Miles and melodies

This year I am going to my first real proper Americany type thanksgiving celebration. I'm being dragged off to Ohio to spend a few days at my gf's house. It's gonna be a five hour drive or so, which wouldn't be so bad except that yesterday I tragically and dramatically slipped on the steps outside my house, cushioning the impact with my lower back. Now I have a proud, shining, dirty great big patch of black and blue nestled nicely by my spine. Bloody icy steps. I'm gonna timidly clutch and claw at the handrail for the rest of the winter like a nervous lobster.

It's funny how such short a drive five hours sounds to my Americanized ears nowadays. Back in England that seemed like forever and ever and ever amen. But magically, being in the States shrinks it down to pretty much something you can pop out and do over your lunchbreak. I remember being totally struck without inspiration of things to do while traveling the tiny three hour pootle between Sheffield and London. Part of it is the different distance standards that spreadly spread America enjoys itself with. And maybe it's partly because I'm turning into an old man, and time is stealthily contracting while I'm not looking.

When we were kids, the six week long summer holidays seemed to last on for forever. Now six weeks flashes by like scenery outside the windscreen. Once you experience almost 30,000 three hour periods they don't seem so long anymore. Oh what a dramatic little thing I am this morning!

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I found this rather wicked little music comprehension test on a Gizmodo link this morning. It plays pairs of melodic snippets and you have to decide whether they are identical. It's actually a proper research project rather then one of those "which kind of desktop accessory are you??!!!1!!" type quizzes so prolific on the internets. You can actually see the Gaussian distribution of results with an SD and mean quoted. I got 88.9% which means that, as was suspected, I am awesome.