It has been a hectic week. We started with five instructors. One was going to be out on Wednesday. Then another told us he'd have to leave after Monday. I scrambled around, recruited my boss and filled the positions with no break in schedule. On Thursday the one who was out on Wednesday came back for one day and then quit after one day. More scrambling. Finally I got to the end of the week with all positions filled and no break in schedule. If I was a nervous type person I'd have been a nervous wreck. Fortunately Wakana was here to help.

On Friday we got home as exhausted as we could be. We collapsed on the couch, too tired to even turn on the TV. The phone rang...

It was Wakana's anthropology professor. He is in Guam for a two week visit interviewing people from Yap and Ponpei. He got her number from one of the professors at UOG. The next thing I knew we were bundled out the door and headed for a restaurant. We stayed there until closing time. When we finally got home I went to bed. I told Wakana that I would smash any alarm clock I heard in the morning.

I woke to an intermittent beeping sound. It was Wakana testing different ring tones on our new telephones. Sigh.

My wrist will be sliced and diced this coming Thursday. Those of you who were worrying earlier can go back to worrying. There's really no need. Dr. Landstrom is one of the nation's top surgeons. And if he screws up my wrist then I have a good excuse for why I'm such a lousy guitar player.

I found this thing describing the number One Billion. I accepted it at face value, as I am sure many others have done. But then I decided to play with it. I think they are wrong.

"A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

a.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

b.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

c.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

d.. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

e.. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it."

According to my calculations a billion seconds ago was only 1974. A billion minutes ago is closer, the Roman Empire was still around but Jesus was not. It was the year 103 AD. They are right about the stone age (112,149 BC) but that spanned such a long time that they couldn't miss. As for the last one, they are right again. But that was 2,739,726.03 years ago. Nothing was working on legs back then but insects, I think. I didn't look at the bufget to figure that out. I'd guess they are wrong.

If somone could check my math I'd appreciate it but it isn't important except to show, once again, that if someone writes it down someone else will accept it.

I need to go swimming.