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2006-04-18 - 9:41 p.m. This new job, the one I started today, is in a wood shop. We (they) take wood and form it into long sticks and send them to framing stores. For the major part of today I was taking bits of wood and pushing them into a sanding machine. A monkey could do this. Gravity could even do it, if they set it up right. When you're doing a job that a monkey could do, you have a lot of free time for thinking. Today I taught myself how to quickly find the squares of large(ish) numbers. 84 squared is 7056. I'm sure people know the way I do it, and I'm sure it's even taught in schools somewhere, but to figure it out without prior knowledge, and in your head, isn't that easy. Especially when you have a nasty habit of forgetting things you've thought about five seconds after you thought them. It's nice to know that the mathematical genius that every teacher from second to tenth grade praised isn't gone yet. One guy I work with, named Ken, has a college degree in biology. Another guy I work with, named Jason, dropped out of school in the 8th grade. They do the same job, and get paid the same amount. At lunch I went to Subway. The lady in front of me paid for her food with a credit card, and the nice girl (named Ashley) working the cashier politely asked to see her ID. This would be more interesting to you if the lady had stolen credit cards. When I paid for my food with my credit card, thirty seconds later, the request never came, even though on the back of my card, right next to my signature, is the bold letters "See ID". To Ashley, a thirty-year-old woman is more likely to have stolen credit cards than I am. I was relieved, because I haven't carried an ID since I graduated high school, but it still struck me as interesting enough to make you read it. My hands smell like Cherry Finish. The boss was impressed when I guessed that the "CCF" on a stack of reddish-brown sticks of wood stood for 'Cherry - Cherry Finish'. I'm a compulsive liar. I told him that I worked in a place quite similar to this one, but where they took wood and cut it to size for carving. I just keep going, don't I? Driving there this morning I saw a "My student is on the honor roll at ..." bumper sticker and it made me start crying. I'm more emotional than every woman in the world put together. I need to end this because I have to figure out cubed roots tomorrow starting at 7:30.

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