and now for something completely different

I am not a math genius (or a genius of any kind), but I do find numberical curiosities to be an astounding thing.

Way back when-- I have no clue how old I was-- I remember feeling quite proud of myself for noticing something about the number 9. We must have been learning multiplication tables in school, since I only took this fascination up to the point of 9x9. Here goes:

the result of multiplying with nine yields the sum of nine. For instance: 2x9=18, 1+8=9. 4x9=36, 3+6=9. Clever, huh?

So out of the blue during a wakeful moment the other night my mind turns to multiples of nine beyond single digits. What about 9x13, or 9x238? Let's do the math. The first result is 117 (1+1+7=9), the second result is 2142 (2+1+4+2=9). Is this cool, or what? When the numbers become huge, the sum of the resulting answer is a multiple of nine. 9x48,356=435,209. 4+3+5+2+0+4=28, which divided by 3=9.

Why my mind brought this to the fore at this point in my life I do not know. I will observer the following, however. When I set up my very first email account the name I wanted to use was taken. The provider suggested adding a 1 to the end of it. I tried that: taken. Tried 2: taken. I decided to jump to the end of the numeric sequence and typed in 9. Ta-da! And so I became xxxxxxxxx9 at aol dot com. Now I'm noticing that the name itself has nine characters. Hm. And the fun part, at least today? The last five alphabetics in my email ID is dance, making the graphic I chose above especially endearing to me. (Nine ladies dancing, from the 12 days of Christmas). I've never had a favorite number before. I do now!

I know this absolutely makes your day. Consider it my gift to your bank of trivia knowledge!