Pi Day

Today is Pi Day, as in 3.14159 etc., or 3/14/08. It’s a big day at Cliffy’s school, with an assembly with skits and contests and songs. Cliffy memorized the Greek alphabet and managed to recite it perfectly, referring to the t-shirt I made him with a sparkly Pi on it, when he got stuck after Omicron. Some of the kids had memorized Pi to over fifty decimal places. Aibhilin, who won the Greek alphabet writing contest, sat down with her slate and asked if she should use upper or lower case, but then decided to do both. It was pretty impressive. Rebecca said the alphabet in 4.66 seconds and that was really fast, but I left before her older sister, Emma, had her chance to beat it. The first graders had a song and the kindergarteners lined up with their digit cards in the right order. There was a baking demonstration with whipped cream and even a Pi rap. Earl, Oliver, and I went to watch and it was a riot.

The NOFA newsletter is coming out and they asked us for a picture to put in the article about Jack Cook Award winners. Cliffy was memorizing the Greek alphabet, so Jackson took these pictures of us. I think maybe we'll take some more at the barn for NOFA, but I thought I'd put them in here because my mom's friend, Linda, was wondering why there aren't any pictures of me.

I know it's only a calm before the next storm, but it's nice to have a day that feels a little boring and routine. It's not really. The three-phase inverter for the little bottle filler, the bottle conveyor and the bottler pump died yesterday. (Most commercial motors run on three-phase power, which is cheaper and better for machines that run at variable speeds. Three-phase power doesn't come this far into the woods, so we take single-phase power and split it into threes with these things called inverters.) We could run all those things through the ice cream inverter, because we never run those machines all on the same day, but we need our electrician to do it and he was at the assembly, but we had to leave early and didn't get a chance to talk to him and apparently he hasn't checked his messages. So we're limping along with the big filler and the portable pump, with Bill sliding the bottles on the conveyor like a fancy bartender.

And Frank, who was supposed to be riding with Larry today so he can train as a substitute driver, which we desperately need because I really hate driving the delivery truck with my kids riding shotgun, didn't get here until seven, when I was pretty sure we had talked about him coming in at six. So Larry left without him, which is good, and then left a message with Nancy about how he hadn't picked up his rider. But Nancy thinks is about dropping off the truck for service at Ryder and so we're needing a little clarity around all that. And we have to call Frank and ask if he can cover Monday for Bill, who needs to take St. Patrick's Day off in order to celebrate properly, whatever that means. But all this is workable and are moving forward.