Six of a Kind

Million Dollar Highway Gold
Wouldn't you know it? I'm 200 hits away from being able to actually watch, live, in person, as my page hit counter rolls to 4,000,000, and my internet provider says, "You need to upgrade your software!"

Like a fool, I did.

And internet was totally lost until a live, on the phone, technician finally surrendered after three attempts to get the new software working. She finally had me uninstall the new software and then reinstall the old software via my modem.

"Can I do that?" I asked. "I have no internet!"

"You shouldn't need internet if it's in your modem," she replied.

She gambled the old software would be part of the modem package, which luckily it was, and finally, after a total of six reboots, we had internet again. Unreliable and intermittent, but we did have internet again.


Thankfully, we had not missed the moment. I spent the next half hour or so, however long it took, making a new Six Zeroes Snowflake, the one I designed last year while waiting for 2,999,9somethingsomething to turn into 3,000,000.

Perhaps I should design a new version of Six Zeroes...


I'd thought the magic number would hit on Saturday while I was shooting the 2014 Spinal Muscular Atrophy Walk & Roll, during which I had no time to watch my iPhone like a hawk. When I got home, I excitedly discovered I still had a way to go.


Then I thought for sure it would happen while I was at church on Sunday and unable to monitor the progress.


The counter was moving rather slowly when I got home from church. The Lizard attributed that to the Bronco football game. I told him my readers hail from more than just Colorado, and probably very few of them give a hoot about the NFL.

Nevertheless, we thought there might be time for a quick bike ride. So that's what we did. When we returned home, the counter was still crawling very, very slowly. Slower than me on a bike!

But we were getting closer!


Instead of working on a quilt or working on my special project or even cleaning the house or taking a nap, I sat down to watch the ticker. To further amuse myself, I kept changing the tag line on the ticker to reflect the mood of the moment.

The Lizard watched a movie while I crocheted and kept one eye on the counter. When it hit 3,999,993, I called him in to watch with me, and he watched over my shoulder as the live ticker struck the magic number. The final few digits took less than ten minutes.






Just like that, it was over. But I got to see it again! I got to see it last year, but the previous two times, 1,000,000 and 2,000,000, I had to watch from my phone, signal was weak, and I missed the exact moment twice in a row.

Why do I care about something as seemingly meaningless as a bunch of zeroes? Anything that comes in sixes catches my eye; I'm a hexie holic and a snowflake spastic. Not sure why numbers grab me so, but this condition affects me on my bike and in my car, too. Oh, and how many shots I take with my cameras as well... recently celebrated the 100,000th shot on my D300, then had to turn the darned thing in for servicing when it developed an old-age owie. Darn it!

I take pictures of my odometers when they hit significant marks. Unfortunately, I slept through 333,333 in my car during our summer vacation this year. I'm hoping one day I can do one of those old Toyota jump commercials, celebrating unrealistic miles on my metallic baby.

I did capture the previous six-of-a-kind on the 4Runner... way back in 2008!!!

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