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1998 Just Add #1 Just Add #2 Just Add #3 1999 Just Add #4 Just Add #5 Just Add #6 Just Add #7 Just Add #8 Just Add #9 Just Add #10 Just Add #11 Just Add #12 Just Add #13 Just Add #14 2000 Just Add #15 Just Add #16 Just Add #17 Just Add #18 2001 Just Add #19 Just Add #20 Just Add #21 2002 Just Add #22 Just Add #23 Just Add #24 Just Add #25 Just Add #26 Just Add #27 Just Add #28 Just Add #29 Just Add #30 Just Add #31 Just Add #32 Just Add #33 2003 Just Add #34 Just Add #35 Just Add #36 Just Add #37 Just Add #38 Just Add #39 Just Add #40 Just Add #41 2004 Just Add #42 |
 February/March 2000Numbers. Numbers are fun. I like numbers a lot. I'm sure you have a favorite number; most people do. Lotteries make billions of dollars a year off of people's favourite numbers. In fact, I have a few favorite numbers myself. I like the number 13. A lot. In fact, I suffer from the rare affliction of triskaidekaphilia. That is, of course, the love of the number thirteen. When I played fastball, that was my uniform number. That and 2 (because we had 2 sets of uniforms and the fancier uniforms only had numbers 1-12). Douglas Adams happens to like the number 42. After all, it *is* the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. And yes, it is what you get when you multiply 6 x 9 in base 13. Really. Its palindrome just happens to be my age as of Feb 21. (And no, nobody gave me any fluorescent orange lava bombs again this year.) But recently, I've gained a new favorite number. This number is 433-3048. Yes, I know, it's a phone number. And no, it's not the phone number of a girlfriend or anything like that. What makes it my favorite number is that it is the number that represents hope. On February 10th, I was in an automobile accident. I'm a Canadian, but the accident was in New York state. The upshot of it is, I was in a vehicle which became defunct in a hurry. The road was icy at 10:45 pm; at least 5 other vehicles became similarly or even worse defunct than the one in which I was located. After waiting at the accident scene for approximately four hours, we were finally allowed to go. The driver of the vehicle in which I had been travelling was ambulanced to hospital, so my friend Liz and I hitched a ride to the hospital in a slightly-less-damaged accident-involved vehicle. It is 3 am. The reality of being out in the cold, in the freezing rain, for 4 hours is becoming a slight pain in the neck, as my muscles untense. My throat hurts, residue from both the stress and the cold which I am coming down with. We have no vehicle. We are stranded. All we know is we need to get home. Who can we call? The driver's husband is worried, but has no vehicle nor access to one. So, I make my way to the front lobby of the hospital, to the bank of payphones. I talk to the security guard; he gives me a phone book. I copy down a listing. Knowles, Alexander........433-3048. 10 miles from the hospital. The number of hope. With this phone number in hand, we wait. At 5:30 am we phone him. The answering machine answers. Hope sinks, a little. At 5:45 I phone. I leave a message, as only a message can be left at 5:45 in the morning. Again, 6:00, 6:10. 6:20. 6:30. An answer. It's Alex's wife. "Umm... Alex, could you come to the phone?" A very groggy Alex answers the phone, and arrives at the hospital at 7:20. I hug him when he arrives. It's been a very long night. The number of hope. |