Why.

Occasionally, amid the sea of grabby hands and short attention spans, I am reminded of why I volunteer at the science museum. Today was one of those days.

About 2 hours into my shift, a couple of girls in the range of 6-8 years old appeared and I decided to try something a little different... this is the first time that I've had a kid assemble the salt water battery (4 cells, each consisting of a cup of salt water with a galvanized nail and piece of copper tubing) herself. Or, at least the wire part. I was kind enough to leave the metal bits in the salt water for them. I just wanted to see what would happen if I said "here are some leads. Make a battery." It took over 20 minutes, but she did it! And she was so proud of herself, it almost made me cry. I helped a lot, sure, but she did enough of it that she felt accomplished and she wanted to show her parents that she had lit a light bulb "without a battery." That she had the attention span for it amazed me; that's the primary reason that I've never done that large of a "figure it out" type experiment before. Watching kids "get" something is a pretty fantastic experience, whether the kids are 5 or 50. :^)

I'm getting a bit better at recognizing what type of people I'm dealing with so that I can do things that will at least teach them something at their level in the amount of time that they're willing to hang around. And for some of them, that means saying "hey, look! A puzzle!" and pulling out the pentamino puzzles. Batteries just don't captivate everybody equally. If I had to pluck one stereotype from my experience, I would say that it is that fathers at the science museum with their daughter(s) are almost universally awesome. I could hypothesize on why, but I think I've already made enough assumptive leaps as it is.

[Things I Love] The Minnesota State Fair

It's that time of year again, as everybody is fond of saying at every time of the year regarding something or other. But this time, it really is that time of year. It's time to rejoice with a million of my fellow Minnesotans and worship at the altar of cheese curds and a really big pig. There should be a song about fried cheese curds. There probably is, so let me be more specific... there should be a good song about fried cheese curds. If there were I would be singing it right now. To my cat. Tauntingly.

I dearly love the MN State Fair while also dearly hating certain parts of it. The good typically wins out over the bad. I love the feeling of camaraderie with my fellow people that the fair engenders... but do they have to be so everywhere?! Tip: find a booth that sells raw vegetables. Guaranteed to be the quietest place at the fair. Tip #2: I found one of these last year, and I'm not telling you where it is.

Things I love about the fair, an unordered list:

• The livestock. Yes, the poultry barn smells awful, but that is the smell of food on your plate! Rejoice in it. Also, cows are very sweet animals.
• Cheesecurds. Sure, they have been relieved of their squeak, but they have been blessed with meltiness and batter instead.
• The malts in the dairy building. Yum. I never waver from my vanilla. It is the best malt I have ever had, because it is made of memories. Here is the point where I should mention that dairy makes me sick. But I don't care. I fair on!
• The tractors. I actually think there might not be any tractors anymore. This makes me sad, but I still walk over to what is [I believe] still called Machinery Hill each year. I think the combines are now Priuses.
• The free pine tree seedlings at the DNR booth. Because of them, I kill a tree every year. I'm sorry. I really am. May I have another?
• The agriculture building, especially the honey section as long as there are no escape bees.
• The butter carvings. Carvings of people! Out of butter! How can that possibly be not awesome? Plus, the carvees never need to worry about having dry dinner rolls for the rest of their lives. Now that's a particular brand of nice that you just don't see too often.
• Random percussion bands. There have been grills and trash cans in the past. I adore any percussing of the musical variety. :^)
  
• Sometimes foods: mini donuts and Sweet Martha's cookies are items that I do love but must be cut from the food plan when not traveling with food sharing partners.
• Going home and taking a very long shower.

The Girl Effect

I managed to miss this until now, but Think Geek has a "heroine" series of t-shirts. The Mary Shelley one will still net donations for The Girl Effect, which looks like possibly my new favorite organization. This is one of the reasons that ThinkGeek is a company that I am proud to support with my dollars.

