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Daily 138: Millions Monday - Grass Cutting Estimate

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Summary

Cold day. JC ran to 12:40 (1hr 10min). New student enrolled, visiting students for fall. Yearbook pages due in 2 weeks. No school Friday, assembly Sunday for budget. Budget video presentation made (recommends 2x speed). Millions Monday: grass cutting estimate - 10 lbs per yard × 30M yards = 300M lbs residential, ×2-3 for commercial = ~1 billion lbs cut per weekend in US.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to ANI In the Air, Under the Tent, and Around Baltimore, your daily podcast briefing of all the goings ons, ins and rounds, arts and ideas, Sudbury School.
0:10 So, um, today was a bit of a cold day. We're still struggling with temperatures around here.
0:20 Um, but, uh, you know, we had a JC today that was, well, it went to 1240, so hour and 10, and everybody kind of stuck with it.
0:31 Um, so that was, um, it was a bit challenging, uh, but, um, yeah, it was interesting, had some, uh, hopefully some good discussions.
0:48 And, uh, we also had, uh, a new student role, uh, today, and we had a couple of more, uh, visiting students.
0:57 Um, presumably for the rest of our visiting students will be all for the fall, uh, where our enrollment is winding down now.
1:07 Although, I suppose we could still make an exception if it's, uh, necessary, but I think most people are in it for the fall.
1:16 And, uh, let's see, we had our Monday announcements. Um, uh, one big thing is the yearbook pages are going to come due within two weeks.
1:28 Uh, Friday we have no school. We have an assembly meeting on Sunday. Uh, there's a budget involved.
1:35 Uh, we'll be sending out an email about it tomorrow, no doubt posted in Discord, and, uh, I made a little video presentation of what is in the budget.
1:46 So hopefully anyone who cares can look at that. I always recommend 2x speed. Hopefully you're listening to me at 2x speed right now.
1:53 Um, and what else? Yeah, uh, lots of Gaga ball playing and Frisbee and tree swinging and all that good stuff out here.
2:06 Uh, yeah. Um, yeah, a bit of a mess, I think, inside for me to clean up, but, uh, looking forward to it.
2:17 And what else? Um, I don't know, that might be enough for today.
2:24 Uh, let's see, it's Millions Monday, so, uh, I cut my grass for the first time in my new home.
2:31 Um, I used, uh, this kind of string trimmer mower thing, which I'm going to talk about on Tip of the Week Thursday.
2:38 I'm so in love with that thing, but, uh, I thought I would be inspired by kind of guesstimating how much grass was, uh, cut, um, let's say this past weekend.
2:54 Then how much grass gets cut over the year. So, uh, and I'll probably just focus on residential. Um, most likely for commercial it's doubling.
3:09 While, um, it's oftentimes true of, uh, electricity and other things, two to four times.
3:18 But, um, you know, some of the commercial properties certainly have a lot of grass that gets cut.
3:25 Um, however, uh, there are fewer of those things, so that can kind of work out sometimes.
3:33 Anyway, uh, so how much grass gets cut? Well, so I'm picturing a standard push mower, not the one that I have, with a grass catcher on the back.
3:43 I used to use that when I was a kid. Yeah, mowing grass as a kid. Uh, that was always lovely.
3:51 I can't actually remember when I started. Maybe when I was 10. Um, I don't know.
3:57 Anyway, um, it felt like, you know, a good normal yard size would get that full.
4:04 When I was recently looking, it was like 10 gallons or something, so, um, quite, quite substantial amount.
4:11 Um, I feel like it would have some good heft to it, but not, like, overwhelming.
4:17 And since I was a kid, it was, you know, 10 pounds might have seemed heavy, so I'm going to go with 10 pounds.
4:24 Um, I'm sure that grass is kind of, um, um, uh, uh, light compared to its volume.
4:36 Uh, I don't know. Although you can probably compact it well and make it really quite heavy for its volume.
4:42 But, um, so, yeah, so 10, let's just say 10 pounds for, I mean, did I say 10? Yeah, 10 pounds for a normal yard.
4:53 Let's go with that. Don't know if it's true. Uh, always a good sign when you don't know it's true.
4:59 I mean, it's at least a pound and it's less than 100 pounds, so why not 10?
5:03 Now, um, so how many yards are there? Well, there's 340 million people or so in the, um, US.
5:17 And, uh, roughly, um, you know, think of three people per household, so maybe 100 million.
5:29 Some households, of course, have a lot more, some have a lot fewer, and, uh, that's sort of like residential units.
5:37 Now, that doesn't mean that everybody's got a yard. In fact, there's quite a number of people, uh, living in apartments and so forth, uh, that don't.
5:45 And there might be some yard associated with the property, but many times there just is none.
5:49 So, um, let's say, you know, and even if you have your own house, uh, like a row home, uh, in Baltimore, there might be not that much grass.
6:03 So, uh, taking a third of, of those households, say, that's about 30 million.
6:12 And so 30 million, uh, yards, and I said 10 pounds, so that's 300 million pounds of grass potentially cut over this last weekend.
6:26 So, and then maybe multiplied that by two or three for the commercial properties and big properties, and maybe a billion pounds of grass.
6:40 Um, that was a lot of grass. So, well, um, that's my guesstimate. I have no idea if it's true.
6:49 Uh, I didn't actually gather up all the grass and weigh it, but, um, anyway, uh, that's Millions Monday. I got grass on the mind.
7:02 Uh, well, I hope, um, this was fun. And I will see you when I see you. Um, yeah, keep in mind school meeting tomorrow at one, assembly on Sunday at two.
7:15 Those are the big meetings. All right. Thanks. Have a good one everybody.