My dad and I went to Ithaca for a couple of days. I had a few chores to do, and he wanted to come along for the trip. We didn't actually go over a weekend, but we stayed for the length of a weekend, and since both of us are still on vacation there's currently not much difference between a weekday and a weekend day.
One of the things I did was have some friends over for homemade-pizza-from-scratch. I'd never made it before, but it seemed to turn out well. The biggest problem was that the pizza became atomically bonded to the tin foil it was resting on in the oven.
The recipe was for kids, and so included lots of fun facts and extra activities. It talked about yeast and how it's alive, and how when mixed with water and sugar, the yeast releases gases from the mixture. It mentioned an activity where you mix these things together in a bottle and put a balloon over the top of the bottle and watch it slowly fill up with gas. It actually fills up very very very slowly. The photo at the beginning of this entry is the result of this experiment after the yeasty beasties have had a night to work.
On this trip, we were supposed to be looking around to see if we could find some string bags. These are bags that are very handy for groceries, because they are extremely lightweight, and if you leave them in the car then everyone can see that they are empty, so nobody is tempted to break in to the car to steal whatever is in them, (unless the thief is someone like us, who is looking for string bags). These bags are also extremely nice for the beach, because they won't retain sand or rocks. The mesh size is too large for that.
We didn't have much luck. We found some very expensive which were far too small to be useful. The closest we found were the sort of all purpose mesh bags that people often use for laundry or to store soccer balls or something. These were too large for our purposes, though. My dad made the brilliant observation that what we needed were mesh laundry bags for midgets.
Two of my friends who were there for pizza are going to have a baby in a couple of months, so several times the conversation turned to baby stories. I'd heard before that I was born exactly on my due date, but I hadn't heard (or maybe I'd forgotten) that my mom had to have a c-section because I was turned around the wrong way in the womb. When I heard this, it made perfect sense to me. I've always been a little confused, and been susceptible to being turned around easily, (physically and mentally).
Do you see? As a baby I was unbelievably punctual and easily confused. As an adult, I am still unbelievably punctual and easily confused. If only I had been studied more as a baby. Maybe we could have figured out what my dissertation topic is going to be, and where I should apply for a postdoc! Just imagine! The possibilities are limitless!! Exclamation points!!!!
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