Busy with anything except blogging

Last week was quite busy. At work of course, but also at home and in the evenings. My Freemason's lodge required two evenings. One evening there was a so-called "Open Lodge". When I just had joined Freemasonry, I found this a strange name because all Open Lodges are closed for non-Freemasons, not even invités. It's called "open" because after opening it is a really functioning Lodge, mostly a ritual is performed, somebody is initiated, etc. So to let the Lodge function, it first has to be opened, just as you open your car before you can drive (I won't compare Freemasonry with a car, though).

Furthermore a new column in our school magazine had been published. It was slightly satirical towards the school board and colleagues. I got a number of positive reactions, and one negative. Well, I think a sound organisation must be resistent against slight satire, not offending or blasphemic etc.

Every working day (all working days of the week except Thursday, then it's my weekly day off) I bike to and fro my work because Janine's workplace is farther away than mine so she has the car, and I find two cars a waste of money. On top of that I feel fitter, paradoxically the bike trips give energy instead of taking it. And then, the foto opportunities. The only thing is that when spring comes, also the breaking-ups of the roads arrive. Last year a bridge was under re-construction, this year another bridge, so I have to make détours.

Today, Saturday I was busy all day with household work and Menno. Menno had been (very) naughty and had home-arrest all day. After dinner he said he didn't find it unpleasant, not really a punishment. He always finds something to do and never says "I'm so bored, I don't know what to do", not even when he is not allowed to play computergames or watch TV. I played a boardgame with him, and "four-on-a-row" between the ironing ant the cooking.

In-between I am re-reading "Escher, Gödel, Bach" and discovered that I had forgotten most of its content since I read (parts of) it some twenty years ago. On the bike from work I was immediately giving free reins to my fantasy about his main theme "Remarkable Loops". The universe, so has recently been discovered, is expanding at a faster and faster rate. Before this discovery, some scholars held it for possible that the expanding rate would slow down and ultimately would reverse into a falling back of matter, until a "big crunch" (opposite of "big bang") would result. Maybe, I fantasied, a Remarkable Loop would cause the expanding force to meet itself somewhere in the universe. This is possible because the universe has no boundaries according to Euclidian geometry, but it has according to cosmological mathematics which hold it possible that an object or particle after an almost endless travel across the universe, arrives at the same place where it started. Well, when the Remarkable Loop would have caused a meeting event of the expanding force, this would be such an enormous catastrophe, that a new big bang would occur.

Maybe this reasoning of mine will inspire some ingenious cosmologist to transform it into a mathematical hypothesis, to be tested not by experiment, but by mathematics. (S)he has to take care not to be lured into a remarkable loop. But I'm afraid I will take this idea with me into my grave.