Anyway, this series of shirts is phenomenal, and I know which one I need. :^)

Ada Lovelace, lady of the ones and zeroes:


Marie Curie, badass scientist


Mary Shelley, mistress of SciFi:

[Review] Vibram Five Fingers

I've owned my Freaky Fuchsia Five Fingers for 6 months now, so I figured it was time to let the world know how I really feel about them beyond their propensity for being highly photogenic. I have the mary-jane-esque Five Fingers, but there are options if you want more coverage (the KSOs, which do their darnedest to Keep Stuff Out) or more freedom for your feet (the Classics do not have a velcro strap).

Before I purchased them, I had a few concerns:

1. I hate having things between my toes. Toe socks are like some sort of 1970s-era human rights violation as far as I am concerned.
   
2. Will they hurt? Am I going to die of blisters and achy arches?!
   
3. Will I feel like a complete dork walking around in pink foot gloves?
4. They're expensive! Can I really justify the cost?

Within one month of purchase, all of my fears had been allayed.

1. Fit is very important for the Five Fingers. I measured my feet several times before committing to the size. I don't notice anything annoying or irritating about the fact that my toes are separate and clearly not equal. The only discomfort is when the toes are not properly in their spaces. It can take a little work at first to make sure that everything is situated correctly. I truly find the Five Fingers to be just as comfortable as being barefoot.
2. I've found that I don't really need the support of highly cushioned shoes to be comfortable. The only thing that hurts is standing or walking on concrete, but that's a problem with concrete, not the shoes. Asphalt, grass, sand, and interior flooring are all a dream to walk upon in my FFFFs. They protect your feet from minor dangers, such as pebbles, hot surfaces, moist surfaces, etc while allowing your feet to be free the way they were intended to be! I have also yet to get a blister from the FFFFs-- there's no rubbing because they fit like a...well... glove.
   
3. No. It turns out that I have absolutely no shame when it comes to wearing fabulous shoes. I do get a lot of attention from passersby and it is almost universally good. My favorite was "Damn, girl! Look at your shoes!"
4. Absolutely worth the cost for me. I wear my FFFFs everywhere that is appropriate for non-specialized casual footwear. To date, I have used them for walking around town, hiking in the woods, walking on the beach, boating, wading in oceans and streams, and quite a bit more. They have been in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. :^) The photo above is from a trip that I took to the Redwoods shortly after acquiring the shoes. I wore them exclusively on that trip except where there was snow.

Another great thing about the Five Fingers is that they are machine washable. So far the only slight downside I've encountered is that they need to be machine washable. ::holds nose::

Overall, I give them 6 out of 5 stars. I made up the rating system, so I can do that. I can't bike in them, otherwise they would have scored the elusive 7th star.

[Things I love] Em Dashes

I don't understand why anybody ever uses en dashes. Em dashes are clearly twice as good. An en dash says "I kind of sort of have an aside, but I don't really know." An em dash, on the other hand, is bold and confident. An em dash says "I have an aside, and I am committing to it!" It will still be a part of the sentence, but will be all "whoa! An aside!"

[Things I Love] Trains

I must be one of the few people who isn't annoyed by having to wait at a railroad crossing. I love watching trains. I love looking at the graffiti on trains and wondering where the cars were when they were decorated as such. They're such a majestic form of transport (there's that word again). The train above is from the original Amtrak "Empire Builder" line, the name of which explains a lot about my love and deep respect for trains. (It's at the Jackson Street Roundhouse Museum, if you'd like to touch it yourself. :^)

We have yet to actually replace them, which impresses me, considering the shear number of transportation options available these days. If you have the time, there is no better way to see the country than via train. It feels like stepping back into an era where traveling was special.

