Geek Award
Today I horrified myself with geekery.

Little background info: I'm slightly addicted to Sporcle, and a while back got briefly obsessed with the Periodic Table quiz, firstly needing to complete it, then complete it in order, then complete is BACKWARDS, etc. etc. etc. I still, in an idle moment, occasionally sketch out a periodic table and try to fill it in, just to see if I still can. Yes, yes, I need to get a life, I know.

So anyway, this morning I went swimming to try to work off some of the Easter chocolate. I go to a little private pool in a hotel as it's just up the road. The pool is only about 15m long so my usual target is about 100 lengths.

So there I was, swimming up and down in my metronomic and rather graceless way, and the only way I can keep count of these very short lengths is to constantly say "...twenty one, twenty one, twenty one, wall, twenty TWO, twenty two..." etc to myself as I swim. Needless to say, after a while, this gets pretty dull.

By the time I got to the ninteties, my mind was starting to wander a bit. I'd recently watched some BBC4 show about the history of chemistry and during length 92, started musing about how 92 was the number of uranium, the heaviest 'natural' element.

And SOMEHOW, I managed to switch myself from "...ninety two, ninety two..." to "...uranium, uranium, uranium...".

What's more, I DIDN'T NOTICE THAT I'D DONE IT, even when I continued on with my swim to "...neptunium, neptunium...", "...pluntonium, plutonium...", "...americium, americium..." and so on.

In fact, it wasn't until I'd got out and my friend had asked me how many lengths I'd managed that I realised, when i could only answer "um... hassium?" [that's 108, if you were wondering]


I now fear for my sanity.
( Seventh is somewhat subdued, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 23:59, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

Yes you should

( Bartleby A dead man on vacation, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 7:47, Reply)