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Here are some things that popped into my mind during the last few weeks of running. When you’re running for a couple of hours with no headphones, you get a lot of time to think about various topics. The problem is remembering them later.

• Sand and stones work their way into my socks and shoes while I am running, but they never work their way out.

  Someone should design socks with the fibers oriented upwards so that small objects that get into the socks get ratcheted out.

  Although… maybe the problems is that my leg hairs are oriented downward, and that ratchets objects down.

  Someone should conduct a study – do men with hairy ankles get more nuisance objects in their socks/shoes than men with shaved ankles?
  Secondary study – do women get fewer nuisance objects in their socks/shoes than men?
  Are there enough women with hairy ankles to conduct a third study?

• Track meet sprint events rely too much on reaction times for the overall times. Why do the runners have to wait for the gun to fire at some inconsistent time?

  I propose that the starter’s gun is replaced by something more predictable, like the red-red-red-green light sequence found in drag racing and Mario Kart. Then the start wouldn’t be so surprising. Do you want to award the fastest runner or the runner with the best reaction time?

• Subdivisions should have different signs for different entrances.

  It was disconcerting the first time this happened to me: I had been running for a while. I saw an entrance sign for a subdivision but didn’t think too much of it. I ran for another minute or two, saw the same sign, and wondered just how few steps I had taken during the last minute.

  Have different signs. Rather than two signs that each say “Briarwood Villas”, have a “Briarwood Villas East” and “Briarwood Villas West” or something. That way I know I have made progress.

• I know some schools don’t allow kids to wear Heelies, but I haven’t seen a race that has banned them.

  It would be fun to find a hilly course on smooth roads. Then you could sprint up a hill and coast down, sprint, coast, etc.

• If you see a guy running without a shirt, don’t assume he is trying to show off. Sure, there are some who are vain, but there are other guys who just have chafing issues.

  On that note, here’s a public service announcement: I have heard the 3M brand Nexcare (active, waterproof edition) bandages stick better than the Band-Aid brand Clear Spots.

• And speaking of shirts… if you are reading this and you are in charge of ordering shirts for a race, please consider the old-fashioned long-sleeved T-shirt of good quality. It used to be that the local 5Ks would give the runners cotton short-sleeved T-shirts, and longer races (e.g. marathons and half marathons) would hand out long-sleeved cotton T-shirts.

  Nowadays, every race hands out tech shirts, either long- or short-sleeved. The problem is that I have a dozen different shirts I can wear running, but only 2 or 3 that I can wear normally, going out and about like taking the kids to the zoo or going to the store or whenever you would normally wear a T-shirt.

  I suppose I could wear a tech shirt out and about, but it seems a bit ostentatious to me. Plus some of them use such a thin fabric. That may be great for competing, but not watching football or whatever.

  Race organizers: bring the pendulum back to the middle. Can some of you take the extra money you would have spent for tech fabric and just upgrade the quality of long-sleeve cotton shirt instead?

  Thanks.

We picked some blueberries this past weekend. The older kids were responsible enough, but the youngest did not care for the bucket.

So I am proposing a policy for any of the You-Pick places (all of whom seem to have lost the letters ‘Y’ and ‘O’).

Sure, it might not be the best public relations move, but it would help keep profits up.

Now that our youngest no longer qualifies as a baby, I’ve thought of some things that would have been nice to have when he was an infant.

Inventions for Parents of Infants

1. One-Way Pant Legs
   
   I can’t even count the number of times that I would get one pant leg on the kicking baby, only to have him work that leg out of the pants while I was trying to get the other leg in. We would go back and forth a few times – this leg in that leg out, that leg in this leg out, etc. – before I could manage to get them both on at the same time.

   If the pants were lined with a directional material, similar to but not as sharp as snakes’ teeth, I would have no problem getting fussy babies dressed.

   The only drawback would be changing them out of the pants. The material would have to be cheap enough to be disposable so that one could cut them off. Single-use, disposable pants. Probably would have to have the diaper built in or something.

2. Non-Contact Thermometers
   
   They have these for industrial use. For example, no one is going to stick any probes in a crucible of molten steel to make sure it is hot enough. But that’s overkill for parents. A squirmy baby does not like having thermometers held under his armpit (or anywhere else, for that matter), and those ear thermometers are touchy too.

   Why not adapt the current non-contact thermometers for use on a child? Kid looks or sounds sick? Zap him from across the room. You just need a clear line-of-sight to his forehead.

   Take care when using the optional laser sight though – you don’t want to damage his eyes.

3. Pacifier Strap
   
   The baby cries because he doesn’t have his pacifier. His pacifier doesn’t stay in his mouth because he’s crying.

   Classic Catch-22.

   Solve that dilemma with a strap of elastic attached to the pacifier.

   Make it decorative elastic, and it can double as a baby girl’s headband.

