and used my old trick to keep the blocks numbered and in order: I used the pins that I pinned them together with to form Roman numerals representing which block (1 through 12) that it was. (It gets more difficult as you get more blocks; sometimes then I use slips of paper with the number written on them.

I had to laugh because one day in a meeting the interim pastor messed up something with Roman Numeral headings and he joked, "I was born in the 80s, I never had to really learn these." I suppose not, and I suppose Roman numerals don't rate high on the list of need-to-know things these days. But I also know that often you can find a use for a tool (like my way of numbering quilt blocks/rows) even if other people can't.

I will also note, one day as I was walking down to set up a lab, I overheard a couple of students talking (not my students). They were talking about math and one of them remarked, "Yeah, I don't, like, really USE math every day. I think the last time I used math was a couple years ago when I had to take college algebra."

Um, really? I can think of lots of ways an ordinary person might use math:

balancing their checkbook
figuring out their gas mileage based on gallons of fuel used vs. distance traveled
figuring how much Waterseal you need to buy for a certain area of fence
figuring out how many self-stick tiles you need to buy to redo a room
figuring out the smallest possible box you can ship a couple books in
figuring out if a particular container will hold a particular volume of something
cutting recipes in half
doubling recipes
keeping a budget


Granted, most of those are fairly basic math, but still: they're math.

And then, of course, there's this, which made me laugh really hard the first time I ever saw it. (And then try to quickly figure out in my head how many 9 foot boards I would need....)



(Not shown in the promo, but later in the actual episode there's a point where Rigby (the raccoon) says something like "more better" and Muscleman corrects him and responds with "Check that grammar, bro," which is a phrase that I also find extremely amusing)

And of course, for me, my hobbies mostly involve math of some kind - quilting includes lots of geometry, doing things like figuring out "How many 3 1/2" by 5 1/2" rectangles can I get out of a half-yard of 40" wide fabric" or "how many yards will I need for sashing if I want to cut it 3" wide and I have 16 blocks I need to sash...." And knitting, also, though that's mostly simple multiples-of math, like, "how do you design a pair of socks in the 64-66 stitch size range if you have a pattern that has a repeat of 12 stitches."

And I guess music has its own mathematics to it, as well. I've always heard that people who are good at math tend to be good at, or at least appreciate music. Not sure of the truth of that (it's probably NOT true of the third part of the triad I've heard, that math/music/chess ability tend to go together; I don't know a lot of musicians these days who play chess also, and I know I was never that good at it).

But yeah: "I haven't used math in two years" - either you're not cooking, balancing your checkbook, doing small-grade home repair, or else you don't think of any of those things as math.