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| Grandma's classy letter banner |
My
grandma is great. I realize that almost everyone must feel this way but I have
evidence. She has all the essential grandma stuff covered. She is an amazing
cook (she makes the best bun in the freakin’ universe), sews like nobody’s
business, she is super polite in that classy old people way, and she had 13
kids, so she has established a nice family dynasty (is it wrong to describe
your grandparent as fecund?). She’s also a hardcore Catholic, cheats at cards,
and can have a sharp tongue when she feels like it. My favorite thing about her
though (other than the buns), is the fact that she sends out a nightly email to
our family members. The fact that a women in her late 80’s can send out an
email at all is impressive but I like her email specifically. It is a nice
diary of her day and an excellent source of data on her life and habits. Given
such a glut of data I did the only logical thing, and made a spreadsheet. What
follows is a breakdown of G’nite emails from March through December of 2012.
Each
email starts out “Nighty Night and Sweet Dreams… The end of another day and all
is ok”. I have suspicions that Grandma uses a form letter, but small changes
between letters gives me doubts. She is amazingly consistent if she doesn’t. The
next thing in the email is a description of how the day was, weather wise. It
breaks down like this.
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| 121 Goods to only two Not So Nices |
I
think this is a good intro to the quality of the data present in these letters.
I took data from 235 days, and only 18 days had unique descriptions. Even better
than this is the fact that she lists a high temperature for all the towns where
members of my family live. Talk about a statistical goldmine. The towns
regularly reported are Rapid City, SD; Dallas, TX; Forney, TX; Denver, CO;
Evergreen, CO; Billings, MT; Pierre, SD; Gillette, WY; Moorcroft, WY; Fargo,
ND; New Rockford, ND; Ogdensburg, WI; and Henry, NE. Now let me throw some
numbers at you (note that January and February are not present, and there are
also frequent gaps from Grandma’s vacations, including most of October). The
average temperature across all towns was 70.82° (comfortable), the average high
was 101.69° (not comfortable), and the average low was 16.15°. In Rankines
those are 530.49 R, 561.36 R, and 475.82 R, respectively (I love the Rankine scale). Dallas had the highest average (84.61°), high (109°), and low
(36°), so kudos to them. The lowest average was New Rockford (61.35°), lowest
high was Evergreen (91°), and the lowest low was New Rockford with the only
negative temperature (-1°, on December 31st).
Pierre
didn’t show up in any of those so let’s take a look at my hometown stats. An
average of 71.27°, high of 107°, low of 12°. We had eight days over 100°, were
the high for the family 21 times, and the low once. How about a scatter plot.
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| I threw in a trend line for good measure |
After
the weather report Grandma gives an account of her day. Her mornings are almost
always spent in one of three ways. First is her exercise program (Grandma is
fit too). The attendance is also always reported and the in 87 trips, the
average was 22.94, the high was 32, and the low was only eight. Robbie the
instructor’s mood is also often mentioned, and he seems like a pretty happy
guy. Here’s a pie chart to show what I mean.
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| Exercise Instructor must be a low stress job |
Other moods include busy, funny,
excited, shook up, snazzy (not really a mood but whatever), upset, cooked (that
day was a hotty), nervous, ready for 30 (as in attendance), and concerned. I
feel like I know this guy. The second activity is a coffee hour in her
apartment building. Coffee hour only has an average attendance of 9.11, with a
high of 30, and a low of five. Grandma also brought a baked good 40 time out of
87 events. The last thing Grandma does with her mornings is Sunday mass. She
“prayed for all my loved ones and lit candles for all of us” a reported total
of 33 times, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Evenings
are normally spent playing some sort of game. The favorite was Hand and Foot.
She played that 146 nights. LET THERE BE GRAPHS.
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| 71-75 record isn't bad |
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| Positive are win streaks, negative are loses |
Also
popular was pinochle, played 80 times. More pie.
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| 98-115 this time |
She
also played Whist twice, Dominos three time (she didn’t like Dominos), and
Scrabble 11 times. I estimate her Bingo winnings at $57 (she didn’t always give
a dollar amount for her winnings). She played that 29 times, so I hope it
didn’t cost her $2 or more per game or she lost money.
The
finish of every letter is a quote. I’m not sure where she got them from or how
she picks them, but the same quotes often turned up multiple times. Her favorite,
with 43 appearances, was "The most powerful and predictable people-builders
are praise and encouragement" paired with "Without involvement, there
is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No
involvement, no commitment." I’m not sure what she was trying to tell us
with that (did she want praise for her commitment?). My favorite was “Three
retirees, each with hearing loss, were playing GOLF one fine day. One remarked to the other, ‘Windy isn't
it?’ ‘No’, the second man replied.
‘It's Thursday.’ and the third man chimed in. ‘So am I. Let’s have a beer.’” We only got that one
once, and it isn’t really a quote, but I enjoyed it.
Other
than discussions of sewing and napping that covers most of the info. That
doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to find a few extra bits. Grandma has a few
sweet catchphrases that I kept track of. She used vashislous a total of 30
times, which isn’t nearly enough. It is “shlurman” as we call it in the family
and comes from “was ist das”, which is German for “what is that”. She also used
“so gates” 279 times. That is an average of 1.16 times per email, and she used
it a maximum of four times in one letter. I have no idea what it means, and she
doesn’t use it when she speaks, but I think it is something like “so it goes”.
The time she sends the emails is also very interesting. Grandma is a bit of a
night owl, because the average time of sending is 12:48 AM (0:48). The earliest
time she ever sent it was 10:24 PM (22:24), and the latest was 4:18 AM (still
4:18). Tangentially, trying to do math with times is somewhat difficult in
excel (it was also converting all my dates into a number of days since 1/1/1900,
which is weird). Grandma stays up later than me almost every night, and I’m not
sure how I feel about that.
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| Here is a scatter plot of her sent times |
The
best stat is that I was mentioned ten times. Mostly for giving her rides (she
still drives, but only around town), or for my computer expertise (which is
impressive to her). Thanks for being stupendous Grandma (also thanks for your
superior DNA).
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now
and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Isaac Newton
“The individual has
always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try
it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too
high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Friedrich Nietzsche
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