Measuring Tape Quotes

Put the damn measuring tape away," Vee ordered. "I already know my size. I don't need reminding.

Would you girls like a free measuring—” “Put the damn measuring tape away,” Vee ordered. “I already know my size. I don’t need reminding.

You can't measure manhood with a tape line around his biceps.

God never measures the mind... He always put His tape measure in the HEART

Jeter de l’huile sur le feu Adding insult to injury As Reynard Wolfe supervises the inventory that determines the company’s fate, I shuffle through correspondence in Louis’s rolltop desk. Louise plays with my chatelaine tools on the Aubusson rug at my feet. She unreels the measuring tape, draws with the pencil, and winds the timepiece. My husband’s gift is useful after all. As

I'm supposed to be here taking measurements, but I haven't even brought a measuring tape. And it's not the apartment I need to measure -- it's the size of my balls.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

I think a persons life is supposed to be like a DVD. You can see the version everyone else sees, or you can choose the directors cut-the way he wanted you to see it, before everything else got in the way. There are menus, probably, so that you can start at the good spots and not have to relive the bad ones. You can measure your life by the number of scenes you’ve survived, or the minutes you’ve been stuck there. Probably, though, life is more like one of those dumb video surveillance tapes. Grainy, no matter how hard you stare at it. And looped: the same thing, over and over.

You can tell all that about me from your measuring tape?' 'Well, I use the metric system, It's the only way to get really exact numbers.

Their lives are like measuring tapes, and they want to trim the lives of other people to same measurements

I proudly show my half-eaten portions to Mom after every meal. She beams. Each Sunday, she weighs me and measures my thighs with a measuring tape.

since I started the Saint Remi Auxiliary for the orphanage. The other auxiliary ladies babble on about Louis—how steadfast, gentle, and loyal he was, never once mentioning his failing wool and wine business. I’ve given them all Etiquette for Ladies. Their words drift to the ceiling with the candle smoke, as my fingers examine the gift Louis gave me last year for my thirty-ninth birthday. I’d hoped for canvas and paints, but he gave me a chatelaine. “Everything you ever need hanging from your belt.” He’d demonstrated each item with such pride, I hid my disappointment. “Thimble, watch, scissors, and measuring tape for your needlework, a funnel for your oils, a pencil, a pantry key, a wax letter seal, and a vial of smelling salts. Uncorking the

Am I lonelier now Than when my sad imagination Had him disappear? Heart torn, Loosing tiny droplets Of sorrow No tape can measure No needle can mend.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they’re right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.

Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions. To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer. • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses. • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others. • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields. • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives. • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.

I carefully lifted out of the pose and spoke up: "Uh, Fran? When I'm doing the pose (camel), I have this feeling in my chest, kind of a scary, tight feeling." Fran was adjusting someone across the room. She had a way of looking like a thoughtful seamstress when she made adjustments: an inch let out here, a seam straightened there, and everything would be just right. She might as well have had pins tucked between her lips and a tape measure around her neck. Without missing a beat or looking up she said, "Oh, that's fear. Try the pose again." Fear. I hadn't even known it was there.

Colonisation is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence. In addition to military and administrative chiefs and a veritable army of churchmen, the Belgians dispatched scientists to Rwanda. The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along. Tutsis had a ‘nobler’, more ‘naturally’ aristocratic dimensions than the ‘coarse’ and ‘bestial’ Hutus. On the ‘nasal index’ for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose.

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?” “I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.” “Thanks, honey.” AWESOME!

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face... As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner.

I looked at it out there. The figures that held my attention, as always (I too had an office at Buna, and spent many hours in front of its window), the figures that held my attention were not the men in stripes, as they queued or scurried in lines or entangled one another in a kind of centipedal scrum, moving at an unnatural speed, like extras in a silent film, moving faster than their strength or build could bear, as if in obedience to a frantic crank swivelled by a furious hand; the figures that held my attention were not the Kapos who screamed at the prisoners, nor the SS noncoms who screamed at the Kapos, nor the overalled company foremen who screamed at the SS noncoms. No. What held my eye were the figures in city business suits, designers, engineers, administrators from IG Farben plants in Frankfurt, Leverkusen, Ludwigshafen, with leather-bound notebooks and retractable yellow measuring tapes, daintily picking their way past the bodies of the wounded, the unconscious, and the dead.

There's a pattern here. In summing up the language of matter, space, and time, I concluded that they are measured by human goals, not just by a scale, a clock, and a tape measure. Now we see that the fourth major category in conceptual semantics, causality, also cares about our intentions and interests.

There must be something in here that can drill through eight miles of solid rock.” He considered a hand drill, a tape measure, a corkscrew, and the iron staff we’d almost died retrieving from Geirrod’s fortress. He threw them all to the floor. “Nothing!” he said in disgust. “Useless junk!” Perhaps you could use your head, Hearthstone signed. That is very hard. “Oh, don’t try to console me, Mr. Elf,” said Thor.

If you try this yourself, I recommend doing so when no one is home. Otherwise, you will run the risk of someone walking in on you and having to witness a scene that includes a mirror, the husband’s Stanley Powerlock tape measure, and the half-undressed self, squatting.

that tape-measure and leave you here with the squashed meatball.” I thought she was joking so I measured her butt.

Those Reddit detectives would have had a field day in here. They’d have whipped out their measuring tapes, their calculators.

Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.

