City sports

Today I saw something amazing.

I was walking to Second City, and a mouse ran onto the sidewalk about 15 feet in front of me. There was a man near where the mouse was running and in one quick movement, he kicked the mouse off the sidewalk and into a puddle, where it was clearly dead.

My first instinct was to be disgusted, but I think I'm too impressed to really be that repulsed. Except for when I walked by later and saw that the deceased mouse had clearly been run over by many cars.

Men of Science

Don Herbert, better known as Mr. Wizard, has died. I watched the show he did in the 80's on Nickelodeon. I learned from him that you can't fold any piece of paper in half more than 8 times. I learned how to measure the speed of sound using a cap gun and two walkie-talkies, information I impressed my 5th grade science class with when our teacher, Mr. Dunn, posed the question (the one other answer I remember involved someone yelling and someone else jumping out a window). I watched as Mr. Wizard used some mysterious science-y powder on the surface of an aquarium full of water, enabling him to retrieve objects from the bottom of the aquarium without getting his hand wet because the powder kept the surface tension from being broken. I tried to re-enact this experiment in my bathroom using a Dixie cup and baby powder, with less successful results.

My 5th grade science teacher, Mr. Dunn, passed away a few years ago. I am occasionally struck by the fact that he taught us to balance chemical equations. In 5th grade. I never really caught onto it, but somehow managed to do ok in the class. When he would go through some equations in class on the overhead projector, he would usually finish each one by saying "It just falls into place." It didn't, for me, but I still hear him saying that sometimes when something does fall into place. And when we re-visited balancing equations in 8th grade, I finally got it.

When we were learning about electricity, Mr. Dunn had the whole class yell "Amps never change in a series circuit" loudly several times. He assured us that by doing that, we'd never forget it. I can't tell you exactly what it means now, but I do still remember it.

(Relatively) Early Morning (For Me) Thoughts

Well, it's 6:52 in the morning and I'm awake. Why? Because I don't have to be. Isn't that always the way? I'm leaving today for a Sonic shoot in Kansas City, but the one time I don't leave at the crack of dawn for one of these trips, I'm up anyway. You've done it again, life! It's ok; it's been a long time since I've watched the Today show, and I need to make sure Ann Curry is still insane. And Meredith Viera is a Tufts alum, and we need to support each other. Is that how she spells her last name?

I'm also pretty sure this whole TB thing is ready to break - that's probably keeping me up too.

Last week I was in my hometown of Dallas for some Sonic PR. There was a nationwide event last Thursday where all Sonics across the country gave away free root beer floats from 8pm to midnight. Brian and I did some radio and television appearances and recorded some weird thing for the Jack FM website (should be up in a week or two if you want to look for it), and then went to three Sonics, in theory to hand out root beer floats, but in reality to pose for cell phone pictures and sign napkins. Brian seemed to always be the first one to sign things, and he was writing verbose witty comments, leaving me intimidated to the point of signing the incredibly clever "Hi (name)! Thanks! Molly (smiley face)"

Mark my words

I'm telling you right now, there is something very fishy about this whole guy-who-traveled-with-TB story. He has a rare strain of TB and his father-in-law* happens to work at the CDC...dealing with exactly this strain of TB?

I don't know what's going down - his father-in-law giving him TB from his lab or what - but something ain't right.

*Oh, and I can't really say "father-in-law" because apparently there was also something fishy about the wedding he was jetting his TB-riddled body off to. Improper documents or some such nonsense. Maybe it turns out his mother-in-law-to-be is a wedding documents expert.