Thursday, August 17th, 2017 08:39 am
[Sunday morning] I'm not sure it was rhetoric distressing me on Wednesday: i got myself into a right good funk though. Therapy was good, with gentle coaching through procrastination and the identification of a reward system for me.

I took Friday off, inspired by an errand i needed to run and, with the day cleared, i decided to spend the morning with my nephew & niece. We had breakfast at the classic small town restaurant (blueberry waffle & banana pancake for them, respectively, hashbrowns & eggs for us), a little visit to our home where they hadn't been for a while, and then -- yay, i found my beading tools! -- to their house for playing with beads for a bit. It was lovely, and now that i have all my kit, i should do it again in an organized way. Also, when my sister is there, so we can use her beads, too.

I'd made a bit of a mess trying to find stuff, so i spent some of Saturday in the residual moving task of sorting out jumbled stuff. We have many residual moving tasks lingering. I also fixed some jewelry of Christine's i'd said i'd fix and made the necklace and earrings to go with my Easter dress with the faceted yellow chalcedony and vermeil links and pendants i bought with birthday money from my grandmother. The dress is a 50s influenced, A-line dress in a print of lemons, so this necklace and earrings is a sparkling accent for that.

--== ∞ ==--

The week is flying by. Sunday i stopped by my parents after meeting, where "stopped by" means driving an extra 35 or more minutes. My parents are in the opposite direction of meeting. Later, as i was spraying my yellow squash and other cucurbits with a milk-soap-baking soda mixture, my dad stopped by to take a look at the crack in the slab in our front porch. He agreed with my assessment that the "fix" someone had applied in the past was part of the problem. He also knew a much better way to repair it than someone had told Christine. (That instruction was to essentially replicate the bad repair.) He confirmed it was a cosmetic and not particularly structural issue, and wouldn't stop thinking about the issue until he came up with a cause for the crack.

We also have an issue with the light that is not quite over the island in the kitchen: i think "Mr Handyman," the previous owner, caulked the halogen light bulb into the socket. I am happy for the excuse to replace the otherwise attractive but poorly located pendant lamp with a ceiling fan with lights.

Yesterday, my niece and nephew stayed with us during their parents' workday. They had to entertain themselves mostly, but over lunch we made oobleck, a non-newtonian fluid with interesting shear properties. That is, we mixed one part water with around two parts corn starch and examined how the behavior changed when you stirred it slowly vs quickly and a variety of other messy experiments. My favorite was watching an apparently solid chunk fly out of the container, hit me, bounce off, land on the counter and then slowly melt into a puddle.

Making gravy will never quite be the same.

I tried mowing last night, but somehow our lawnmower has lost the adjustments to the front two wheels and all one can really do is scalp the grass. There are some areas where that is desirable, but it was even scalping the moss, which isn't.

It's miserably humid, by the way. Miraculously the forecast for Monday is "clear", although the detailed prediction for Brevard, NC is 50% cloud cover in the afternoon. I've been trying to pretend like it's no big deal and have not been practicing camera stuff, etc. I guess i ought to be getting out the eclipse glasses and filters now, though.
Friday, August 18th, 2017 01:57 am (UTC)
I would love to see the necklace/earrings.

Have you gotten to play much with silly putty? Hit a small bit with a hammer some time. It shatters like glass, producing powder, which then balls back up into putty.
There are apparently serious suggestions to deploy speed bumps filled with rheopectic material, because if you're going the recommended speed it'll just flatten, but if you're going fast it'll speed bump.
When I was involved with the physics teaching project, we'd half-fill a rubbermaid container with oobleck (we called it mung) and then lower a kid into it, saying "stomp your feet as fast as you can!" and the kid would be able to stand on it until he got tired, at which point, whoops, knee-deep!
Sunday, August 20th, 2017 01:27 am (UTC)
Beading! I love doing crafts also and making beautiful things for myself and loved ones.

I should make oobleck--sounds like such fun! Will be seeing my twelve year old niece within a week, maybe she would be interested. Otherwise, on my own...
Monday, August 21st, 2017 04:02 pm (UTC)
Washing dishes after my family made gravy was how I discovered oobleck, though I only learned some of its properties. (The amazing quality of stiffening if you tried to push or flick it, when it would easily pour, was what I found most fascinating.)

Ah, childhood, when washing dishes was a pleasant chore compared to all the rest of the work....