I have a very annoying habit of counting stairs. If I stay in one place long enough, I start memorizing how many steps are where. Yesterday, as I was walking down from the Annex (where the psych department is), before I'd reached the bottom of the first flight I thought, "no doubt this'll be boring old 11." And it was; both the flights were 11 steps. I didn't have those memorized, so it made me surprised that I'd expect them to be eleven steps, and when I looked back on stair counting, I realized that in academic environments (or is it just public places?) there tend to be eleven steps in one flight, or two sets of eleven. But not all places are eleven steps. My favorite number of steps is fourteen. The Bexley house had fourteen steps, and the new house in Calais that Dad's building has fourteen also. I was very happy when I realized he'd picked 14. Now every time I climb them I get a little bit happy or satisfied instead of a little bit annoyed.
Anyways, that's my semi-realization, which may be completely wrong. That public places tend to have stairs that come in 11 steps, and houses tend to have 14. Feel free to count the steps around you and say, "Excuse me, Mandy, but my house has thirteen steps, and my workplace comes in sets of twelve."
I hate small numbers of steps. The little threes and fives and twos. Obnoxious.
You know what I love? Places that all have the same number of steps except for one spot that's off. Bexley (Cassingham, middle school, and high school) was great for this. The entire place came in 11 steps. Eleven was everywhere. Except for that small, narrow stairway back where the old orchestra room was, where the only off number was in the whole building, and that had one bit that was 10. I always wondered if anyone else knew that.
Thank goodness for computers. I would never remember Daylight Saving Tim
e if it weren't for my computer automatically adjusting for it.M.C. Escher, by the way, is actually really cool. I only ever saw his trippy stuff, or little tesselation thingies, and while that was nice, I thought that in the end it was pretty boring and not anything I'd want around for the pleasure of looking at it. But I saw a book on Escher the other day, and was really surprised. He did tons of cool linoleum cuts in different styles. Don't you like Escher so much more now?
