And then it was Friday.

Friday. It feels like next Tuesday. I arrived at work this morning... Nothing. My desk was still there and the chicken was resting peacefully, observing the world from on high. After sorting through a plethora of email - all of it junked, I commenced my new hobby.

143 this time. One hundred and forty three steps from my desk to the whiteboard in room B4, where I was to spend the next couple of hours. This was interesting as yesterday I reached B5 in 140 steps, and B5 is further north than B4. Maybe I was walking faster, or maybe talking to people while making a mental count does not constitute good practice. Mental note to self, visit canteen and inquire about volume of oil used in daily cooking. I never eat at the school canteen; I actively dislike greasy fingers. Perhaps I had better explain myself.

A few days ago I was approached by a member of the English faculty to write a column for the magazine. Having become known for my limericks (a rather long story, with some humerous five-liners...) they were probably expecting something witty and clever. Lesson number one in life: do not ask a mathematician to write an article for an artistic journal, the result will be very artistic in its own way, but leave the majority of the audience scratching their heads and asking, 'who was Cauchy anyway?' The joke, by the way is, "Why did the mathematician name his dog Cauchy? Answer: it left a residue at every pole!" Or "Why is the contour integral of Western Europe zero?" Answer: "Because the Poles are all in the East!" So they're not to everyone's liking, even Cauchy himself is an amusing story to a finely honed mathematical brain.

So, in order to write a piece that would entertain and inform the majority of readers while maintaining a highly mathematical focus I decided to journey around the school and gather as many meaningless statistics as possible and submit them to genuine statistical analysis. For example, is there a strong correlation between the number of suspensions in a week and the volume of beer the pub sells on a Friday evening? Or, if you took all the toilet paper the school consumes in a year, how far accross the country would it reach? I'm not expecting the most positive of reactions, but hopefully, if I go overboard enough I will not be asked to write one next year.

So, although 'beer and pizza night' has become something more of a 'coke and kfc' night, it is Friday finally. With a train to Melbourne at around 8am, I hope the town decides to pack it in early tonight.