here's life

Well, just had a enjoyable weekend with my family--they drove out Friday and just left. It was good to have a change of scenery, a change of ideas. Got to hang out yesterday afternoon with my brothers at a science museum (they spent most of the time flying flight simulators) and in the morning we went to an Engineering Expo where there were different stations doing different things--one place they were putting together a truss bridge and then replacing a link with a chain to demonstrate the difference between tension and compression. There were some Ham guys with a laser-detector two-way radio. They described modulated laser signals by having two lasers side by side--one just on, and the other flashing at 400hz. You couldn't see it flashing, but they had the same circuitry hooked up to a buzzer, which you could hear. Then they used a mirror to move the beams across the floor, easily showing breaks in the beam as it whizzed across the floor, leaving a dotted line.
Probably my little brothers' favorite was the slime-making--judging by the number of times that we visited that table. Take Elmers glue, add borax. The polymer chains in the glue are crosslinked by the borax, making it thicker, and stretchy.
There was also a group with a complex, remote control robotic manipulator (four channels run by one person) on the end of a 10' class I lever (operated by another person). Watching them pick up three paint cans at once and place them in three holes at a different spacing was cool--especially when the two experts went at it.





This morning we went to one of my churches and heard my cousin's visiting choir sing. It was cool, and then we had a mini-reunion over lunch.
That reminds me, Salt & Light Co: Tuesday one of my cousins was coming through Hutch with his music team, so I went to see him. First, I met his sister and some of her friends for supper in Yoder (mmm, pie!), and then we went and saw the performance (which was excellent and meaningful) and then I hung out with people I didn't know, but my siblings knew, or I knew someone who knew them. I got to introduce my self as "Tirzah's brother", and watch their faces light up, "Oh, yeah, Tirzah is cool!"


I need a garage, so I have somewhere to shove all my wood and stuff when someone comes to visit me.