The Numbers, How They Cross
2006-08-28, 16:29

Today is The Girl's birthday, and I happened to be looking something up on Wikipedia, so naturally I clicked on the current day on the main page to fish for some interesting 'on this day' data. One of the people with whom she shares a birthday is Leo Tolstoy, acclaimed author of War and Peace. I found myself becoming perplexed, however, because I vaguely recalled that is was I, in fact, that shared a birthday with him. It turns out that we both do.

That is, we both do, depending on whether you're looking at the Gregorian calendar (me) or the Julian calendar (The Girl). I had no idea that our birthdays were so related. I guess that explains things, in an opposite-sides-of-the-same-coin, clones-must-destroy-each-other kind of way.

Then I continued on to read a bit about Mr. Tolstoy, about whom I knew little other than he was Russian, and that he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Turns out, he's my kind of guy, go figure.

The thing that struck me most was about his 'mid-life crisis', where he declared, at age 50, that he would either seek out and find the meaning of life or commit suicide. Eventually he came to develop his own version of Christian anarchy, anarchic in that it split with church and governmental dogma and promoted the concept of complete pacifism and nonviolence, a la Sermon on the Mount, a concept that I greatly respect, and would myself consider being pure Christianity.

While grocery shopping yesterday, The Girl mentioned her interest in returning to vegetarianism, which she strayed from a year or two ago after about the same amount of time trying. My immediate answer, in pure authoritarian father tones, was 'no, we can't afford another vegetarian right now.' (H is one currently.) Let's face it, being a vegetarian in the U.S. can be expensive, especially where others in the family are omnivores. But then, if she wants to revert back into a 'healthier' lifestyle (I put that in quotes because The Girl was a starch-heavy veggie), why should I stand in the way? The accountant in me says, 'Me, because I'm the one buying the groceries.' But what I think it really comes down to is just planning food buying more carefully and designing meals with greater care. And making The Girl do a better version of vegetarianism.

And what if I decide to test the no-meat waters (as opposed to the Meat Waters, which are rather murky and smell bad)? Do we go all veggie? Would I then have to force The Boy to join in on the fun? That's not exactly fair, but then, neither is having to cook several different versions of a meal in one day.

This is going to bear some further discussion.

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