myth's livejournal!

Although a glance at this livejournal would indicate otherwise, July was actually an action-packed month for me. For your convenience and mine, I present a retelling of this eventful month in the much beloved, time-tested trope of magazine writers 'round the world: the list of faux statistics!

Games

3,328,856 was my final score in my first NetHack ascension (Päike the neutral human Wizard ascended to demi-goddesshood)

2 turns into my next game (as an orcish Rogue), I died ("A trap door in the ceiling opens and a rock falls on your head! An arrow shoots out at you! You are hit by an arrow! You die ...")

Literature

3: The number of books I read in July

4 ... if you consider that I read Everything Is Illuminated two times, back to back

5: The volume of Harry Potter which seems to have been, inexplicably and hopelessly, replaced with Lemony Snicket's Harry Potter fanfic (how else to explain why everything goes wrong for everyone in this damn book)

6: The volume of Harry Potter that everyone on the subway thinks I'm reading ("Actually, I'm still on five ... I've heard six is pretty good, though")

A dose of Mormon history

650 costumed cast members participated in the Hill Cumorah Pageant ("the world's largest outdoor pageant") in Palmyra, NY

5 members of my immediate family, including myself, were in attendance (my older brother somehow weaseled his way out of it)

0 people were anywhere near the Pageant's "Información en Español" booth, as far as I could tell

9 "protesters" stood at the entrance to the pageant, most of whom were bent on telling the Mormons that they're hell-bound cult members

267 miles separate Palmyra, NY from Kirtland, OH, our eventual destination

5,830 cubic meters of water pass every second over Niagara Falls, which we visited along the way

11.50 dollars is the amount we paid, per person, to board the Maid of the Mist, thereby getting a sizeable amount of that water on ourselves

7,432 is the measure (in MTUs, or metric tacky units) of how tacky the Maid of the Mist gift shop is (Maid of the Mist hockey sticks? Yes. Maid of the Mist boxer shorts? Of course.)

0 gift shops were to be found at the Sacred Grove (though both my little sisters expected one)

1 gift shop, however, sits in a small building next to the Kirtland Temple, which is owned and operated not by the LDS church but by the Community of Christ (formerly the Re-organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

6 total hours were spent sitting in airplanes waiting to take off, if you include both the flight to Rochester and the flight back to JFK

My job

3 developers in my department have been thinking about polishing their resumes, due to the fact that ...

2 new managers had been put into place while I was on vacation, as ...

1 of my old managers had gotten the axe

My family in NYC

0: number of times that my dad has liked eggplant, before having eaten a dinner prepared by S's mom (a good impression was thereby made)

1 is the subway line that I took the most frequently while showing my family around New York City

2 (i.e. both) of my sisters enjoyed the Chinatown Ice Cream factory, and

3 is the Serendipity that we visited for my mom's birthday (and, incidentally, the number of hours we had to wait for a table)

Music and product placement

5 bands that I have learned to love in July (the Fall, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Teenage Fanclub, Suicide, Mojave 3) thanks to a paltry ...

40 downloads a month at emusic.com