An Overthinker’s Thoughts About Signs

The rock group, Kongo, sang about me in their song “Come With Me Now”.

 

“I’ve wasted time, I’ve wasted breath
I think I’ve thought myself to death.”

 

I overthink everything. For example I’m thinking about the word “everything” in the previous sentence. “Everything” is too inclusive. Better choices would have been “most everything,” “quite often,” or “more than I care to admit.”

Now that I’ve “wasted time” on my wording, I’ll figuratively “waste breath” on overthinking signs.

Excessive Rumination About Tortillas

I scanned the package of tortillas before the evening’s fajita dinner.

 

 

Nothing seemed unusual until I ruminated about the instructions listed on the front.

 

 

 

 

 

Was Nuevo Leon targeting athletic consumers by offering an opportunity to show off muscular biceps to dinner guests?  I imagined a young man or woman nurturing a fledging relationship by cooking dinner for his or her romantic counterpart. Just before opening the 12 count Neuvo Leon flour tortillas, the cook, strikes a pose with flexed muscles in full view of his or her dinner guest. (This would be especially effective in a tank top.) The object of his or her affection admires the cook’s fitness and is duly impressed.

 

I, on the other hand, impress no one, but am reminded that I haven’t seen the inside of my gym in months!

Extreme Reflecting About Beer

While shopping at Mariano’s grocery store, I paused at the “Build Your Own Six Pack” section of the liquor department and reflected about the sign.

 

Mariano’s was not targeting math majors.

“Endless” implies infinite. Since the beer varieties available are finite, the combinations are too. They are NOT endless.  It has to do with calculating the number of combinations using the total choices and how many of those choices are picked. In this case it would be choosing 6 beers out of an estimated 175.  The mathematical formula is as follows:

n!/r!(n-r)!=n/r

Since I have NO idea why an exclamation point is in a math formula and didn’t know what to do with it, I used an online calculator I found at https://stattrek.com.

After plugging in the numbers 6 and 175 and pushing the “calculate” button, I learned that there are 36,582,584,325 combinations of six packs that could be built at Mariano’s. (I know this is true because I read it on the Internet!) While 36,582,584,325 seems endless, it’s not.

Disproportionate Contemplation About Pizza Parking

While boating up the river in Milwaukee I spied a line of moored vessels.

The sign caught my interest.

 

While I can understand why residents wouldn’t want their riverfront cluttered with docked pizzas, I had hoped that a rogue pepperoni thin crust would anchor in spite of the warning. It would have been a sight to see!

 

 

However, I needed to hurry home to shop at Mariano’s for beer. Figuring out which of the 36,582,584,325 six-packs to purchase is time consuming, but not endless.