We shall see but little if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

When we use a measuring tape, we are using a system of numbers that is human invented. What are the birds using? And further, how are they storing it in memory? To be stored in memory the measurements have to be encoded in some form and that form has to have an internal consistency to it. In other words it has to possess the same kind of structural integrity as our system of mathematical measurement.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard—generally about as long as a tailor's tape, and we have to put up with it: as also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself—a supposition which is once for all taken for granted.

On the morning of a formal dinner, they started marking off 8, 16, 18, or 20 inch spaces using measuring tapes or rulers and placing cards noting the perfectly symmetrical and equidistant locations for the plates, linens, and so forth

She sighed wickedly. “I wasn’t even saying good-bye to him, but to his penis. Ten inches. I measured it myself with my mother’s measuring tape.” “Shitshitshit. I’ll never let you come near me with a measuring tape.” “I won’t, I swear.

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious.

If you want to know if your kid is going to be fast, the best genetic test right now is a stopwatch. Take him to the playground and have him face the other kids.' Foster's point is that, despite the avant-garde allure of genetic testing, gauging speed indirectly is foolish and inaccurate compared with testing it directly - like measuring a man's height by dropping a ball from a roof and using the time it takes to hit him in the head to determine how tall he is. Why not just use a tape measure?

The seamstress looped her measuring tape around my boobs. The sound she made as she wrote down the number was unmistakably a sound of judgement. "We'll build in cups," she offered delicately. "I should think so," Aunt Olivia replied. "You have such a tiny waist," Lily told me soothingly. There was nothing like starting the day off with a three-way conversation about the size of my boobs where no one actually mentioned my chest, but it was strongly implied that one needed a microscope to see it.

You are quite . . . long,” she said. “Have you ever measured it?” A glint flashed in Cameron’s eyes. “No.” “I must fetch a tape measure then.” Cameron seized her wrist in an impossibly strong grip. “You are not going anywhere or fetching anything. Not now.

Humans spent thousands of years looking up at the stars and wondering what was out there. You guys never saw stars at all but you still worked space travel. What an amazing people you Eridians must be. Scientific geniuses.' The knot in the tape comes loose, recoils wildly, and smacks Rocky's hand. He shakes the affected hand in pain for a moment, then continues messing with the tape measure. 'Yeah, you're definitely a scientist.

Cub had puffed up like a rooster when the article came out, taking it in to show the guys at the gravel company. He was impressed with all the celebrity in equal measure, the type of kid who had cut out pictures of football players, Jesus, and America's Most Wanted to tape on his bedroom wall. He'd confessed to having cried in sixth grade when he learned that superheroes weren't real. Dellarobia was his Wonder Woman. But Hester seemed incensed by the article, which referred to Dellarobia as Our Lady of the Butterflies. Among other complaints, Hester said it made them sound Catholic.

the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

A brick could be used as a measurement of time. Yes, just think how stylish you’ll look with a brick duct taped to your wrist!


He stops playing with the tape measure for a moment. “♩♪♩?

I try to think of other things. David’s hand in mine. That was nice. Innocent, friendly hand-holding. I think of his tape measure. And his haircut. I think about what it might be like to kiss him. Not that I really think of him that way-like a boyfriend or even just some hookup-but still I imagine kissing him would feel good. A true thing. A real thing. I imagine he tastes like honesty.

Ma stood up and I tried to measure her butt and she said “Try it and I’ll tie you up with that tape-measure and leave you here with the squashed meatball.” I thought she was joking so I measured her butt.

Obesity Kills More Americans Than We Thought.’ This headline, from the health news section of CNN’s website on August 15, 2013, commanded readers’ attention. Accompanying the article is an image of a fat black woman. She is wearing a sleeveless top, revealing the dark, fleshy skin of her arms. A tape measure around her waist is being held together by a pair of delicate white hands reaching out from a white lab coat.

drones convened on stools and soft, low-slung couches, whipping out the measuring tape to see who had the biggest complaint and trying to forget that the minute you bury the miserable day it rises from its coffin the next morning, this monster. Jennifer’s invite text received an eager response. She was a quick drinker who bullied and heckled her comrades into keeping pace. She’d make sure he got a full dose of medicine.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

Waist-to-Height Ratio, or WHtR.120 Instead of a scale, grab a simple measuring tape. Stand up straight and take a deep breath, exhale, and let it all hang out. The circumference of your belly (halfway between the top of your hip bones and the bottom of your rib cage) should be half your height—ideally, less. If that measurement is more than half your height, it’s time to start eating healthier and exercising more regardless of your weight.121

I swear,” said Scarlet during the last lesson of the day, “if he says hmm like that one more time, I’m going to strangle him with that bloomin’ tape measure!” I watched as Mr Hardwick went over to the fireplace at the side of the room, one of the remnants of the old house, paused, and then said, “Hmmmmm …” Scarlet jumped up out of her seat, but thankfully the bell rang right at that moment. I quickly dragged her out before she could do any damage.

Happy hour was impenetrable, as bedraggled drones convened on stools and soft, low-slung couches, whipping out the measuring tape to see who had the biggest complaint and trying to forget that the minute you bury the miserable day it rises from its coffin the next morning, this monster. Jennifer’s invite text received an eager response. She was a quick drinker who bullied and heckled her comrades into keeping pace. She’d make sure he got a full dose of medicine.

Gently boiling potatoes make a sound not unlike a small stream moving quickly over rocks. I thought it would be perfect for one of those ambient-noise tapes: The Ocean; Wind in the Pine Trees; Boiling Potatoes. It was very soothing. I measured baking powder to its dulcet tones.

