This morning over breakfast, I said to my wife, “Happy π day!”
“Happy pie day? What the hell are you talking about?”
“No, not ‘pie’,” I said. “‘π’.”
“Not ‘pie,’ but ‘pie.'” She was clearly not amused. “Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”
“Anne, look at the date on the calendar.”
“Yes it’s march 14th, and you’re going to watch WrestleMania dos equis* with your brother.” She frowned. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re taking a pie to Jeremy’s house? Because if you expect me to make you a pie . . .”
“No, I don’t expect you to make me a pie.” I said, well into that area where you’ve explained the joke so much, it’s never going to be funny.
“Today is March fourteenth. That makes it 3.14 on the calendar. 3.14 is also known as π.”
She blinked a few times.
“Oh. It’s π day.”
“Yes!” I said. “And at 1:59 pm, it will be even more π day. Isn’t that cool!?”
She took a long, thoughtful drink from her coffee mug, carefully set it down and said, “You are such a nerd.”
126 thoughts on “i shit a piece of π”
Comments are closed.
I’ve never celebrated pi day.
But I think it’s fricking ironic that Indy, who has been celebrating for years, posted his comment at precisely 1:59
Geekier than thou! Pi Day is also my birthday, and so I had it tattooed onto my person.
Wow!
I’ll bet Corey Feldman never had such an original thought.
Even though the kid’s had more hairPIE than the Beatles.
I just wanted to take this time to comment on this particular blog entry and let you know that this blog entry has absolutley no relevance or purpose of any kind whatsoever. It is 5 minutes of my life wasted and 5 minutes of my life I will never get back. No one has benefitted from this horrible trend of thought in any purposeful way and we are all the more stupid for having read it.
Thank you.
Can I just say that I LOVE your wife! She says the same things about you that I do to my significant other. He is such a geek sometimes too. Gotta love it!! 🙂
C’mon Wil, what did Anne really call you? I doubt she called you a nerd. Had I been having that conversation with you, I’d crack that coffee mug over your head for subjecting me to the most ridiculous topic of discussion ever.
N day. Pie day. Are you for real?
Well, if your browser is displaying “N” or “n” instead of π, I can see how you’d miss the joke.
It’s “pi” vs. “pie.”
why DO you Americans always put the dates back to front and have such trouble with spelling?
It’s true. You’re a huge nerd.
My birthday was the day before pi day, but my dorky brother sent me a happy pi day email on the 14th instead of a happy birthday email on the 13th. I guess since I have a math degree I should be proud of the kid – but a birthday email could have killed him?
Yeah every year G and R have a pi party. Everyone makes homemade pies and it starts at 1:59. This year we had a great crawfish pie and D’s mom brought over a kickin strawberry rhubarb pie. I probably gained an extra 2.65 lbs. Good stuff being a geek with a geeky community. Hehe…
holy crap! my high school chemistry teacher made us celebrate pi day! there was another one, but i can’t remember it. it was in october.
wow… that’s weird. i haven’t thought of that since. well, high school.. 1992? ew.
Well, you’re not alone Wil:
After reading your blog, realizing that it was indeed Pi Day, and thinking it was the coolest thing ever, I wished my friends a Happy Pi Day. And they ALL called me a dork. Considering how important Pi is to life as we know it, it shouldn’t be so underappreciated!
it’s true what they say, all the good nerds are taken. I celebrated pi day alone, because all the men in my life just don’t get it. they told me it is just a commercialized holiday and they refused to participate.
at 1:59 exactly, i burned my nag champra and ate blueberry pie a la mode (no reason, i just had a craving.)
i love you wil!
someday, my prince will come.
Every year on Thanksgiving, my mother makes two apple pies. One of them has a piece of dough shaped like an apple; the other, one shaped like the Greek letter “pi”. And my brother and I often, when we ask about pie, say that we want a piece of 3.1415926535897932384626433832… (and, unlike Brad who posted above, that was from memory).
Of course, since e doesn’t have the same prestige as pi, I’ve only memorized its first ten digits: 2.718281828.
I always love running into fellow geeks on the web – that also shows that the part of Wesley Crusher was well-cast: the actor is almost as much of a geek as he was! (Of course, as a physicist, I enjoy picking apart the Trek technobabble – for example, in real physics, a tachyon is a particle that only exists in “sick” theories because it has imaginary mass and, therefore, travels at v > c…)
I guess we are a household of nerds. My daughter and niece made a special trip to the market on Sunday to get blueberries so we all could celebrate pi day with a pie and pi recitation.
Now, what to do next year for e day. We hadn’t thought of doing that one before…
it’s great to be a nerd
You are a GIGANTIC nerd.
I like that. 😀
Wil,
Pi day? You are such a nerd. 🙂
This is why I love your site.
Keep it up, nerd-brethren!
Melissa
Wil, i would have given you a “Tyler Perry.com Medea” look, taken a drag on my fictional cigarette, pointed my finger, rolled my eyes in your direction and said: “Some’m wrong with you chile” and walked da hell off!!!!!!
Don’t worry kiddo. I amuse easily, as well.
BTW, you got better pictures of the Mendenhall Glacier than I did, when I lived in Juneau and hiked Mt. Roberts last summer. Love ya. Keep it up.
As cool as Pi Day is, why didn’t you mention March 15th as the imfamous Ides of March, the day Jullius Ceaser was assinated? That’s my birthday and I think it’s cool!
At 1:59 on 3/14, my car’s odometer hit 31416. No shit.
I don’t feel like such a geek having recorded the Frantics from CBC radio back in the early 80s on Canadian Tire house brand cassettes. With all due respect to the gods of television, the Frantics were much better on the radio. I still chuckle when I think about Todd Booster battling Moo Moo Bunnylips. My buddy Malcolm and I would laugh like crazy about it on Monday morning in calculus class.
Wow! I really was a geek, wasn’t I?
I totally missed pi day (was on the Greyhound). Gonna celebrate it (along with St. Patrick’s day) when my mutual geek of a boyfriend (Patrick) returns from France.
All hail the 3.14159!
Btw, did you know March 14th is Einstein’s b-day?
Shoot… Eva beat me… 🙁
to Craig:
Why can’t the University of Minnesota have a college math team… *cries* Can you e-mail me with what college you go to so I can apply?
Embrace your inner nerd!
hey, I never realized that my birthday is N day. (who’s the bigger nerd NOW?!)
ja, nerdess
you smell… worse than me
Hey, does that mean that we in the UK have to wait until 31st April as we tell the date differently??