Loss Of An Old Friend

I visited my high school alumni web page yesterday, to see if there was any talk of a reunion in a couple of years. We had a 10 year, but not a 15. Anyway, there is a directory, where you can go in and say what you're doing now. I read about some old friends, and then got the notion to look a few names up on Google. I hung out in a group of five my senior year. We all became very close; but lost touch after graduating; well two of us did anyway. Two were brother and sister, and the brother had married the third one of our group. I saw them at our 10 year reunion. His sister was in a different class, so she wasn't there, but we got the update that she was getting married in a few months. Anyway, to reduce the likelihood of getting someone with the same name in my search, I picked the two that married each other to search for. While there are probably more out there with the same name, the chances of two married people sharing both names with two other married people are slim. The first page that came up on Google was for the American Cancer Society, and there were a list of donors with the married couple's names. And honestly, I didn't even notice that it was for the ACS until I went back to that page later on. The second page was something called young survivors; where I found a copy of an obituary from April of 2008. It turns out that the sister got breast cancer (at least that's what I gathered from some of the posts) and had died. She was only 29 years old. I did some more searching, and found the obit on our local newspaper's site; though she was living in Houston at the time. There was a guest book to sign, but it had already expired and had been archived.

The whole thing floored me. She was my date to Homecoming my senior year; although we had gone as friends. We had all gone as a group. I've been sad since I found out. I mean it's not like I still knew her. I hadn't talked to her in over 15 years. But I think of all of those friends often; and wonder what they are up to now. I would always picture her smiling and making people laugh; because that's what she did; she made people feel better. It was fitting that she had become a doctor. The obit said that she had not had any children, but she had been married for 4 and half years. She was too young. God bless her and her family.

I'm A Genius, If I Do Say So Myself

Archimedes discovered a way to measure the volume of odd shaped objects, when he noticed the water level rising in his bathtub when he climbed in. To this day, the volume of odd shaped objects is measured by measuring the water displacement when the object is placed in water. I had a similar epiphany this morning.

We had some bad storms last night, and the power went out about 11:00. I woke up this morning to find the power still off. Worried that the food in our fridge would spoil, I got our big cooler out and put the contents of the ice maker tray and the perishables from the fridge in it. As I was getting the ice from the freezer, I saw the enormous amount of frozen meat that I was going to have to cook tonight to keep from spoiling. While the cooler will keep refrigerated things cool, it won't keep meat frozen; and once meat thaws, you can't refreeze it. So I was faced with two options; put the meet in the cooler and cook it when I get home, or leave it in the freezer all day on the off chance that the power comes back on right after I leave for work. It was cool enough in the freezer that the meat would stay just as cool in there as it would in the cooler, even if the power was still off when I got home, so I left it in the freezer.

While I was taking my shower, it occurred to me that the power coming on right after I leave for work, and the power still being off when I got home were not the only possibilities. What if the power didn't come back on until 3:30? What if the meat got warm enough to thaw, and then refroze before I came home? I'd never know. Then my ingenious epiphany came to me. I reached into the cooler, and found a chunk of ice that had been at the bottom of the ice maker tray. You could still make out the shapes of the cubes, but they were fused together in a round chunk, sized and shaped kind of like a baseball. I placed the baseball chunk of ice in the ice maker tray, and turned off the ice maker. If the freezer gets warm enough to thaw the meat, the ice will melt. When the ice refreezes, it won't be shaped like a baseball, but like flat sheet in the shape of the bottom of the ice maker tray. If I come home and the power is on, I look at the ice. If it's like I left it, I'm OK; if it's shaped differently, I need to cook the meat.

Now, I know that this isn't too accurate. The meat might thaw at a different rate than the ice, but at least I'd know something.

I came home and found the power on, and the ice still shaped as I left it. The stove clock said 7:55. And since it says 12:00 just after the power comes back on, I could deduce that the power was restored about an hour after I left for work. In hind site, that might have been all I needed to know to figure out the meat was OK. But since I don't know how well insulated the freezer is, and I don't know how long the power has to be off before meat starts to thaw, the ice was a better indicator.

Two More Shirts; 3rd and 10th

Opening Credits

As old TV series are released on DVD's, it has become more apparent that, at least in the 80's, action footage is recycled from episode to episode. You don't notice it as much when the episodes are a week apart, but when you have the ability to watch several back to back, it becomes more obvious. I noticed this awhile back, and it has become sort of a recurring conversation between me and my wife.

I recently started watching CHiPS again. My wife commented the other day, while watching a segment where Ponch and Jon were merging from an on ramp to the highway, that "they sure use that footage a lot." My reply was, "yes, once a week for 6 years, it's the opening credits sequence."

In her defense, my wife doesn't care for my taste in old 80's TV shows. She tolerates them, but doesn't care to watch them. That being said, she often sees parts of them if she's in the room doing something when I'm watching them.

And there is a trend with TV shows now days where opening credits have been replaced with just a graphic with the name of the show, and the actual credits are displayed during the first minute or so of the show. This allows them to pack more into an episode, by not taking up time with opening credits. More likely, it allows them to have more commercial breaks, without reducing the content of the episode.