Who were the men in the Bronco?” “If I had to guess, FBI.” “Are they following you?” “Apparently.” “But you made it sound like they couldn’t arrest you.” “Which is exactly why they’re only following me.” “What do they want?” “Information. Names. Dates. Locations. The measurements of my dick.” “Nine and three quarters.” “Excuse me?” “Nine and three quarters.” “My dick is not ten inches long.” “No, I said nine and three quarters.” “Even I’m not that self-inflated.” “Have you ever measured it?” For fear of setting off Morgan’s bullshit o-meter, I had to fess up. “Just under eight and a half.” “When?” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Well, if you did it before the age of twenty, you probably gained an inch.” “My dick is not… okay, even if it was, when did you measure it?” “I had it in my ass. I think I would know.” “Is this where you tell me everyone has a built in ruler and all I need to do is bend over so you can show me how to use mine?” Morgan snorted. “No, but we can test that theory if you want.” If I said anything but hell yeah, it would have been a five-alarm bullshit fire. “My dick is not that big.” And as soon as I got the chance, I was whipping out the tape measure to prove it.

I went to the room in Great Jones Street, a small crooked room, cold as a penny, looking out on warehouses, trucks and rubble. There was snow on the windowledge. Some rags and an unloved ruffled shirt of mine had been stuffed into places where the window frame was warped and cold air entered. The refrigerator was unplugged, full of record albums, tapes, and old magazines. I went to the sink and turned on both taps all the way, drawing an intermittent trickle. Least is best. I tried the radio, picking up AM only at the top of the dial, FM not at all." The industrial loft buildings along Great Jones seemed misproportioned, broad structures half as tall as they should have been, as if deprived of light by the great skyscraper ranges to the north and south." Transparanoia owns this building," he said. She wanted to be lead singer in a coke-snorting hard-rock band but was prepared to be content beating a tambourine at studio parties. Her mind was exceptional, a fact she preferred to ignore. All she desired was the brute electricity of that sound. To make the men who made it. To keep moving. To forget everything. To be that sound. That was the only tide she heeded. She wanted to exist as music does, nowhere, beyond maps of language. Opal knew almost every important figure in the business, in the culture, in the various subcultures. But she had no talent as a performer, not the slightest, and so drifted along the jet trajectories from band to band, keeping near the fervers of her love, that obliterating sound, until we met eventually in Mexico, in somebody's sister's bed, where the tiny surprise of her name, dropping like a pebble on chrome, brought our incoherent night to proper conclusion, the first of all the rest, transactions in reciprocal tourism. She was beautiful in a neutral way, emitting no light, defining herself in terms of attrition, a skinny thing, near blond, far beyond recall from the hard-edged rhythms of her life, Southwestern woman, hard to remember and forget...There was never a moment between us that did not measure the extent of our true connection. To go harder, take more, die first.

Zed pursed his lips and grabbed a nearby book. He placed Jillian’s hand on it and raised his hand. “Jillian Ramsay, I hereby deputize you as a law enforcement official in the Mystic Parish. Do you swear to follow Sheriff Bael Boone’s orders and uphold the law to the best of your ability?” “This is a copy of The Da Vinci Code,” she noted. “Do you swear?” “Define ‘follow orders,’ because I don’t want to accidentally enter into some sort of sex contract with Bael.” She jerked her thumb toward the sheriff, who bobbled the measuring tape he was holding and dropped it on Ted’s chest. Zed frowned. “You OK, buddy?

I can say that I have been a firsthand witness to the Will and Shannon show almost from the beginning. Will treats Shannon like a queen and I know she adores him. Now I have to tell you that I haven’t always appreciated this, despite the fact that I received some of the benefit of the royal treatment bestowed upon Shannon. I think 'nauseating’ was the term I used to describe them when they were first engaged to be engaged. I think ‘unbearable’ was another word I used. . . . You’ll all start to learn the quirky things about them that I’ve seen. When they’re together, you’ll rarely find them more than ten feet apart from each other. I’ve honestly thought about getting a measuring tape.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The thing that impressed me most was that Eddie should have been bitter and he was not. He had used the incident for his own entertainment and mine. Whether he also used it for my edification I do not know. But I thought about this old man then. And his people. Thought about how they’d been slaughtered, almost wiped out, forced to live on settlements that were more like concentration camps, then poked, prodded, measured and taped, had photos of their sacred business printed in colour in heavy academic anthropological texts, had their sacred secret objects stolen and taken to museums, had their potency and integrity drained from them at every opportunity, had been reviled and misunderstood by almost every white in the country, and then finally left to rot with their cheap booze and our diseases and their deaths, and I looked at this marvellous old half-blind codger laughing his socks off as if he had never experienced any of it, never been the butt of a cruel ignorant bigoted contempt, never had a worry in his life, and I thought, OK old man, if you can, me too.

It's all a conundrum, isn't it— forgetting the mixed tape in the car... feeling forgotten when... so many people are thinking of us? Drinking when we should be eating... sleeping when we should be making love... thanking God above when we don't have enough? Each day is a mad rush to something irrelevant. We measure our pricelessness by our successes, which... still equals money. Life goes by so quick when each day is a mad rush to slow motion. We eat fast food so that we can go to bed on time, but, trust me, everyone wakes up too late.

