3, 1, 2, 4

That’s my mnemonic for something new I learned yesterday. If you want to get rid of your coins, you’d want to have exact change for anything you buy with cash (or another way of course is to give them to charity or to feed your kids’ piggy banks). If you carry with you 3 quarters, 1 dime, 2 nickels, and 4 pennies (they add up to 99 cents), then you’ll have exact change no matter how much that figure is after the decimal point. In other words, for every value from 1 cent to 99 cents, there is a combination of one or more of these coins that will add up to that value. To prove this, I would have to create a table that lists the correct combination for each of the 99 values. And I’m too lazy to do that so I’ll just leave it up to you. :)

So we got another mortgage offer in the mail. Remember the one that would have saved us a whopping $5+? I didn’t think anyone would beat that in the laughter department. This last one we got was going to save us ($389)!!! Note the parentheses. They mean negative or loss. That means, we would actually end up paying more. Great Scott (to quote Superman in Superfriends)! It’s really hilarious. You can’t fault them though. That’s what mass mailing is all about. They can’t review each and every one that they send out. However, their system must be enhanced to be smart enough to not print/send out a letter if the savings is below a certain value, or in this case, even negative.

While we’re talking about numbers, the other night, Jed could not go to sleep. So, I asked him to count sheep. However, I myself cannot do that. Instead of seeing sheep hop across the screen one at a time, I see lots. I can’t control my brain to show me just one. Weird. So, I end up more awake… and frustrated. :(

When we were kids, we would tease our mom every time she started a roll call when she meant to call just one of us. And as karma would have it, I’m experiencing the same thing. I tend to call Jed Janelle and vice versa. I often end up calling Janelle Jed...nelle as a result, with my realization of my mistake coming a second too late. :)

We were watching Eight Below the other night. When we learned its setting was in Antarctica, Jed started talking about penguins. I questioned, “Do penguins live in Antarctica?” as I could never remember which one of the poles they were at. Then suddently, it showed a group of penguins jumping from ice into the water. Napahiya ang ama! :) Now, I won’t forget.

So long, Pluto!

So it's official... I think. Pluto is now only considered a dwarf planet. From here on, we only have eight planets. Can you enumerate them?

I was actually kinda glad when I heard the news. I was worried they'd really create a new term called pluton to collectively call Pluto and its moon (or something like that). That would have been a mess.

Pluto, we'll still see you around.

Updates

So we decided to put Jed in the gifted school. He had a tryout the other week. Everyone there was nice, so Jed will be in good company. It was nice seeing all the smart students together in one room. I fondly call them the X-Men. Have I mentioned that before?

Every night, Janelle would weigh herself and would read her weight herself. She's turning out to be one smart kid like her brother. We have to get ready. :)

The other night, Janelle weighed 28.4 and Jed, 48.2. What a nice numeric palindrome! A good combination for the Daily 3. :)

If you haven't, check out the recent photos I posted, especially the "dwarf" tricks in the Backyard gallery. Cool stuff. Hehe...

L8r.