Breaking a friend's hand boiler...

I remember being at a friend's house, I think the first time for this particular friend, and he had a handheld glass contraption that would boil a red liquid on the inside of you held it in your hand.

So based on my simple understanding of the science behind it, basically the red liquid was a substance with a very low boiling point. Low enough that cupping your hand around the glass bulb at the bottom where the red liquid had gathered would cause it to boil. It would then bubble up through a squiggly piece of glass into another bulb in top. 

Anyways we played with that, playing cards, his dog, video games, but at some point I left the glass hand boiler in the floor and managed to sit on it, which obviously crushed the thin fragile glass. 

I felt terrible, but he and his mom seemed to not mind and put me at ease about the whole thing...

Just a random memory, thought I would share. 

600 minutes = 10 hours

600 minutes = 10 hours

I just realized that I know this simple conversion not because of its simplicity in the base 60 unit of minutes to hours, but because of some school reading program requirement. The requirement and reward system was designed around 600 minutes of reading. This seemed like an astronomical amount of time reading, seeing as I find it hard to sit down and read a book for any length of time.

My parents very simply broke it down into 10 x 1 hour reading sessions, or 20 x 30 minute reading sessions.
So because of this huge goal/milestone/achievement in reading for a total of 600 minutes, I now can easily convert 600 minutes to 10 hours without doing the (possibly even simpler) math of 600 minutes / 60 minutes/hour to get 10 hours.

I just find it fascinating that I have this number/conversion burned into memory as just a hard fact (directly associated with this reading requirement), and not simply doing some simple math of 10 hours x 60 minutes = 600 minutes.

"This is the way I go to work" - Mom & Dad

Driving with mom, dad looks back and says "This is the way I go to work", moments later my mom says cheerfully "This is the way I go to work". 

I can't help but laugh, which then makes my mom ask why, and my dad then has to explain himself! :) Apparently it was some what of a habit for my mom to make the same statement anytime she was driving down Main St in Rolla. 

Newspaper ink from delivering papers

I'm sure I have plenty of memories from delivering newspapers, but the first one that randomly came to me was about the black ink that would rub off onto my hands, arm, and t-shirts!

I'll add more to this later...not tonight. :)

Newspaper ink from delivering papers

I'm sure I have plenty of memories from delivering newspapers, but the first one that randomly came to me was about the black ink that would rub off onto my hands, arm, and t-shirts!

I'll add more to this later...not tonight. :)