there are the things we know we don’t know…

...for instance: a hole has a bottom. i distinctly remember being questioned as i was digging away in the sandbox at 262 ten eyck st. whether the hole i was working away at so furiously was going to go through to China. the question should have been “is the TUNNEL you are digging…” a hole has a bottom you see, an aperture (or tunnel) does not…is this science or linguistics? (i know i don’t know the answer to that)

a certain brilliant scientist who is related genetically to both the ice-man who was discovered frozen in the Italian (?) alps and to my wim & lily, was explaining about small holes and apertures. if you are digging an aperture, a tunnel from New Zealand to the antipodes, you might end up in Espana (he said). by coincidence a port in that very country was visited by the ship bearing our earthly belongings that is purportedly on its way here—what a small world!

speaking of small, i was being instructed on the concept of the extremely minute. correct me if i err, those of you who know you know, but i think that a nanometer is where we start—what we can make use of to establish a scale on human porportions we can relate to. an average hair, for instance, is about 5 to 7 nanometers in diameter. a nano, expressed as a fraction, is a 1 with (under the line) a 1 to the power of minus 9 (or a minus 1 followed by 9 zeros. (blessed are those who have not seen and yet, believe) [now in a parallel paradox, the container, probably visible from those handy satellites, is every bit as invisible as a nano…shipping news update: using the web, we have predicted, on our own (hypothesizing that the last digit of ‘our’ container posited by a bloke in Sydney is correct) that our stuff may land in Littleton (NZ) on friday. i know we will 'know' by next tues. or weds. whether or not there is good news on the household front…

and, oh yes, during the blog hiatus, 'our' mouse has retired from the fray. he gave his all and is no more...in the end the small creature’s ignominious demise was un-witnessed and un-remarked. the superior analytic power of the human brain triumphed (by observing that a couple of strips of cardboard would contribute a hair trigger aspect to the trap) . (we won’t being catching bird-flu from that rapscallion…) (or whatever) (i give up on finding a parallel construction bird-flew…mouse-scurry?) (adieu…it’s way too late in NZ…any later and i will be tempted to start dialing early risers in bush country—i know you know who you are) (expunged material...we had meant to work in Yogi Berra's trenchant 'you can see a lot by observing')