Here's pi in your face!

[vovat]

travspence did this survey, and I thought it was a cool idea. Each person answers all the questions, and then adds another one related to the next digit of pi.

3. Things in your immediate vicinity
Water bottle
Mechanical pencil
Eraser

1. thing you regret
Not trying to get an internship while I was in graduate school.

4. people you are close to
Hmm, bethe, my mom, my dad, and...does the Internet count as a person? :P

1. SECRET
I've already bought a present for Beth's birthday. (No, I won't tell you what it is.)

5. places to visit before you die
In order of what's probably most to least likely:
Lucy the Elephant
Jenny Jump State Forest
Toronto
The Deep South
England

9. songs in your playlist/ipod/WHATEVER
Pretty much ALL my songs are on my playlist. I'd get iTunes to select nine songs at random, but I don't have access to it right now, so I'll name nine that I've listened to within the past day.
All Her Favorite Fruit - Camper Van Beethoven
Playboy Mommy - Tori Amos
Sally Boy Candy Bar - They Might Be Giants
The Rhythm - XTC
555 (Part 1) - Fastbacks
Pillow Fight - The 6ths
Penpals - Sloan
Caribou - Pixies
We Both Go Down Together - The Decemberists

2. people you would like to see in a steel cage death match
Jessica and Ashlee Simpson. Hopefully there would be no winner.

6. things to eat
Pizza
Spaghetti
Cheese steaks
Hot dogs
Crackers
Donuts

5. movies you like
UHF
The Neverending Story
The Wizard of Oz
Return to Oz
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

3. things you are wearing
Dark green shirt
Black pants
Black underwear

5. cool words
Defenestration
Echinoderm
Ostentatious
Quasar
Saturation

8. street names in your town
William
Mary
Chestnut
Lincoln
Grant
Pennsylvania
Wallace
Brown

9. books you have read
The Living House of Oz, by Edward Einhorn
Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken
The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell
The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams
Dot and Tot of Merryland, by L. Frank Baum
Dave Barry Slept Here, by Dave Barry
XTC: Song Stories, by Neville Farmer

7. lucky things that have happened to you
Finding Beth
Being able to go to college (although I'm sometimes not sure it helped with anything)
Always having a place to stay
Being able to see both the Decemberists and the New Pornographers in the past month
Being born in a place with a fairly high standard of living
Having discovered the Oz series
Never having had a house fall on me

9. lives: how many have you used up
I thought that only applied to cats.

3. famous people with the same name as you
Nathan Lane
Nathan Hale
Nathan Deal (R-GA)
(I had to look that last one up.)

2. things you can't live without
Food and water

3. nice things about the person you copied this survey off
He added me without my urging.
He has interesting dreams.
He gave me a cool survey to fill out.

8. digits in your phone number in random order
74388475
(Those are actually for a phone number that I used to have, but no longer do.)

4. people who will take this survey
As much as I hate to ruin the whole pi thing, I doubt four people will. I think the two most likely are rockinlibrarian and obsessical.

6. people from history you'd invite to your dinner party
L. Frank Baum, Mohammed, Jesus, Socrates, Nero, and Leonardo da Vinci

2. favorite kinds of cheese
Cheddar and mozzarella

By the way, if you want do this survey and don't feel like looking up the next digit, it's 6.


Okay, with that of the way, let's move on to other matters.

How come Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sandwiches are sometimes really great, and other times not particularly good? Probably the freshness of the bread product involved is a major factor.

Whatever happened to the weather cooling off gradually? It seems like it went from T-shirt to coat weather in a week or so. I hate the cold. According to my mom, it'll be warmer tomorrow, so that's a good thing.

Today, I took a route that I've taken many times in the past, only in reverse, and I had trouble figuring out which way to turn. It seems like that should be easy to figure out, right? I don't know. I have a pretty good memory, but practically no sense of direction.

Speaking of directions, I usually rely on street names and signs to figure out how to get somewhere. There seem to be a lot of other people who know how to get places, but don't know street names. They go by landmarks, or some other system, which makes it difficult for them to give me directions.

"And then you go past the bank."
"You mean the one on [X] Street?"
"I don't know."