And I've been counting and recounting all the finite experiences that it never seemed to matter at all: riding on a subway, getting sand in my shoes at the beach, being woken up by the sound of a neighbor's barking dog. Because do you ever look at your life and say, hey, how many more times will I ever pack a suitcase for a trip, or write my name with a mechanical pencil, or use a tape measure? Every experience we have, everything is finite. That’s what it is to be human - because everything we do, or don't do but think about doing, is strained through our awareness of limits. Maybe there was some comfort, some beauty, in being a cog where the infinite was feasible.

Old Dudley would get out his gun and take it apart and, as Rabie cleaned the pieces, would explain the mechanism to him. Then he’d put it together again. Rabie always marveled at the way he could put it together again. Old Dudley would have liked to have explained New York to Rabie. If he could have showed it to Rabie, it wouldn’t have been so big—he wouldn’t have felt pressed down every time he went out in it. “It ain’t so big,” he would have said. “Don’t let it get you down, Rabie. It’s just like any other city and cities ain’t all that complicated.” But they were. New York was swishing and jamming one minute and dirty and dead the next. His daughter didn’t even live in a house. She lived in a building—the middle in a row of buildings all alike, all blackened-red and gray with rasp-mouthed people hanging out their windows looking at other windows and other people just like them looking back. Inside you could go up and you could go down and there were just halls that reminded you of tape measures strung out with a door every inch. He remembered he’d been dazed by the building the first week. He’d wake up expecting the halls to have changed in the night and he’d look out the door and there they stretched like dog runs. The streets were the same way. He wondered where he’d be if he walked to the end of one of them. One night he dreamed he did and ended at the end of the building—nowhere.

One of the problems is that Dublin is, and I mean literally and topographically, flat - so that everything has to take place on a single plane. Other cities have metro systems, which add depth, and steep hills or skyscrapers for height, but Dublin has only short squat grey buildings and trams that run along the street. And it has no courtyards or roof gardens like continental cities, which at least break up the surface, if not vertically, then conceptually. Have you thought about this before? Maybe even if you haven't, you've noticed it at some subconscious level. It's hard to go very far up in Dublin or very low down, hard to lose yourself or other people, or to gain a sense of perspective. You might think it's a democratic way to organise a city - so that everything happens face to face, I mean, on equal footing. True, no one is looking down on you all from a height. But it gives the sky a position of total dominance. Nowhere is the sky meaningfully punctuated or broken up by anything at all. The Spire, you might point out, and I will concede the Spire, which is anyway the narrowest possible of interruptions, and dangles like a measuring tape to demonstrate the diminutive size of every other edifice around. The totalising effect of the sky is bad for people there. Nothing ever intervenes to block the thing from view. It0s like a memento more. I wish someone would cut a hole in it for you.

But the truth is, there’s little even the most organized people can do to prepare themselves for having children. They can buy all the books, observe friends and relations, review their own memories of childhood. But the distance between those proxy experiences and the real thing, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. Prospective parents have no clue what their children will be like; no clue what it will mean to have their hearts permanently annexed; no clue what it will feel like to second-guess so many seemingly simple decisions, or to be multitasking even while they’re brushing their teeth, or to have a ticker tape of concerns forever whipping through their heads. Becoming a parent is one of the most sudden and dramatic changes in adult life.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

You should give him a picture of you to keep him company, if you know what I mean.” She frowns at me. “Do you know what I mean?” “Like, a sexy picture? No way!” I start backing away from her. “Look, I’ve gotta go to class.” The last thing I want to do is think about Peter and random girls. I’m still trying to get used to the idea that we won’t be together at UVA this fall. Chris rolls her eyes. “Calm down. I’m not talking about a nudie. I would never suggest that for you of all people. What I’m talking about is a pinup-girl shot, but not, like, cheesy. Sexy. Something Kavinsky can hang up in his dorm room.” “Why would I want him to hang up a sexy picture of me in his dorm room for all the world to see?” Chris reaches out and flicks me on the forehead. “Ow!” I shove her away from me and rub the spot where she flicked me. “That hurt!” “You deserved it for asking such a dumb question.” She sighs. “I’m talking about preventative measures. A picture of you on his wall is a way for you to mark your territory. Kavinsky’s hot. And he’s an athlete. Do you think other girls will respect the fact that he’s in a long-distance relationship?” She lowers her voice and adds, “With a Virgin Mary girlfriend?” I gasp and then look around to see if anyone heard. “Chris!” I hiss. “Can you please not?” “I’m just trying to help you! You have to protect what’s yours, Lara Jean. If I met some hot guy in Costa Rica with a long-distance gf who he wasn’t even sleeping with? I don’t think I’d take it very seriously.” She gives me a shrug and a sorry-not-sorry look. “You should definitely frame the picture too, so people know you’re not someone to mess with. A frame says permanence. A picture taped on a wall says here today, gone tomorrow.” I chew on my bottom lip thoughtfully. “So maybe a picture of me baking, in an apron--” “With nothing underneath?” Chris cackles, and I flick her forehead lightning quick. “Ow!” “Get serious then!

