some simple things that make me happy

1. Putting together a homemade spaghetti sauce with lots of veggies and spices.
2. Throwing my Outback in low gear and powering up a hill (particularly if said hill leads to Williamstown).
3. The sound of a squash ball hitting the wall.
4. Watching a lathe on automatic feed turn down material.
5. Turning on a radio and instantly hearing a song I’ve been thinking about but haven’t listened to in a long time.
6. Writing useful functions that work properly and integrating them into my codes.
7. Watching a charcoal drawing take shape.

semester’s over now

1. Northern Water Snakes
2. Enemy at the Gates
3. Robert Downey, Jr.
4. Book sale
5. Modeling clay
6. Window envelopes
7. Scrambled eggs
8. Nimbus clouds
9. Callithump
10. Twelve-hour airplane flights
11. Five hundred dollars
12. Science fiction

that was a good break

1. Matzah
2. Badminton
3. Sun
4. Dislodged fuse in a glider
5. Ice cream

Air Force mess halls are

• delicious
• nutritious
• full of friendly staffers
• inexpensive

winter means…

• Thick, quiet blankets of pure white on pine trees
• Cross-country skiing on forest paths
• Sledding down the orchard hill
• Hot chocolate and soup
• Crackling fires with board games and books
• Snow forts
• Bundling up (and then unbundling again)
• Snow days!

ummm

1. Apple
2. Windows XP Pro SP2
3. Seinfeld
4. Toboggan
5. 0.5mm mechanical pencil
6. Cycloid
7. White envelope
8. Balloon

no, I haven’t

1. Rockets
2. Hamburgers
3. Paper clips
4. Staplers
5. Propane gas
6. Cheese
7. Oblate planets

well, well…

1. Glider and tow plane
2. Champagne Supernova
3. Vermont
4. Paycheck
5. Red October
6. Mozzarella pesto burgers
7. Jupiter
8. Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene
9. The Gates of the Desert

I amused myself while walking home by estimating the cost of the following liquids in dollars per gallon

• Gasoline: $3.10/gal (at Ithaca-area gas stations)
• Milk: $2.50/gal (at Wegmans – not far off the mark, which is actually $2.79)
• Bottled water: ~$10/gal (assuming $1 per 12-ounce bottle from a vending machine)
• Soda: ~$10/gal (ditto water)
• Coffee: ~$16/gal (assuming ~$2 per 16-ounce cup)
• Human insulin: ~$8,000/gal (assuming about five 10-mL vials are $100 — this turns out to be a gross underestimate now that I’m back in my apartment and have checked my records: the actual figure is more like $25,000/gal!)

Yay grill! The list so far:

1. Italian sausages
2. Shish kabobs and veggies
3. BURGERS NUM NUM NUM NUM
4. Salmon