Time and Money

Time ... it can be there to kill ... or on your hands ... or to spare ... or of the essence ...

I had some extra this morning while I waited to wake up enough to walk Kenya for an hour up the log road till she bristled at raccoon tracks and sniffed the bear poo, and then around the lake throwing sticks to give her extra exercise. 

This is what I did with those extra minutes.

I tracked a $10 bill I had received in change a couple of days ago.  Someone had written a website on the bill and I followed it to learn that my $10 was in excellent condition when the writer received it August 3, 2007 in Grandora, Saskatchewan.  It had traveled 2,359 kilometres and gone from excellent to fair condition in the time it took to get to me. 

963 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes had elapsed since she sent it off on its journey.

I was the only person in the trail, so I was left to wonder how many hands touched that bill in the nearly 3 year period, and what they used that $10 for.

If you have some time and a Canadian bill of any denomination on/in your hands, you could check out the website and send a bill on its journey yourself.

www.cdn-money.com

Enjoy whatever time you have today.  It is crispy out there but not freezing except when the wind catches bare ears, and if you can find a sheltered spot in the sun it is practically basking weather, a good place to load up on the Vitamin D Canadians lack in the winter months.

Where does time go?

I seldom sleep in later than 6 or 6:30 so my day begins early. By 8 p.m. I am usually weary and unlikely to want to do much more than drink a glass of wine, knit and watch a movie (simultaneously) before going to bed by about 9:30. Still and all, that leaves about 14 hours of energetic time to fill, right? Yet almost always at this time of the day (3:30 p.m.) I find myself wondering what could possibly have happened to the last 9 hours. I have been going non-stop but all I have managed to do today is:

... put the homemade yogurt in the fridge
... pick the dandelions and make dandelion bread
... dump the compost bucket
... fill a garbage bag and take it up to the garbage can for tomorrow's pick-up
... organize the recycling to take up the hill on my next trip
... feed Kenya
... dawdle over tea while dealing with email
... eat a piece of leftover tourtiere while making the dandelion bread
... go to Wakefield to tell Sharon about a bus trip to the Montreal Botanical Gardens
... stop at the hardware store to get wire brushes
... walk to the mailboxes with Kenya to mail the cheque for our trip
... work on the ugly little table (some kid's project from about 15 years ago and so badly made that the kid refused to take home)
... paint the frames of two bulletin boards for my den
... make a couple of phone calls
... make a quick lunch of canned beans and homemade bread and eat it
... make my bed
... wash my face, brush my teeth and hair and take my vitamins

Apart from the painting and fooling around on the computer, I can account for about 3 or 4 hours, which means that 5 or 6 hours disappeared while I was on the computer and dabbling about with paint.

The only time I play a computer game is while I am waiting for something to load so this was all reading and writing ... but it is still a time thief.

Does your time evaporate?