Tucker “But what’s the deal with the smaller cot or whatever?” Hate “Oh, that’s just the icing on this cake of bullshit.” Credit “OK, when we got to our place for the first time, since it was so shitty, I let Hate pick the cot he wanted, and I took the other one. Well, after a few days, Hate started to suspect that my cot was larger than his cot.” Tucker “We’re talking about cots? Like, these are just two pieces of fabric tied between sticks?” Credit “Oh yeah. No doubt. It was impossible for these to be more shitty. So anyway, Hate starts obsessing over the cots, every day he’s talking about the cots, and how maybe I got the larger cot, and on and on. So one day we bought a tape measure and measured them—” Credit is laughing too hard to even continue, and Hate can’t contain himself. Hate “HIS COT WAS TWO INCHES WIDER THAN MINE!!” Credit “Hate, I let you pick the cot you wanted!” Hate “It doesn’t matter—YOU GOT THE LARGER COT!! EVEN AFTER YOU FUCKED EVERYTHING UP!!

An inventor's depth and breadth were measured by their work history. The U.S. Patent Trademark Office categorizes technology into four hundred fifty different classes -- exercise, devices, electrical connectors, marine propulsion, and myriad more. Specialists tended to have their patents in a narrow range of classes. A specialist might work for years only on understanding a type of plastic composed of a particular small group of chemical elements. Generalists, meanwhile, might start in masking tape, which would lead to a surgical adhesives project, which spawned an idea for veterinary medicine. Their patents were spread across many classes. The polymaths had depth in a core area -- so they had numerous patents in that area -- but they were not as deep as the specialists. They aslo had breadth, even more than the generalists, having worked across dozens of technology classes. Repeatedly, they took expertise accrued in one domain and applied it in a completely new one, which meant they were constantly learning new technologies. Over the course of their careers, the polymaths' breadth increased markedly as they learned about "the adjacent stuff," while they actually lost a modicum of depth.

There was nothing pretty or elegant about their robot. Compared to the gleaming machines other teams had constructed, Stinky was a study in simplicity. The PVC, the balloon, the tape measure—in each case they had chosen the most straightforward solution to a problem. It was an approach that grew naturally out of watching family members fix cars, manufacture mattresses, and lay irrigation piping. To a large swath of the population, driveway mechanics, box-frame builders, and gardeners did not represent the cutting edge of engineering know-how. They were low-skilled laborers who didn’t have access to real technology. Stinky represented this low-tech approach to engineering. But that was exactly what had impressed the judges. Lisa Spence, the NASA judge, believed that there was no reason to come up with a complex solution when an elementary one would suffice. She felt that Carl Hayden’s robot was “conceptually similar” to the machines she encountered at NASA. The guys were in shock. They marched back up to the stage and looked out at the audience with dazed smiles. Lorenzo felt a rush of emotion. The judges’ Special Prize wasn’t a consolation award. These people were giving them real recognition.

So the [Binet-Simon]test results were always related to time. Thereby producing a new figure -- a measurement of intelligence. A calculated figure,and hence quite objective, All the psychologist had done was to let the children read and answer the questions, record them on a tape, note the times, double-check the figures and refer to the evaluation table. Everything clear and obvious. So that the result was, by and large, exempt from human uncertainty. Almost scientific.

Try this: Fill a glass with water. Measure the water level as carefully as you can and put a mark there; use a piece of tape and a pen or pencil, or maybe a felt-tipped marker. Put the glass of water in a microwave and run it, just for a minute or so. Look very carefully at the mark on the tape. The water level will have gone up—just a little. So it is with the world’s ocean. As it gets warmer—just a little bit warmer—it will get bigger, just a little. Water expands when warmed. The warming of seawater is a major cause of our rising sea levels. Melting glaciers and ice sheets also contribute to the rise. As the ocean expands, it will overrun seaports around the world. Wharves and streets that provide access to the cargo that comes and goes are just a meter or two, a few feet, above the level of the sea surface.

If we measured the lengths Of our miseries with tape, I would be bested by him, Only by useful inches, Every inch counts. In a tight room of private unspoken evil, Inches discrete life from death, An inch on a wrist. An inch from the ground, An inch in your bed, An inch from madness.

There’s a primer,” continued Lightfoote. “I know it. I just can’t figure it out. There’s a measuring stick in this mess!” Lopez sighed. “So you’ve been saying since dawn. But it’s a quarter to five and there hasn’t been anything more. Don’t you get hangovers?” “Cyborg.” “Right. I’d forgotten.” They’d been staring at the reconstructed image for hours, assembled on the computer from several photos Houston had taken, completing the half obtained from Fawkes’s file. “What do you make of it, Francisco?” Houston had asked after they stitched the images together. “Nothing,” he’d sighed. “Just more crazy.” But from early on Lightfoote had disagreed. As the night had limped by, she continued staring at the news clippings, scrap paper, words and diagrams, equations and images John Nash had taped and pinned together across the giant poster board. “Look. This isn’t coincidence. Numbers!” she gestured to

