Who are these goofy kids?

Nah, not related to me at all...

The Super Olive Bowl

Irene told me this one when the Superbowl was gearing up (apparently that sports event is a "super" big deal - who knew?): Olives in Taiwan look different, their ends are pointy, and they're called "gan lan". Chinese people think they look just like footballs, so that's why footballs are called "gan lan chiu" in Chinese - "olive ball"! Football in Chinese is olive ball!

Super Bowl = Olive Bowl?

Conservation of Mass

In my new hobby of beer brewing, I would daresay I have had a string of successes.  Batch #7, though, not so much.  It turns out it is very important to mix the prebottling sugar around before bottling.  This is the sugar that will give the yeast a second round of fermenting in the bottle in order to give each bottle its own champagne-like carbonation.  Sloppily, I poured the sugar in and immediately bottled.  Turns out the first six bottles I opened were flat, like so:

I tried adding sugar to the bottles individually, but one week later they were only marginally improved - like so:

How about that lightning mcqueen cup in the background?

Now, just as I was wondering "Where did all the sugar go? I mean - it has to be in some of the bottles, right?" I open a series of bottle that are... over-carbonated:

Note the frothy beer still in the bottle as well!

Johnny Cash and the Science Team

A couple of months ago, I was chaperoning our high school science team to a meet in Lowell, MA. More recently, I spent a fair amount of time talking to our driver on a different bus ride about the other driver (for reasons that will soon become clear).  I'm going to go ahead and spoil the story by telling the best part first:  When I asked what the other driver's name was, my driver paused and said "Well, we don't know - we just call him Johnny - as in Johnny Cash on account of his being a professional Johnny Cash impersonator back in the day."

Intiguing, eh?  Who knew there was such a profession as a Johnny Cash impersonator?  The reason I asked was because of the Lowell trip incident: 

It was a dark, wet, trafficy night and I had in my charge nine (or was it eleven - who knows?) youths.  On the way back from Lowell,  the bus starts making funny noises.  At first it is a mild straining on the accelerations.  Then it is a major slowing on the uphills.  Then, eventually, in the middle lane, it is a complete engine failure.  The driver attempted to get into the breakdown lane, but a bus going uphill comes to a stop pretty fast after its motor dies and he only managed to straddle both the middle and slow lanes on I-495 during rush hour.  As cars start whipping around both sides of the bus (the fast lane on the left and the breakdown lane on the right), I start thinking "Hmmm, awkward time to be the responsible adult present" and "Hmmm, should I get the kids off the bus so they can stand on the side of the road - but, they might get killed crossing the breakdown lane with all those cars speeding around us."  Just as quick as these thoughts pop into my head, Johnny Cash gets the bus fired up again and we crawl up the hill safely.  We then spend almost 2 hours getting home at a top speed of about 35 MPH, but I am thankful to get all 9 (or was it 11?) kids safely back.

At the end of the ordeal, I ask the driver "Did you think the engine would start again" and he wisely replied "I was sure hoping so..."

Sebastien plays "House"

"Daddy, you want to play house with me?"

"Of course I'll play house with you!" 

I start looking around for Isabelle's plastic tea cups and whatnot.

He grabs some legos stuck together to look like a gun and says "Ok - you shoot the bad guys when they come in, and don't worry - I have a bomb!"

Hmmm, girls are different from boys.

Battlestar Galactica, Costco, and Oatmeal

My Dad has a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast everyday.  When I was growing up, he thought it would be a great synergy to serve us both up some oatmeal in the morning.  I, however, decided it was yucky.  Around the same time as I pushed back on the oatmeal, I really (really!) wanted to watch a pretty lame show called Battlestar Galactica (old school style for you youngsters - not nearly as hip as the more recent incarnation).  To this day, I can't stand oatmeal because he made a deal with me over 30 years ago that I could watch BG if I would eat a bowl of oatmal.  That bowl would get cold and nasty and thick and crusty and I would make the pain of eating it last for the entire episode.

Now I have kids of my own, I bought a Costco variety pack of oatmeals because they told me they liked it.  Of course, now that I have a boxful of the nasty stuff - they have decided not to like it.  Sigh - I guess there was never  smart play with oatmeal for me...

Stu and I

For some time now, students have been happy to point out the fact that they think I bear a resemblance to Stu from the movie "The Hangover".  I have yet to see the entire movie, but have seen so many scenes from it that I really don't think I need to.

When I was eight or so, I flipped while balancing on the top of some monkey bars on a playground.  I cracked my tooth and, to this day, I have a fake tooth bolted to the root of my original tooth. The bolt has held up pretty well for over 30 years, but the fake enamel wears away faster my real teeth.  The year before I got married, my dentist fixed up the corner of the tooth so I would look sharp for the wedding pictures.

We were out eating some lobster at a dim sum place over the holidays and I lost that chip, so now everyone at school thinks I recently chipped my tooth.

 

"How did it happen?" I just tell them "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

No plans to get it fixed, - I think it will look good with the monocle!