Remove ImagesHoloholo Girl
Numbed by the Numbers
5
June 01, 2006
Number of Mind Erasers I had with Sonja on Sunday night, after we
clearly stated to each other that we only wanted to go out for one,
maybe two cocktails. But as it happened, we both got caught up in the
moment—actually, several moments, including that one time a
Jurassic-sized cockroach flew into my cleavage—warranting a quick
erasing of memory with said cocktail. And then another of same cocktail
to erase the feeling of tiny roach legs scampering across my tender
bosomy flesh.
920
Number of minutes I spent watching 23 CSI
episodes in three days. You see for some reason I thought it would be a
good idea to rent the first season on Netflix but then I started
house-sitting for some friends who happen to have a big-screen
projector in their living room and I kinda thought it would be a shame
to waste it on a television series so the logical thing to do would be
to drink a lot of coffee I mean a LOT of coffee and spend the whole
weekend powering through all those crime scenes and dead bodies and
maggots and ha ha it really wasn't so bad and hey what's that noise?
148
Number of student loan payments I have left before it's finally paid
off. Yeah, that's 21 years of paying for a science degree I'm not
currently using. But hey, talking about the sex lives of cephalopods is
big at the bars so I guess it's all worth it.
17
Number of purple garments I spotted people wearing at the Ali'i
Lavender Kula Farm on Sunday. And I'm talking about people who weren't
actually employed by the lavender farm. You know, I went up initially
thinking it would be a sufficiently calm and peaceful getaway for me to
do some much-neglected personal writing. But the purple-people were
loudly ebullient in their praise for how calm and peaceful upcountry
(seemingly) is.
4
Number of years I studied Spanish in grade school. Also the number
of prefabricated Spanish sentences I can actually speak now, with some
difficulty. My mother tells me I was fluent when I was quite young. I
was even the lead in our fifth grade Spanish play of "Little Red Riding
Hood." And yet, somehow having to utilize my education in the real
world scared that fluency right outta me. And now I could more easily
recite the words to "All I Need" by Jack Wagner than any pertinent
vocabulary words in Spanish.
151,012
Approximate number of miles on my Jeep before it blew up in flames.
It also seems to be how many days it'll take for me to collect my
insurance money and get a new ride. Not that I'm anxious or impatient
or anything, or that I don't simply love staring at the heartbreaking
heap of molten metal in my driveway every morning I leave for work. No,
really, I'm fine—thanks for asking.
515
Number of Google hits I got for the words "Samantha Campos, Brussels
sprouts." Amongst the convoluted info I discovered about "bold
broccoli, lanky lettuce and courageous cauliflower" was this obscurely
pertinent sentence on a UK TV Guide: "For Boxing Day, Gary suggests
original ways to use up the remains of the Christmas pudding and
Brussels sprouts…"
32
Number of minutes I spent driving around Central Maui looking for an
open taqueria at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Doesn't this seem odd to you? I mean,
the very nature of taquerias states that they must serve heaping plates
of mammoth burritos, steaming Spanish rice and stale tortilla chips
into the wee hours of the morn—or at the very least, 9 frickin' p.m.
Right?
56
Number of minutes before I finally broke down and went to Taco Bell.
Samantha Campos once aspired to be
a high school calculus teacher but has now pushed that notion aside for
loftier ambitions—like teaching Functional Analysis or "Fun Anal," as
the kids call it. MTW