Growing crystals

The last three weeks of December are going to be different this year. Given all the work travel, going to take it easy and rest. Doesn't mean we don't get to do some fun things in the house with the kids..

For starters we decided to bring out this birthday gift and actually try it out with the litlte one.

Diffusion is a slow process.. the little one learned "patience is a virtue" during the experiment.

This was time zero

Ten minutes

close to an hour later

this was a few hours later

then we decided to "help it" by creating some localized heat near the ones that were not growing.. but that went only so far.

The final stage was not far from this one. There was one drawback to this kit. We lowered the stand into the bath of chemicals with a hook. When the crystals finished growing, they went into the hole for the hook. So we could not remove it out of the bath successfully. 

The little one was very disappointed, but for a few seconds. Once she realized the crystals were broken and there was nothing we could do about it, she promptly said "oh well. we had fun while it was growing. now clean up daddy" and went on to watch Netflix.

So that part of the experiment where the experimenter is also responsible for the cleanup... failed! 

Whirlwind week

The last week went by very fast. It all started when San hydroplaned her car and survived a crash. She came out in one piece with minor bruises, and yes, she is fine and back to her normal self and to prove that point, she will yell at me for mentioning this to the world. That will bring her "percentage normalness" from 95.6% to around 98.9%. In a couple of days, we are confident that she will reach 100% !

Work went from hectic to unmentionably busy at the same time. Almost worked two days straight with a few power naps of 30 to 45 mins towards the end of the week. Then slept for 12 straight hours to compensate and the weekend almost disappeared.

The only saving grace was my college roomates visit today! He came from the east coast and spent most of the morning with us. It was a treat to watch him play with the kids. He told my wife and MIL old stories of me, but they always beat him to the punchline! He was so disappointed to see that my behaviour has stayed consistant over the years and that my wife and MIL could guess how the old grad school stories ended! For me, it was a joy to watch them make fun at my expense.

The best part? He could not believe that I don't go near the kitchen anymore. He told my kids "your daddy cooks really well, you know. He cooks great food for you everyday right?" and they had the deer in the headlights look. If Jr. was 16 she would have said "our daddy? cooks all the time? which parallel universe are you from, dude?"

fun, fun, fun, to make up for a nasty week.

On the plus side, we now have a new car, now that the old one is totalled. San has a new algorithm for driving the car:

Pray
Sit in car
check everything before opening garage
open garage
carefully ease car out
check dimensions all around car (this reminds me of how saastrigals ask you to put darbais in all four directions around the fire during a prayer!) San looks at all diagonal points to check for something.
drive out extremely carefully

Everyone at home was upset with my busy schedule at work the whole week. Jr. did come to me once and say "Daddy , look I did something very different!"

She had come up with a novel way to assemble the rings on the toy, just out of pure boredom.

So I promised to tell everyone how she did something differnt. So here it is..

She might check on me tomorrow.. This blog is slowly being taken over by the kids!

This week promises to be less busy, and that means a few posts that never made it out of my head into the draft, will actually get out!

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