Counting tildes. It should take about one minute to count 100 tildes, so making piles of 100 tildes each then counting the number of piles would tell you how much time you were waiting for your lady to get herself all dolled up and ready to go.
When I was pregnant the last time, I worked in the office because I couldn’t drive a truck. Mike the Micromanager was our boss. We had to listen to the streaming radio station of his choosing. I think the radio station was on a 24 hour loop because we could tell what time it was by the song it was playing.
Your answer made me think of my favorite book by my favorite author -- I've read all of her works -- Shirley Jackson.
"The Sundial"
Check out this opening paragraph, one of the best openings of anything I've ever read. :)
"After the funeral they came back to the house, now indisputably Mrs. Halloran’s. They stood uneasily, without any certainty, in the large lovely entrance hall, and watched Mrs. Halloran go into the right wing of the house to let Mr. Halloran know that Lionel’s last rites had gone off without melodrama. Young Mrs. Halloran, looking after her mother-in-law, said without hope, “Maybe she will drop dead on the doorstep. Fancy, dear, would you like to see Granny drop dead on the doorstep?”
Kittigate 