Comments on: And you thought metric was hard

By: hannah

hannah — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:38:52 +0000

oh and how cool is it that there is another hannah? i thought we were a dying breed, all though i have heard rumours of a well-spring of two and three year old hannahs, watch out world, we are making a comeback!

By: hannah

hannah — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:36:35 +0000

hi everyone, i am new to blogging, and in love with trixie! but dont tell my daughter, she might get jealous! at some point i hope to get some pictures up of my kids on my site, but they will pale in comparison to the tpods. thanks ben for the inroduction, i hope one day to have comments on my own site like a real blog.

By: benmac

benmac — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:31:37 +0000

Rae: Sometimes you just have to pick your favorite child, and use that scale. But I would probably pick the newborn to avoid accidents (see KED.)

Maddie’s Mom: I’m not convinced that cats didn’t used to be heavier (see Heather.)

Heather: We’ll always remember the younger, thinner Graceland. Like the Post Office did.

KED: Love everything you wrote.

Rachel: Thanks for the fuzzy memory!

hannah: Everyone, we have a new hannah who’s been posting lot’s of funny stuff lately. I just wanted to point out that she’s not the same as our beloved ‘old school’ hannah who’s also awesomely funny. You can tell them apart because the new hannah has a website, huffmania.

Adrienne: Ok, that’s pretty strange. Because I thought most new shoes cost at least 24 gallons of milk.

By: Adrienne

Adrienne — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 22:42:03 +0000

The unit of measure for money at our house is gallons of milk. When someone says they spent $40 on a pair of shoes, my mind flips that to mean 16 gallons of milk!

By: hannah

hannah — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:32:51 +0000

my jobs involves converting a lot of measurments from in/ft to cm/m which i thought was hard… but thinking about trixies makes my head hurt.

btw, i do the plastic mug thing all the time!! why is that??? i must never pay attention to anything.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:18:39 +0000

I’m reminded of this Fuzzy Memory by Jack Handey:

‘Grandpa used to describe the size of everything in terms of a calf. For instance, if he was describing a large dog, he would say it was “about as big as a calf.” Or about a car, he would say it “could seat four calves comfortably.” (Oh, that was another thing: how many calves could ride in something.)
One time he was talking about a calf he had, and I asked him how big it was. He said it was “about three-quarters as big as a calf.”
Sometimes Grandpa would tell time by calves. If you asked him how long something would take, he’d say, “About as long as it takes a calf to drive over here.”‘

By: KED

KED — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:08:44 +0000

I, too, have a “little unit of measure” at my house: a rather large 14 month old. Think how I feel when I pick up my 9 month old, significantly smaller, twin nieces. You think you have a problem when you toss a neighbor’s cat in the air, yeesh. Plus, you can innocently mention that two of my nieces equaled one of my son at a certain point in time and really get in trouble. I was, obviously, merely speaking in terms of weight not importance or societal value. Sisters can be so touchy!

The whole discussion reminds me of the measure of currency my college dormitory used at its governing council meetings. All purchases were translated into the equivalent of kegs of beer. Not just kegs, either. There were varying denominations: kegs of Shiner (a local beer that was still very cheap back then), Miller Lite, and then various more expensive imports.

It all just goes to show that you use whatever gold standard represents your most precious “commodity.” Not a surprise that your world revolves around Trixie “units”.

Great essay!

KED

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 13:42:57 +0000

Remember that not all cats are light. I had a cat (Graceland) who weighed 25 pounds. And that was after she’d been on a diet for 3 years. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found her dead in my bathroom last March from a heart attack.

By: Maddie's Mom

Maddie's Mom — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 04:50:06 +0000

How do you manage to put into words what the rest of us parents of 17 month olds are thinking? And so much better, too!

Of course, I wasn’t really thinking about it as in depth as you were…I was just thinking something along the lines of, “Wow…didn’t Kramer (the cat) used to be heavier?”

By: Rae

Rae — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 03:08:49 +0000

Ben: You are hysterical! I definitely enjoy the way your brain works. What happens when you have a newborn and a 14 month old like I did? Which scale do you choose? Maybe you just add the 2 kids weights and create the “2 kid” weight wheel.

Just keep on thinking, Ben, it’s what you’re good at.