I'd Rather Do Math than Wash Dishes!

I know it's bad when one's mind wanders away from prayers during Divine Liturgy. I know. Usually such thoughtful meanderings involve thinking judgy thoughts about other people, or being annoyed or experiencing self-pity over one's hunger or the aching in one's feet...come on, I've spoken with enough other people about this to know it's not just me.

Anywhoo, last Sunday during liturgy, I acutally had a useful and beneficial thought. Truly inspired. I will now share it with you.

You know how, when you've made a big pot of soup you have a big pot of soup? But the burning quesiton remains: How many CUPS of soup do you have? (I don't know about you, but for my currently-calorie-counting self, this is a relevant and burning question because not knowing how many cups of soup there are in that pot means I don't know exactly how to figure the calories of each portion.)

One option would be to pour the hot soup into my pampered chef measuring bowl, risking burning myself, spillage, and creating more dishes to wash because not only would I have to pour the soup into that bowl, I'd have to transfer that measured soup into yet another container so that I could measure the rest of it. I have a big pot. I've done this. It is not fun.

Another option would be to guess. Wildly make something up. I've done this. It is not accurate.

OR, I could apply some simple math:

First, find the area of the bottom of the pot. pi x radius x radius. (do this in centimeters). Then, measure the depth of the soup in centimeters. Multiply this by your pot bottom area and you have the metric volume of the soup in your pot. cubic centimeters, baybee. One cubic centimeter is one milliliter. Fun stuff.

Now that you know how many cubic centimeters of soup are in your pot, you can go here: CalculateMe.com and enter that number and effortlessly know how many cups of soup are in your pot.

It's true. I'd rather do math than wash dishes.

Comments

Mimi said…
Yes, my mind wanders during Liturgy. I have been known to come up with scrapbooking/cardmaking plans whilst in church.

Your idea is much better. Good job!
This past Sunday was a beast WRT to focusing on prayers.

I would have never been able to come up with that math! I'm impressed!

~Janelle
gemma said…
I would rather do neither but push comes to shove (where did that expression come from?) I'd be pouring and measuring and doing the dishes. You lost me on the milliliters.
Anonymous said…
You thought of that during the Liturgy?? That's a pretty inspired distraction! If (i.e. when) my mind wanders, it's to things like email and hair pins...

The mathematical blessing of the Lord be with you! :P

x M.
Anonymous said…
I measure how much my ladle scoops. I have one that always does one cup. Then I know how much soup I am getting.

Red
Alana said…
Yes, I do that too, Red. But what I was needing to do was figure out how many calories there were per serving. That's why I needed to know how many servings were in the whole pot.
Has said…
That's very clever!