I needed to grab another box of screws, but, when I got to the truck, I realized I’d left my wallet in my tool bucket. When I went back ground the house to get it, she had my plans open and was double-checking all my measurements.” Emma’s cheeks burned when Gram laughed at Sean’s story, but, since she couldn’t deny it, she stuck her last bite of the fabulous steak he’d grilled into her mouth. “That’s my Emma,” Gram said. “I think her first words were ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’” “In my defense,” she said when she’d swallowed, pointing her fork at Sean for emphasis, “my name is on the truck, and being able to pound nails doesn’t make you a builder. I have a responsibility to my clients to make sure they get quality work.” “I do quality work.” “I know you build a quality deck, but stairs are tricky.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I had to double-check.” “It’s all done but the seating now and it’s good work, even though I practically had to duct tape you to a tree in order to work in peace.” She might have taken offense at his words if not for the fact he was playing footsie with her under the table. And when he nudged her foot to get her to look at him, he winked in that way that—along with the grin—made it almost impossible for her to be mad at him. “It’s Sean’s turn to wash tonight. Emma, you dry and I’ll put away.” “I’ll wash, Gram. Sean can dry.” “I can wash,” Sean told her. “The world won’t come to an end if I wash the silverware before the cups.” “It makes me twitch.” “I know it does. That’s why I do it.” He leaned over and kissed her before she could protest. “That new undercover-cop show I like is on tonight,” Gram said as they cleared the table. “Maybe Sean won’t snort his way through this episode.” He laughed and started filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’m sorry, but if he keeps shoving his gun in his waistband like that, he’s going to shoot his…he’s going to shoot himself in a place men don’t want to be shot.” Emma watched him dump the plates and silverware into the water—while three coffee mugs sat on the counter waiting to be washed—but forced herself to ignore it. “Can’t be worse than the movie the other night.” “That was just stupid,” Sean said while Gram laughed. They’d tried to watch a military-action movie and by the time they were fifteen minutes in, she thought they were going to have to medicate Sean if they wanted to see the end. After a particularly heated lecture about what helicopters could and couldn’t do, Emma had hushed him, but he’d still snorted so often in derision she was surprised he hadn’t done permanent damage to his sinuses. “I don’t want you to think that’s real life,” he told them. “I promise,” Gram said, “if I ever want to use a tank to break somebody out of a federal prison, I’ll ask you how to do it correctly first.” Sean kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Cat. At least you appreciate me, unlike Emma, who just tells me to shut up.” “I’d appreciate you more if there wasn’t salad dressing floating in the dishwater you’re about to wash my coffee cup in.” “According to the official guy’s handbook, if I keep doing it wrong, you’re supposed to let me watch SportsCenter while you do it yourself.” “Did the official guy’s handbook also tell you that if that happens, you’ll also be free to watch the late-night sports show while I do other things myself?

Mark Patkowski (1980) studied the relationship between age and the acquisition of features of a second language other than pronunciation. He hypothesized that, even if accent were ignored, only those who had begun learning their second language before the age of 15 could achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski studied 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. They had started to learn English at various ages, but all had lived in the United States for more than five years. He compared them to 15 native-born Americans with a similarly high level of education, whose variety of English could be considered the second language speakers’ target language. The main question in Patkowski’s research was: ‘Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?’ However, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences that some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a person’s success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal ESL instruction each speaker had had. A lengthy interview with each person was tape-recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the results would be affected by accent, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews and asked trained native-speaker judges to place each transcript on a scale from 0 (no knowledge of English) to 5 (a level of English expected from an educated native speaker). The findings were quite dramatic. The transcripts of all native speakers and 32 out of 33 second language speakers who had begun learning English before the age of 15 were rated 4+ or 5. The homogeneity of the pre-puberty learners suggests that, for this group, success in learning a second language was almost inevitable. In contrast, 27 of the 32 post-puberty learners were rated between 3 and 4, but a few learners were rated higher (4+ or 5) and one was rated at 2+. The performance of this group looked like the sort of range one would expect if one were measuring success in learning almost any kind of skill or knowledge: some people did extremely well; some did poorly; most were in the middle.

OrbiTape One-handed Tape Measure

But what on earth was my mother-in-law doing with a tape measure in my living room in the middle of the night?

Harry suddenly realised that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes.

Where is she?’ asked Harry, grabbing the tape measure and unrolling his own homework. ‘Somewhere over there,’ said Ron, pointing along the shelves, ‘looking for another book. I think she’s trying to read the whole library before Christmas.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Ever since I was a child, ever since I became wrongly convinced I had to be bigger and smarter than I really was, I’ve been trying to perform, trying to convince people I was more capable than I really was. I’d been sending that same nine-year-old kid who took the tape recorder apart out into the world to speak and perform and interact with people. She asked me to come back and sit in the adult chair and tell the nine-year-old what I thought about him. I didn’t know what to say. She asked me to imagine what he looked like, and I immediately pictured the chubby kid from the movie The Goonies. I smiled. I liked the kid. He was funny and disarming and yet still only nine years old. He seemed alone and afraid, and the only way he could get attention was to convince everybody around him he was smarter and stronger than he actually was. My therapist asked me, again, to say something to him. I looked at him for a while and he looked back, wide eyed and curious. I finally spoke up and said I liked him. I told him I thought he was funny and charming and smart. “Anything else?” my therapist said. “Yeah,” I said. “I also want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you out there in the world so you could impress people for us and fight for us and make money for us while I sat in here and read books.” The moment was powerful for me. I’d completely disassociated from the kid who had taken apart his tape recorder. I hardly knew him. I’d not raised him to maturity and he’d spent the last thirty years lonely and desperate for attention. It’s no wonder I hid from the world. It’s no wonder parties made me tired or I got exhausted after I spoke. It’s no wonder criticism made me angry or I overreacted to failure. I think the part of me I sent out to interact with the world was, in some ways, underdeveloped, still trying to be bigger and smarter as a measure of survival.

If you try to measure love's power, you will run out of measuring tape.

the measuring tape around the girth of Inez’s cleavage again, checking her measurements. “Hips—36 inches.  Waist—30 inches.  Bust—43 inches which translates into about a 38DD.  Hardly small, Sven.  Much more like the perfect figure to me.” She winked at Inez in her defense.

