Just life

Hello again. I have thought about blogging a few times in the last month but every time I sat down to start writing, I thought Nah, I'm not going to do that. So here's an all at once recap of what we've been up to.

Jeran has been working hard at science and on reassembling his motorcycle. It's been amazing to watch (and very occasionally participate) the bike come together. It's going to look so good. It might even run! This is not a very recent picture, but we'll save that for later.

I've been working a lot the last few weeks, which is great because I can stay busy and make money at the same time (amazing how "work" does that). Unfortunately I've been working on a difficult project which has meant waking up around 5:30 AM many mornings thinking about it. Oh well. The days are so much longer and more productive this way!

I made one of those neck coolers (aka cool ties, cooling scarves) that you put absorbent polymer crystals into and they soak up water and keep you cool via evaporative cooling. I overfilled it a bit so I'll have to try again on another. Good thing they are super easy and cheap. It's too bad I didn't make them months ago because we sure could have used them all summer long, especially on our waterfalls trip and Jeran working on his motorcycle. We've been scorching hot here - when 95 degrees sounds like a reasonably nice temperature you know it's been hot.

Our garden is not doing too great. We have had trouble with deer eating our tomato and pepper plants. We did get three little cayenne peppers and a few little green tomatoes have been on the plants all summer without changing at all. Regardless of the heat, our carrots seem to be doing quite well. I didn't think they would because I think they like sandy soil better than clay, but I pulled one up yesterday and it's the cutest little carrot ever!

A while ago we went on a quest to picnic at "Research Triangle Park". We knew there was a good chance that there was no real "park" park, but we picked up a pizza and drove around looking for parkish places in Research Triangle Park. We found the actual RTP headquarters and it seemed as parklike as anything we were bound to find so we ate there. It was deserted and they have a large grassy field and bushes and stuff. The sky looked amazing. We picnicked on pizza and took a little snooze on our blanket. It was a very nice evening. I'm still convinced there must be a park SOMEwhere there, but maybe not...

And now for three things that are super amazing/cool/brilliant:

1. Opposable thumbs. Think about it. Look at your hand - it's that bottom thumb joint down by your wrist that is opposable. Now try doing things without rotating that joint. VERY difficult. Yesiree, opposition is amazing. We can grab stuff, write, play the piano, create a cup with our hand, etc. I do love my opposable thumbs.

2. That we can turn electrical charges into mechanical motion. After watching the clock spin around and around the other day, I researched this and learned a lot! At first I was surprised when I Googled this and Wikipedia's "Engine" article was a top result but now it makes better sense (see particularly the electric motor section). And now my engineer dad and brother are probably rolling their eyes.

3. Wikipedia. Lame, I know but it is pretty amazing and I've read some really interesting articles, like the Waste Management, Engine, Laudanum, HeLa, Petabyte, Eden Project, etc.