The lake is a lie

After watching an episode of The West Wing wherein Martin Sheen gets all patriotic about the National Park System, I decided that I really need to see all of the national parks. After a quick trip to Wikipedia-- okay, who am I kidding?-- after a 2-hour wiki-walk, I decided that in order to keep this reasonable and with the assumption that there are not going to be any medical advances in the next few decades that will increase my life expectancy by 50 years, I would limit the self-imposed requirement to places that actually contain the label "National Park." Partly because there are a lot of national lakeshores, seashores, monuments, historic sites, historic reserves, recreation areas, and much, much more...but mostly because national forests are really, really boring and better lend themselves to being driven through at high linear velocities.

So I set off to plan a solo vacation. My first stop was to be Redwoods National Park. Oh, how I've always wanted to see those majestic trees! Majestic isn't a word I use often, but it definitely applies to those beasts. Upon researching the area, it became clear that I could see Crater Lake National Park on the same trip. Wonderful, I thought! I didn't have any preconceived notions about Crater Lake, having only a passing knowledge of its existence from the backside of a quarter shortly before using said quarter to buy something far fizzier and tastier than a pressed image of Crater Lake. So I did what I always do when I don't know enough-- headed out to the internet to research like a mad person. I started to get really excited about seeing Crater Lake! It was huge! A volcano collapsed and made this fantastic bit of nature! The photos I saw were breathtaking. I wasn't just doing this to meet some arbitrary goal; I was doing this to experience the beauty of our country, one crazy volcanic structure at a time!

There was some foreshadowing. A friend suggested that, based on weather predictions, I should arrange to go on a different day. First of all, everybody knows that weather prediction is some sort of crazy crystal ball voodoo. Second, I'm from Minnesota and you can't scare me off with a little "28 degrees and snowy." Third, I had my trip planned down to the hour and couldn't wouldn't change anything. On my way out of town, I stopped at a small gas station in Oregon that had one pump and a sign stating that their hours were "10-5 starting March 16." What good fortune! I had managed to catch gas season by just a few short days. The man of few teeth who sauntered out to pump my gas was a bit surprised to hear that I was planning a trip to Crater Lake. "Today?" he asked, his head askew, shaking slightly.

But I was determined. I was going to Crater Lake because I said so.

Everything was going so well at first. I zoomed along in my rented Chevy Aveo, like a little red bullet of moderate and efficient speed. As I increased in elevation, I saw the first little bits of snow on the ground. I was so excited! I was going to snowshoe around the rim of Crater Lake and it was going to be magical and awesome. It started raining, lightly at first. As the Little Aveo That Could steadily chugged along, we kept going up, higher and higher. We were on the park road now, bracketed by 12-foot banks of snow with heavy duty plow marks streaked along them. The rain turned to sleet, and then to snow. I slowed down a bit; I could feel the little Aveo starting to slip and slide as snow accumulated on the narrow, winding road. It may have been my imagination, but heavier duty vehicles seemed to being going out of their way to avoid me-- a feat on a two-lane road. It may have been the Arizona plates I was sporting.

We must almost be there. I was going 15 mph now, with a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel. It was snowing harder, the flakes wet and heavy. I wouldn't normally drive in conditions like this. Back in Minnesota, I would have stayed inside drinking cocoa and playing Scrabble against myself. But I was going to see Crater Lake. I came all this way, and I was not going to turn back now.

45 minutes later, I arrived at the rim gift shop/snack bar/parking lot of Crater Lake. I bought some magnetic hematite for my refrigerator, because I thought my refrigerator might like it. I went up to the second floor where you're supposed to be able to look out and see the lake. I should have gotten a clue when I couldn't figure out which of the four windowed walls I was supposed to be looking at the lake through.

Never one to give up, I went back to my car and donned my snowshoeing gear. Boots, snowshoes, jacket, gloves, scarf, hat. I was all ready for some awesome national park fun. I walked as jauntily as one can while encumbered with snowshoes out to the rim of the lake. I stood right next to the rope that they had there for our safety. I looked down, and I was forced to confront the reality that I had been avoiding at every opportunity that day: there was no lake. This is what I saw, in all of its sordid, disappointing glory.

I still don't believe there is one. Roswell, the moon landing, Crater effing Lake.