Science + Beer = Good

The other night, Jessie and I were watching "Mythbusters," as is our wont at 9pm on a Wednesday night. The myth in question was from the Viet Nam era. That burying beer deep in the sand, pouring gas on it and setting the gas on fire makes the beer somehow colder.

They busted the crap out of that, with hilarious results. And they figured, hey... what would make beer cold fast? And they set to work.

Simple chemistry was the answer. Three coolers for the beer, one fridge, one freezer. Room temperature was about 68 degrees.

Cooler 1 was filled with just ice. Cooler 2 was ice with water poured on it. Cooler 3 was ice, with water and a very hefty dose of table salt.

I believe in about 5 minutes they had a beer that was at their target drinking temperature of 37-42 degrees. The beer in the cooler with ice, water and salt.

After explaining the chemical reactions salt has on water, Adam Savage enthusiastically announces "Science plus Beer equals GOOD!"

Jessie and I really laughed. We decided it was T-shirt worthy.

C, from my office (yeah, I never talk about work) and I were talking about all the T-shirts we want to make. I think this is now top of my list. I emailed Adam Savage, doubt I'll ever hear back from him, but I asked permission to make a shirt and use his likeness on it and credit him with the quote. I'll even mail him one when we make it.

I clicked on this little icon on my Firefox Browser to download the new rev of Firefox. I installed it. And now Firefox doesn't work atfreakinall.

I'm pretty pissed. Doug will be especially pissed because he has bookmarked all his OBX house rental searches and potentials, and if he can't access them by tonight when he gets home to finalize his choice he'll be really cheesed with me.

I hate technology with a white hot passion sometimes. What the hell did I do wrong. It's a freakin' upgrade of software. I download updates all the time and install them and ... they work.

Any and all suggestions welcome. I'm terrified if I uninstall and then reinstall Firefox that I'll totally lose all his bookmarks. And then I'll get a spanking, and not a fun one either.

No -- we don't spank. Get that image out of your head. Forget I said it. Oh dear.

Anyway, I'm on IE now and I forgot how much I disliked it.

Our plannings for OBX go well. Thank you for asking. Doug has narrowed things down to a few good options for us. We did discover that the advertised price of $595 dollars a week is compounded with fees. Like $150 per dog, $100 "service fee," $200 pool fee, $100 travel insurance, this fee that fee, fee fee fee... until it works out to $1200 for the week.

Nice!

What a racket. We figured there'd be fees. But. Dang!

Upon picking the dream spot, then filling in the form and getting sticker shock, he did more research with other rental agencies. He found some with smaller dog fees but a limit to 2 dogs, which rules out Gonzo if Aaron and Michelle come with. With the pool fee, Doug noted that some places apply the pool fee, but the pool isn't open until May 1, so he would call them to the mat on that one (an online form needs to be date-defined if you're filling it out and it auto generates the sum based on all your fees. If a reservation is being made before May 1, and the pool isn't open, the form should not pull in the fee. Hello? Call your programmer).

Another planning issue is the Saturday to Saturday, or Sunday to Sunday type of rental. We are hoping to arrive on Saturday. We will then leave on Saturday, get back here and have a day to decompress. And, if Aaron and Michelle come with us, they can hopefully leave their house Friday night, get here, sleep, relax, chill, and then we all go on Saturday Morning early. And the Sunday gives them time to get home (they are five hours north of us, and will need that extra day to get back...)

Some rentals don't run that way, they run Sunday to Sunday only. Oh, so complicated.

We also discovered that the OBX is one long assed place. We looked at places in Kill Devil Hills, and then Doug wanted to get a little further south. He discovered that the next place he preferred was 40 miles from the nearest grocery store. Nice! So, that was out of the question. We can be caught unawares at times, even with my very best planning. Being 40 miles from a grocery store when we realize that we forgot to bring coffee with us equals death. I'm sure there are little mom'n'pop places along this long and skinny stretch o'road, but they may not be open yet. And that would so suck.

So, he used a map and planned better and found that we could stay in Salvo, and there's a Food Lion or something not too far away. And it isn't too far from Hatteras Village. And.

As you can see, the planning goes on. Add to this planning that he hasn't even researched geocaches on the OBX yet, and you know that'll be a key component to our trip. I looked up some, and there are tons of virtuals because there is a National Park there (one cannot place a geocache in the National Parks) so that'll be an added element of planning. I may just print out every single one on the OBX, and a bunch on the other side, and on 95 South from New Jersey onward, so we can do a cache in each location.

In 2001, Doug put a shit ton of effort into planning our trip to the South West. Every ounce of his effort paid off. We had the Best Vacation EVER©. I'm sure he'll iron every detail out for this and it will be another fabulous time. I do feel like an Internet Widow though.

Today the kids have a day off of school for Good Friday. Easter usually is the first weekend of school vacation week but it is early this year, and so they get to go back to school on Monday, much to their dismay. Both of my kids are so sick of school at this rate. Geoff had a really rough week, only earning two of his reward dollars out of the four days there. He was pissed, wants more money, but just isn't making the connection that telling the principal that he hopes she dies over the weekend isn't going to get him his attaboy prize.

Two good weeks and a bad week. Two steps forward, one step back.

So he's so happy this morning to be home. We don't have nearly the problems at home as they have at school with him... I am tired of school too. I'm ready for the school year to end, but it doesn't until the end of June. Gah.

Geoff's new favorite thing is the Discovery channel or the History channel in the morning before school. He doesn't watch Kablam! on Nicktoons anymore, because he's seen each episode 100 times.

So right now he's watching a History channel program on Angels -- Good or Evil. He keeps coming in here to give me interesting updates on what the experts have to say about Angels... and whether or not they are good or evil. I'm so glad to know!

I see the future for my son. Are you ready for it?

My son will hold down menial labor jobs, perhaps be some sort of civil servant working for the town, and he'll hang out in a townie bar at night, and be the Cliff Clavin guy who knows EVERY answer to EVERY trivia question.

He will be filled with factoids about every culture, historical figure, and barnyard animal. Only his facts will be REAL facts and not made up fake facts filled with nonexistent words. Like Cliffy's facts. He'll know everything about Orville and Wilbur, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, polar ice caps, animal husbandry, physics, outer space, Evil Angels, science + beer = good.

He'll drive everyone in the bar nuts, in a lovable kinda Cliff Clavin way. Perhaps someone will love him enough to be waiting at home for him. I sure hope so. And I hope he doesn't stay at the bar all damn night every night and piss off this significant other. We broke that cycle with this family unit (based on the one my sister and I grew up in) and I don't want our genetic pool to revisit that nightly behavior.

Geoff told me last night that he wants to have a birthday party on February 15th every year for Galileo. Because Galileo was so cool.

I love this kid. In his mind, why have President's Day when there isn't a Galileo Day. So, mark your calendars. Next Feb. 15th, we party like it's 1692. Or. Whatever.

Anyway -- on the agenda today is a whole lot of hanging around. Firefox fixin', Laundry foldin', and maybe a nice long walk because it's supposed to be in the low 50s today.

Workwise, I'm not unbusy today. I have a website update to do, and more floorplans to get the Operations team ahead of the game... first and foremost though, I have to call C and have her fix something that I discovered last night when I should have already been gone (glad I discovered it, but now need her to fix it). I so wanted to drive Doug to work, but he's got to go to 2 nursing homes today so he needed the car. Sigh.

And, I can catch up on my blog reading. So many folks have been neglected for the past couple of weeks.