Mrs. Proudie insisted on our going down to the house,” continued the mother, “and when there, I thought I might save a journey by measuring some of the rooms and windows; so I got a knot of tape from Bobbins. Bobbins is as civil as you please, now.” “I wouldn’t thank him,” said Letty the younger. “Oh, it’s the way of the world, my dear. They all do just the same. You might just as well be angry with the turkey cock for gobbling at you. It’s the bird’s nature.” And as she enunciated to her bairns the upshot of her practical experience, she pulled from her pocket the portions of tape which showed the length and breadth of the various rooms at the hospital house.

A political/relational model of disability, on the other hand, makes room for more activist responses, seeing “disability” as a potential site for collective reimagining. Under this kind of framework, “disability awareness” simulations can be reframed to focus less on the individual experience of disability—or imagined experience of disability—and more on the political experience of disablement. For example, rather than placing nondisabled students in wheelchairs, the Santa Barbara-based organization People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) places them in bathrooms, armed with measuring tapes and clipboards, to track the failures and omissions of the built environment. As my fellow restroom revolutionaries explain in our manifesto, “This switch in focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change in ways that ‘awareness exercises’ may not.” In creating and disseminating a “restroom checklist,” PISSAR imagines a future of disability activism, one with disability rights activists demanding accessible spaces; contrast that approach with the simulation exercises, in which “awareness” is the future goal, rather than structural or systemic change.

my books are well-worn hand tools—hammers, tin snips, measuring tapes, and vice grips—to help me remodel my brain.

What’s the tape measure for?” “Measurements.” I rolled my eyes. “Wow, never would’ve figured that one out. What are you measuring for? Are you my fairy god-demon now? Am I going to the ball?

Please don’t let me mess this up. Please. I’ll just die. But then the tape grows taut and I’m not even all the way up his leg yet. I give it a tug with a grunt, trying not to make eye contact with the man’s lower body as I work with the tape. Then, to my total horror, the tape snaps and pings Blaze right in the area I was trying to avoid. He grunts and steps back, covering his crotch with both hands. A tear slides down his left cheek. This is so much worse than going up too high with the tape. So much worse. I stare at him dumbfounded for a few seconds before I find words. But instead of offering an apology, I hold up the two broken pieces of tape and frown at him. “You’re so big, you broke my measuring tape!

Frikkie said, “Van der Merwe had a flagpole lying on the ground. He propped it in its hole, got a ladder and a tape measure and tried to climb up to measure it, but the flagpole fell down. Twice again he propped it up and tried to climb it. Finally a Kaffir said, ‘Baas, why don’t you measure it when it’s on the ground?’ and Van der Merwe said, ‘Stupid Kaffir, I want to know its height, not its width.’ ” Jopie said,

Attempting to sustain GDP growth in an economy that may actually be close to maturing can drive governments to take desperate and destructive measures. They deregulate—or rather reregulate—finance in the hope of unleashing new productive investment, but end up unleashing speculative bubbles, house price hikes and debt crises instead. They promise business that they will ‘cut red tape’, but end up dismantling legislation that was put in place to protect workers’ rights, community resources and the living world. They privatise public services—from hospitals to railways—turning public wealth into private revenue streams. They add the living world into the national accounts as ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘natural capital’, assigning it a value that looks dangerously like a price. And, despite committing to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C’, many such governments chase after the ‘cheap’ energy of tar sands and shale gas, while neglecting the transformational public investments needed for a clean-energy revolution. These policy choices are akin to throwing precious cargo off a plane that is running out of fuel, rather than admitting that it may soon be time to touch down.

And the measuring tape? And all the craft supplies, for that matter?

So, dear fat people, what I want to say to you is this: You are loved. You are worthy, and you are capable of so much more than you think. And a number, whether it be on a scale or a measuring tape, cannot quantify the value that you have; it cannot count all the ways that this world needs you; it cannot define your health or project your success. Your weight does not measure your worth. And if I can give only one piece of advice, it is this: be visible.

Suppose we wanted to transmit this knowledge, everything we had ever learned, to another world. First we would want to make the representation as compact as possible. By squeezing out redundancies we could compress the number so that it would occupy smaller and smaller spaces. In fact, if we are adept enough we can represent the number in a manner that requires almost no space whatsoever. We simply take the long string of digits and put a decimal point in front of it so that it becomes a fraction between 0 and 1, a mere point on a line. Then we choose a smooth stick and declare one end 0 and the other end 1. Measuring carefully, we make a notch in the stick -- a point on the continuum representing the number. All of our history, our philosophy, our music, our art, our science -- everything we know would be implicit in that single mark. To retrieve the world's knowledge, one would measure the distance of the notch from the end of the stick, then convert the number back into the books, the music, the images. The success of the scheme would depend on the fineness of the mark and the exactness of the measurement. The slightest imprecision would cause whole Libraries of Alexandria to burn. [...] Suppose the medicine men of Otowi had discovered this trick. Suppose, contrary to all evidence, that they had developed a written language, a number system, and tools of enough precision to encode a single book of sacred knowledge into the notch of a prayer stick -- the very book, perhaps, that explains what the symbols on the rock walls mean. And suppose a hiker, exploring one day in the caves above Otowi, found the stick. Could the knowledge be recovered? [...] Aliens trying to decode our records might recognize what seemed to be deliberate patterns in the markings of ink on pages or the fluctuating magnetic fields of computer disks (though, again, if the information had been highly compressed, it would be harder and harder to distinguish from randomness). If they persisted, would they find truths to marvel at, signs of kindred minds? Or would they even recognize the books and tapes as things that might be worth analyzing? One can't go around measuring every notch on every stick.

