Monday, November 10, 2008

Hello, Chicagoland!

Why didn't someone tell me it would be so cold here? I'm not sure my fall jacket will suffice...

Oh, wait. John told me it would be cold. I told him I thought my fall jacket would suffice.

My kids are so wunnerful when I'm leaving.

Both of them told me I would be missed. Very nice. Devin said that I was his most favorite, favorite...insert favorite 62 more times here...mommy in the whole world.

Trevor said that it's always "upsetting when you leave because we have to go to school every day until you come home."

On the way to drop me off, we talked about the environment. We recently toured a house built by some PSU students that is very "green." One of it's greenovations (can I copyright that word?) was a "screen" of glass milk bottles. The thought is that you can put these water (or some other medium) filled glass bottles in front of a sunny window on a cold day, and they would absorb heat. In the evening, you can pull the shades, and the glass water-filled bottles would release that heat into the home thereby helping to reduce your carbon footprint and our reliance on non-renewable resources. It's a noble effort.

After we talked about this, Trevor began to talk with some authority on the concept of "absorbed water." He said, "if you take one drop of absorbed water and put into a jar of ink, it will absorb all of the ink. If you take 2 drops of absorbed water and put it into a mud puddle, it will absorb the entire big mud puddle."

I said, "what?" And, he repeated what he just said.

I was confused. He was talking with such authority, the same type of authority he uses when he talks about tornadoes or dinosaurs, that I thought absorbed water was real! That he had learned about it in school or something. He didn't start out talking about absorbed water with a "what if?" He just began talking about absorbed water and explaining it's very absorbent properties.

John had to explain to me that it was a hypothesis. But, I think he was confused, too. At least at first. I would have figured it out eventually, though. I questioned Trevor a little further, he just had more questions for me...

I really like Trevor a lot. I think he's really smart and handsome. I'm relying on him to figure out how to eliminate our need for foreign oil all together or to improve tornado forecasting systems or find a habitable planet outside of earth. I expect that Devin will makes signs that will prevent people from drowning from his McDonalds's/First Aid booth at the beach where he will entertain beach goers every night with juggling, magic tricks and other general buffoonery.

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