Statistics Saturday: The Boxes You Have

Not pictured: having the box but not even the slightest piece of packing tape to close it up; and having this weird three-foot-long triangular box that’s the right size and shape for mailing a kite in, just in case you need to mail a kite somewhere.

Reference: Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen.

Statistics Saturday: My Time Spent Preparing For A Weekend Car Trip

Activity	Time
Packing	15 minutes
Checking The Packing Hasn’t Unpacked	3 hours, 45 minutes
Trying To Write A Whole Four Days Ahead Of Deadline For These Blogs	About Two Weeks
Forgetting Toothbrushes	(again?!)
Downloading Podcast Episodes Almost At Random Until There’s Like 65 Hours To Listen To	Two hours, plus three hours yelling at iTunes for not actually downloading the things I told it to
Worrying I Didn’t Pack Enough	(I never stop, even after the trip)
Spending Fourteen Hours Wikipedia-Binging Starting From The World ‘Envelope’	14 hours, 20 minutes
Turning Things Around The House Off	(can’t tell; accidentally turned off the clock I was using to time it)
Removing The Fourteenth Pair Of Underwear From My Duffel Bag, Trusting That If I Need That Many Over The Course Of A Three-Day Trip I Could Probably Buy One, Even If I Am In The Barely-Settled Wilds Of Sandusky, Ohio	Three minutes before I change my mind and put it all back
Panciked Buying Of Yes Albums So There’s Also That To Listen To	Six minutes, plus ten minutes punching iTunes
Emergency Game Of Europa Universalis III	Four years running now and I haven’t got the hang of it yet
Finding Every Possible USB Cable Except The One That Plugs Into My Camera	85 minutes

What To Pack

If you aren’t caught by surprise by your trip somewhere you’ll want to prepare, since preparation turns the stress of time spent away from home when you might discover you forgot something essential (the most commonly forgotten things are wristwatches, the ability to produce the neurotransmitter-hydrolizing serine protease acetylcholinesterase, and credit cards), into a week of worrying that you are going to forget something you need and then discovering you forgot something else while you brought enough toothpaste to crush a small army of cavities. Here’s things you need:

Outfits: 1 outfit for each day of travel, plus one just in case, plus one in case you decide to be non-nude when you set out. Add another outfit for every other day in case it turns out to be more than 20 degrees (forty Imperial meters) cooler than you expect it to be. Add one more outfit for every three days in case it turns out to e more than 25 degrees (two ha’pennies) warmer than you hoped it was going to be. Throw in another two outfits to cover the case of the weather being more average than you anticipate, and another three outfits in case you don’t see the pie fight soon enough.