4. Double-Sided Squeegee Tissue
   
   It doesn’t take a baby long to fear the tissue. You see his runny nose and reach for a tissue. He sees the tissue and prepares for his evasive maneuver. As you approach, he waits. Timing is critical. You apply the tissue then he acts – shaking his head from side to side to ensure that all the facial tissue does is smear the contents of his nose across his cheek, making more of a mess instead of less.

   It might be cost-prohibitive for an item as disposable as facial tissue, but we need a tissue with a squeegee on each end. That way, any mess is kept instead of smeared. And a squeegee needs to be on each side, because you never know which way your baby is going to go (“he always turns to the right in the bottom half of the hour”).

5. Baby Monitor Snooze Button
   
   With our first child, we learned by accident that he could sleep through the night. He was sleeping 3 or so hours at a stretch, which after a few weeks made for some weary parents (i.e. us). One early morning, around 2:00 or 3:00, he starting crying. I was too tired to get out of bed, so I assumed my wife would get him. She was too tired, so she hoped I would get him. Both of us fell back asleep and neither one got him.

   Then we both woke at 5:00 and panicked – “did you get him?” “No, I thought you did.” “Is he okay?” We rushed to his crib and found that he was sleeping peacefully. After that, we let him cry for 10 minutes or so before we would get him during the night. He rarely made it for all 10 minutes.

   So what I recommend to new parents, after the first month, is to get a baby monitor with a snooze button. The baby starts crying, the monitor wakes you. The baby’s cry sounds normal, so you push the snooze button and the monitor goes silent for the next 10 minutes.

   The baby learns to deal with it, the parents get some more sleep, and everyone is better off.

Potato cannons are fun for a while, but then it just seems a waste. Flinging tubers far and wide, just for the sport of distance or accuracy. I wonder if we could kill two birds with one stone, or with one potato for that matter.

What if we put hot oil at the end of the potato cannon so that it fried the potato as it exited the barrel?

Then, when you are done firing, you would have some sides for your next meal. However, no one fries a whole potato. So we need to put a slicer of some sort at the end of the barrel, to cut the potato into the desired shapes and sizes. I’m picturing thin wires, like a cheese slicer. Here are some suggestions:

Of course those last two would be cabbage and oranges, respectively, instead of potatoes. I was thinking about having a no-pulp option for the orange juice, but I think that would damage the cannon somehow. Just stick with pulpy orange juice and strain it later.

We went to a restaurant on the way home from a book sale. The lot was crowded, but there were two spots available. I saw one spot had a sign in front of it, so I took the other one.

I assumed it was a spot for take-out or pregnant women or something like that. Here is a picture of the spot:

On our way out, my wife read the sign and made a comment like “That’s not good”. In case you couldn’t read the sign in the previous photo, here is a close-up:

And my wife was right – if no employee is the best employee, that must mean that all the employees are equally bad, right?

Or maybe he was just late that day, which would make him not the best employee anymore.

Or maybe part of his perks for being awarded “Best Employee” was that he got an extra vacation day.

Or maybe he happens to live close to the restaurant so he can walk or bike to work.

It doesn’t really matter – our spot was closer to the front door anyway.

I recently had occasion to be scorekeeper for a kickball game. The usual scorekeeper advised me to have one team’s score on each hand and when the teams switch sides for kicking or fielding, then I was to swap hands so that the hand closest to that team had that team’s score.

It was an easy enough concept, but I have only 5 fingers on each hand so I was hoping for a low-scoring game. My backup plan, if the score went above 5, was to use sign language. I know enough ASL to be able to count to 10 on one hand.

The problem was the final score was 17-16. I had to count to 10 for each team and then I had to start back at one and remember to add 10.

After the game, I got to thinking of how I could have handled each team’s score on one hand. My solution for how to keep score with one hand?

Count in binary, using each finger as a bit.

For 5 bits, the maximum count is 31, so I can now handle a score of up to 31 to 31.

My recommendation is to use your left hand palm-down and your right hand palm-up so that the LSB is on the right, as it should be. I practiced, and I found that although the bits are in correct order if you use your thumb as bit 0, it’s harder to read. I keep my thumbs as bit 4 because I don’t have to move them as much that way.

Here’s a diagram:

The first pair of hands shows the standard binary form. The second pair of hands shows the decimal equivalent, for those familiar with the concept of places. Instead of 10s place, 100s place, 1000s place, etc., we have 1s place, 2s place, 4s place, 8s place, and 16s place.

We have been listening to a lot of a particular CD of children’s songs lately, so I have some of them floating around in my head.

I will share them with you here, so that you too may have them floating around in your head. I think research has shown that if you can get a song stuck in someone else’s head, it leaves your own head.

Old MacDonald

Old MacDonald had a farm and Bingo was his name-o.
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
and Bingo was his name-o.

Song of Many Lyrics

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky
Now I know my A-B-Cs
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.

Head and Shoulders on the Bus

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes.
Knees and toes.
Knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, round and round
All through the town

I wonder how many people are named “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”?
Actually, I wonder how many people have the name of “Jingleheimer”. If that is anywhere in your name, I doubt it matters what your first or last name is.