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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Yardsticks

I like yardsticks.

I know that sounds weird.

I currently only have two of them. I got them at the Home and Garden Show in January, and technically one is Vanessa's. She forgot it at my house, so it obviously wasn't too important to her. I will give it back to her if she really wants it.

I used to have a mess of yardsticks; I think a "mess" is what a person should call a group of yardsticks. I realized too late that I'd left them all in my utility room when I moved from my townhouse in Shoreview to a rental place in Roseville this time last year.

I also had two dowels, that may or may not have been an exact yard in length, but they were close enough. I also had at least two of the 4-H yardsticks that I refer to as "cubic yardsticks": you know, the ones you buy at the 4-H place at the state fair with the leather strap? The state fair is a great place for yard sticks, as I think it's the safety barn where you get the neon yardsticks.

I left those in Shoreview, too.

I will admit that my mess of yardsticks did survive multiple moves with me, for no practical reason, as they really aren't that convenient to measure much.

If you are baking a cake (which I don't do) and need to know if your pan is 9" x 16", no one is going to pull out a yardstick.

Point of all this is that I pulled out my yardstick to measure something, but for the life of me I no long remember my point.

4 comments:

SteveQ said...

I have some yardsticks so old they're only about 35 inches long now, from wear. My sister has one prominently displayed in her dining room; it advertizes a general store/feed store which closed 80+ years ago - I was using it until about 1980!

GRIMEYRUNNER said...

I think I understand...maybe they're not great for measuring but you can poke things, wack things, even scratch things.
For measuring I prefer my 30 foot Stanley steel tape measure. Mmmmm. Now that's a measuring device! 30 feet of finger snapping steel. Gotta love it.

Anonymous said...

They say that people of brilliance are drawn to the number three. Not only is it three feet in length, but the amount of inches are divisible by three. Or maybe I'm looking to deeply into this.

Diane said...

I play with the yardsticks while I'm on the phone. Years ago at my parents' house I would used the yardsticks to "draw" on the carpeting as I talked.

I have about 3 Stanley steel tape measures, and they are handy. Mine are all "inherited" (meaning "old") and don't have quite the same finger-snapping-ness as they would have when new.

Steve, you're right that after 80 years of use it would be reasonable to question the accuracy of a wooden yardstick. Try selling it on ebay as a 35" yardstick. Someone must be interested!

Mike, who is this "they" that you speak of who recognizes my brilliance?