Tensday Wednesday

a column that can only be described as "in tens!"

1) In Saturday's $10 poker game, Jaood became a first-time winner. He's played poker at my house since the very first game in April 2004 (when none of the windows had curtains yet), and it's taken him this long to break away from the pack. Congratulations!

2) Ten people who graduated from high school with me that I never kept in touch with, and then found again on Facebook: Chris Detrow, Rangena Hotaki, Geoffrey King, Matt Koerner, Deborah Lipnick, Matt McGuire, Ben Seggerson, Steve Seltz, Ely Soto, and Mike Stafford.

3) In mathematics, ten is a semi-meandric number. This means that it will occasionally wander to the spot before nine or after eleven.

4) When I was ten years old, I was a sixth-grade safety patrol that had been playing the trumpet for two years. My science teacher, Mrs. Anderson, ran a boring class which consisted entirely of students pairing up and doing labs that involved rolling metal balls across carbon paper while she sat at her desk and tuned us out. I missed two classes in a row once for a band rehearsal and concert, and she called my parents at home to tell them that I was a troubled student who was missing too many classes.

5) Memento is the only movie I have seen more than ten times in my life.

6) The tensile strength of concrete is 10 MPa.

7) Ten years ago today, I was home on Winter Break during my sophomore year of college. I ran errands with my dad during the day, and then went to see L.A. Confidential in the theatres with Mike Sharp and some of his friends, back in the days when Skyline Mall at Bailey's Crossroad was actually a mall and movie theatre, rather than a gigantic Target (in the retail sense, not the launch the missiles sense).

8) My "safe" vocal range extends from G2 up to D4. This means that I am not a tenor.

9) I've only ever written one composition that lasted at least ten minutes without interruption. It was my Masters' thesis, , and though it was never performed, it did have Jim Barry's seal of approval.

10) Finally, there once was a man who sent ten different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.