Ma stood up and I tried to measure her butt and she said “Try it and I’ll tie you up with that tape-measure and leave you here with the squashed meatball.

It needs something more than imagination and something more than constructive power to place Middle-garth and Utgard in their due relation one to the other. Re-experience is needed. We have to build up the world anew, without regard to all we have learned, irrespective of atlas and topography. With us, the world is formed by setting observations in their place according to measuring tape and compass, but if we are to build up Middle-garth and Utgard as well, then we must take experiences as a weight — and bear in mind withal, that no scales and standard weights can here avail; all must be weighed in the hand. Experiences are too many and various to be expressed in numbers and measurements at all. They consist not only of the impressions produced by the external eye, but have also an inner reality. When we learn that the ancients imagined the limit of the world as situate close outside their village, we are apt to conceive their horizon as narrowed accordingly; but the decisive point in their view of the world lies rather in the fact that the contents of their horizon was far deeper than we think. How large is the village? Meeting the question in words of our own, but as near to the thoughts of the ancients themselves as may be, the answer must run; It houses ourselves, it is filled with honour, with luck, with fruitfulness — and this is equal to saying, that it is the world. Yes, the village is Middle-garth itself.

Are you going to frisk me?" he asked when I stepped in close to measure the width of his shoulders. He smelled of pine and leather and the fresh ocean breeze--- wild and free. "This is a custom tailor shop, not a police station." "I might have a dangerous weapon in my pocket," he teased. I pulled the measuring tape tight under his arms, reminding myself that I was a professional. I was totally unaffected by the rock-hard pecs that flexed under my hands or the fact that I was now so close, I could feel the heat of his body. It was disconcertingly intimate. I'd measured many clients over the years for my dad and not once had I ever felt like I needed an immediate date with my vibrator.

Installing tape-in hair extensions on short hair may initially seem daunting, but fear not! With the right technique and a touch of patience, you can achieve stunning, voluminous locks. In this step-by-step guide, we'll walk you through the process, providing clear instructions and helpful tips to ensure a seamless installation. Supplies You'll Need: Before diving in, gather the following supplies: tape-in hair extensions, sectioning clips, a fine-tooth comb, hair cutting shears (optional), a hair straightener (optional), and hair extension adhesive remover (if reusing extensions). Step 1: Prepare Your Hair and Section It Begin by thoroughly washing and drying your hair. If desired, straighten your natural hair with a flat iron to facilitate blending. Next, use sectioning clips to divide your hair into manageable sections, starting with a horizontal parting at the nape of your neck and working your way up. Step 2: Get the Extensions Ready Lay out the tape-in hair extensions, ensuring they're in the correct order for installation. If you're reusing extensions, carefully remove any remaining adhesive using a hair extension adhesive remover. Step 3: Measure, Trim, and Apply the First Extension Hold a tape-in extension against your scalp, starting from the bottom of a sectioned hair portion. Measure it against your natural hair length and trim accordingly, leaving a small gap between the extension and your scalp. Remove the protective backing from one side of the tape and press it firmly against the roots of your hair, just below the sectioned hair. Step 4: Sandwich and Repeat Take another tape-in extension with the sticky side exposed and place it over the top of the first extension, sandwiching your natural hair in between. Apply firm pressure to secure the extensions together. Repeat this process, working your way up in rows until you reach the top of your head. Step 5: Blend, Style, and Maintain Use a fine-tooth comb to blend your natural hair with the extensions, ensuring a seamless look. Style your hair as desired, using heat tools or styling products if needed. Follow the maintenance guidelines provided by the hair extension manufacturer to keep your extensions looking their best, and avoid excessive heat or oily products near the tape area to prevent slippage. Step 6: Removal Process When it's time to remove the extensions, use a professional hair extension adhesive remover for a gentle and safe removal process. Conclusion: By following this comprehensive guide, you'll confidently install tape-in hair extensions on short hair, unleashing a world of voluminous and glamorous hairstyles. Remember to take your time, follow the instructions diligently, and seek professional assistance if necessary. Embrace the transformation and enjoy your stunning new look!

Get a simple tape measure and measure four locations: both upper arms (mid-bicep), waist

Do you still want that measuring tape? I can go find one now and settle the debate.

Then I think, what the hell, a flight from Newark to Jamaica takes as long as the walk to this village did, so yeah, I do live near Jamaica. Their eyes light up with excitement. One of them runs out and returns minutes later with a cassette tape. It turns out that James is the only one in the commune who owns a cassette player and his friend is the only one to own a tape, and it’s Bob Marley’s Legend.

Needles—sharps, betweens, milliner’s, darners, tapestry, embroidery, beading, for all that must be pierced and adorned and joined together Pin cushion, apple-shaped, with a felt stem, to keep pins from getting lost Thimble, your mother’s, gold, on a chain, a tiny loop soldered to the top; wear it on your index finger so you won’t prick yourself, or around your neck, to remember Measuring tape, for determining shape and size, yards, inches, centimeters, the distance from here to there Thread—mercerized, nylon silk, textured, floss Fabric, swatches and yards and bolts, wool, silk, linen, net, whatever will come next, whatever will be made The pattern? Will it come from a drawer at the fabric store—McCall’s, Butterick, Simplicity, names from your childhood, the instructions in an envelope, the outcome preordained? Or will you make it up as you

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.