numbers

Right now our life is revolving around selling our old house and fixing up our new house.  Things are stressful right now, but I am trying my darnedest to keep sane.  I could bore everyone with the latest house stuff (like ripping up the bathroom vinyl or the the quotes we got to replace our front door), but I want to try to keep my blog about being married to a pilot.

So, let me talk about Steve's skill with numbers.  I am sure this is a skill that most pilots have.  To bring this back to house stuff, we are getting our air ducts cleaned.  There is some debate about the the benefit of getting them cleaned, but I don't want to hear it.  We are getting them done, period.  If this is what the floors look like in the bathroom:

and like this in Ben's room:

and what the bathroom vent looks like:

then we are getting the ducts cleaned!!


So, the quote is: $275 for 10 vents and $7 a vent after that.  The man assumed we have 20-25 vents in total.  When I was talking to Steve about this I was trying to calculate the total cost.  So, I reached my hand over to my adding machine and started to punch the numbers.  Steve heard the tape printing and said "are you seriously adding that on your calculator.  Joanna, the number is $380."  Just like that, he multiplied numbers and added them. 

Now, in my defense, I work with numbers all day long.  But, since my numbers concern money I need my numbers to be 100% correct.  Yes, I have a college degree and I would consider myself intelligent, but there is always human error.  Calculators calculate numbers, if entered properly, 100% correct 100% of the time, and I need that for work.  At this point, it is second nature to just calculate numbers on my machine.  Just as it is Steve's second nature to calculate numbers in his head.


This is just one example of Steve and his numbers.  Steve has a lot of numbers floating around his head on any given day.  I clearly recall a very funny conversation we once had.  Steve was in Rhode Island and was going to visit a friend from high school.  When they were on the phone, his friend Jack said "hey, let me give you this other phone number to call me." Steve responded with "let me get a pen," and Jack was like "oh no...the number is really easy to remember..." and Steve finally said "dude, no.  Do you know how many numbers that run through my head...flight level xxx...take off runway xxx" and then he went into about 60 seconds of examples of all the numbers that go through his head on any given leg.  I would love to repeat what he said, but I couldn't do it to save my life. 

Steve has the hardest time remembering the three digit code to get into the door at the kids daycare.  When I give him heat about that, he will remind me how many door codes he has to remember at work. 

But hey, when to comes to numbers, as long as he remembers our anniversary, my birthday, and the kids birthday all will be right in the world.