What's even worse is when people measure distances in units of time, because that always assumes that you're going to be driving the exact same speed they usually do. I'm honestly not great with distances in miles, either, but at least I have the odometer to guide me in those situations.

So, just out of curiosity, how do other people usually find places, and give directions to others?

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

I have read 5 of your 9 books! Which ones? NOT TELLING (but I would figure you could probably guess).

As for directions, I am LOUSY with them. So bad. I will typically remember street names for the destination, but otherwise, I tend to use a combination of landmarks, and useless foreshortening of distances. So I will be basically "OK, it's on 4th and Lenora!" "Where's that?" "Oh, a little ways from Westlake Center. There's a Comic shop on the way!" "How many blocks" "I don't know, maybe 1 or 2?" (Then it will turn out that a) The comic shop IS on the way, but, well, a block away from Westlake Center and b) it'll end up being more like 4-6 blocks, basically just long enough to make you wonder if you're going the right direction, turn off, and then get further lost, looking for where I said it was going to be.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you haven't read the Einhorn, Pratchett, or Baum. I'm going to guess the other one you haven't read is the Vonnegut one, but I could be wrong.

I think one of my main problems with directions is that I'm not very good with distances. And going by landmarks can be a problem because different people notice different things. Using your comic shop as the example, I'm sure there are people who have passed it hundreds of times and never really noticed it.

[revme.livejournal.com]

You're right!

And yeah -- partly, in that example, I only used the comic shop since there really isn't much else that's notable on the way. Maybe the Vera Project (local all-ages venue) or the Piano Store with the Ugly Green Piano in the window, but... yeah. I think part of it is that since I don't drive, I don't really tend to pay much attention, since basically everyone else has to worry about how to get somewhere, I just hang out.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is that since I don't drive, I don't really tend to pay much attention, since basically everyone else has to worry about how to get somewhere, I just hang out.

Yeah, that makes sense. When I learned to drive, I had to learn how to look at the world in a different way, so to speak. There were actually some routes that I remembered pretty well just from riding on them with other people so many times, but there were other places where I knew generally where they were, but not necessarily how to drive there.

Of course, the worst is city driving, where it can sometimes take longer to drive to a place than to walk there, because of all the one-way streets and stoplights and such.

[revme.livejournal.com]

It was kind of funny, because I used to get rides to and from my college a lot (it was relatively near by, and by the last couple of years, it was gtting to the point where I _had_ to leave, lest I go insane and burn it down, heh....), and one time trying to explain to someone how to get to my house from there, my mom was all "YOU GO THIS WAY ALL THE TIME! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET THERE?!?" and it was funny, just because, well, I never paid attention. I would just listen to my discman, and that'd be it, heh.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Ok, as sort of an aside to your directions question:
Last weekend my dad was visiting, and we were coming home from dinner or something of the like. He is OBSESSED with saying that he knows his way around Lexington, and when I'm driving he'll always say stuff like, "Oh, I know where we are", ad nauseum. So anyhow, he was driving back home from dinner. We get to a stop sign, where you're supposed to turn left. I notice he didn't have his turn signal on, so I say, "Turn left." He does. Then, thinking, well, he doesn't know where he's going, I tell him to turn left again at the next stop sign. He snapped at me, "I know where I am." Ok, so I let the next direction go (he did that one correct). I notice he's going the ass-opposite way after the next turn, but I didn't say a word. He passes the street completely. We go around the block (which means going onto a main road), and he goes to the end of that block, and needs to turn right. he had that part, but then he missed MY street.
My point: My father is annoying when it comes to directions. He snapped when we told him, and screwed up when we didn't. Argh!

[loz]

I go by street names to figure out where I have to go. My sense of direction has improved out of sight in the past few years. I rarely get lost anymore (once upon a time, I'd get lost quite a bit...)

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Oh that's CUTE! The pi survey that is. Man, and now I feel compelled to do it just because you said I probably would. Besides that it's cute.

I do a cross between street names and landmarks. I prefer both, actually. Of course this means when I give people directions they tend to be really long.

[obsessical.livejournal.com]

i go by landmarks normally, unless i randomly know a street name. but then again, i'm just learning, so I have an excuse :P