That’s 1,000,000,000 seconds, a US billion.
I blogged our funny wedding in NJ traffic court–that happened late in the evening of July 3, 1973.
10 seconds, 100 seconds, and 1,000 seconds later, we were still shell-shocked newlyweds, most likely still lost somewhere out in Dutch Neck, NJ.
10,000 seconds after we tied the knot–a bit less than 3 hours–we were eating cake-mix cake and ice cream to celebrate.
At 100,000 seconds (near the July 4/July 5 borderline) Frank was gone! He spent our “honeymoon” in Sicily at a physics summer school; I spent it in Princeton, doing much duller grand school thingummies, and missing him very much. At 1,000,000 seconds, a long 11 days later, our separate-honeymoon phase was still ongoing.
At 10,000,000 seconds, we get to October 26, 1973. We were happily sharing our married-grad-student-housing with two white mice. We had, in those long ago days, our own separate slide rules. (Computers were room-sized , $10,000,000 thingies.)
At 100,000,000 seconds, we’re all the way up to September 5, 1976. Frank was all the way up to being an assistant professor, our beautiful daughter Mickey had just turned two, and I was thinking about getting back to grad school.
Now, 1,000,000,000 seconds of marriage takes us to Friday night, March 11, 2005, roughly 11 p.m.
Now, if you think it’s geeky to celebrate powers-of-ten-iversaries, remember this: if we were truly geeky we’d celebrating powers-of-two-or-eight-or-sixteen-iversaries.
I’m sure looking forward to our next billion seconds!