Proud Geek Mom

This week as I was coming home from working, Mackenzie came bounding out of the house to greet me with a big smile. I knew something momentous had happened that he was just busting to tell me about and sure enough he came out with it just as I climbed out of the car...

"Mom, they fired up the Large Hadron Collider today! And it didn't even create an earth-swallowing black hole!"

Yeah, that's my boy :)

The quote I like best from the live coverage of the collider was this one:

11.28am: Hilarious. A Cern physicist has just been talking about creating black holes. He worked out that to make a black hole, you need to compress 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 protons into the space of a billionth of a millionth of a millimetre. That number of protons would make up three times the population of Geneva. Apparently.

This from Brian Cox on Twitter:

"If anyone else says "black hole" today I'm going to come round and chin em".

Although there's lots of great sci-geek info tucked into the commentary, like this:

"What would the effect on living tissue (other than the assumed cold) of these high-energy beams be?"

A good question.

In the mid-70s, a Russian physicist called Anatoli Bugorski was checking a faulty accelerator when the proton beam came on and hit his head. He says he saw a bright flash "brighter than a thousand suns".

His face swelled up and skin started falling off. He lost some hearing but otherwise his brain remained in quite decent shape. He could still function, but got tired quickly. It was a crazy accident to have happened.

And this:

11.37am: i: manipulating the Higgs field isn't going to happen any time soon. You'd need to heat your part of the universe above 10,000,000,000,000,000 degrees to influence it. Which isn't really on. A bit dangerous too. If you change the Higgs field, you'll alter the size of atoms (though not their mass very much), and destablise normal matter. That's not a good thing to do. 

Or perhaps this:

9.48am:  I refer you to the priceless exchange between Robert Wilson, former director of Fermilab, and Senator John Pastore, during a Congressional hearing over the value of building a new particle accelerator. Pastore is sure there must be something about the machine that can be steered towards a defence app:

Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of this country?

Robert Wilson: No sir, I don't belive so.

Pastore: Nothing at all?

Wilson: Nothing at all.

Pastore: It has no value in that respect?

Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with, are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean, all the things we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except perhaps to make it worth defending. 

Overheard

From little sister to big brother: "You don't need to give me advice. I don't recall asking for a childhood mentor!"

Mackenzie Humor for the Day

Mackenzie tells about a million jokes a day that he just comes up with on the fly, and every now and then I remember to write some down. Here's a couple from today that had me chuckling:

What do you call a buffalo when he's being annoying?
> Jerky

What kind of priests make the best cooks?
> Friars

More Life With the Pun-Meister

Over the lunch table today, Mackenzie is commenting on Asa's tendency to only eat the middles of her grilled cheese sandwiches:

"Oh great, my sister is the Anti-Crust!"

So I Guess It's A Good Sign...

...when your teenage son says to you "Mom, you should write a parenting book. That way other parents or people thinking about having kids could have all the benefit of your wisdom."

After I got done laughing, I thought about it. Trouble is, I don't know what I'd say. Well maybe I do, but it wouldn't be enough to fill a book. When my son was just a baby I remember thinking about how helpless he was, and trying to put myself in his shoes. What if I was in some terrible accident and my memory was wiped out and I had to relearn everything all over again. What if my best friend was my caregiver throughout all of that. How would I want her to treat me? That's how I've tried to treat my kids. And I know my caregiver might sometimes get frustrated beyond all reason, so I hope that my kids can forgive me when I don't get things just right or when I blow a cork from time to time. I always apologize, after all they're my good friends too.

I guess it all boils down to the golden rule. Not enough to fill a book, but I guess enough so that your teenager still thinks you're doing a decent job of things. High praise indeed.

Checking the P-Mail

With temperatures over 100 degrees here lately, we've been taking our dog to the dog park late at night when it's actually almost cool enough for her to run around (as I biked home from work at 7:45 on Monday, the thermometer read a toasty 97 degrees!). Mackenzie keeps up a running dog impersonation as Callie runs around sniffing "Yep, I'm just checking my pee-mail. 328 messages! Some of these are from two months ago. I'm getting behind on my pee-mail, must check the inbox more often." The kid cracks me up, it's like living with a full-time comedian (when it's not like living with the bouncing ball of hormonal emotions, that is).

Genetic Hoo-Haw

First of all, a pic of my great big gargantuan huge-looking kids. Gosh, does the summer weather make them sprout up like my dandelions?? I have to chuckle because someone commented the other day on how much the kids looked alike and Mackenzie (individuating himself as required in the Big Brother Code, section 1.3.c.) replied that they looked nothing alike. Ummmmm, yeah. Take a look at this photo, big bro.

Secondly, some totally cute stuff from the kids lately. The first is related to this growing-huge phenomenon. One day he just started doing it, Mackenzie in his now-much-deeper voice began to answer the phone like this... "Mmnnnnnyellow". This is EXACTLY how my dad has always said "hello" when answering the phone. But I don't think Mackenzie has ever heard that since I'm always the one to call my dad. It's just plain eerie, but at the same time it never fails to bring a smile to my face. Talk about a chip off the ol' grand-block. It sure makes you wonder exactly how many things are genetic. I mean, phone answering??? On a not-so fun note, both of the kids tend to get a painful knot in the muscle that lies just under the left shoulder blade.... Exactly where I have a killer knot that flares up from time to time and even travels up my neck until I can't turn my head to the left. So Mackenzie quips "Great, I inherited the family knot!"


My Asa funny for the week comes from her first swim meet of the season, where she won her freestyle and backstroke heats. Afterwards, she remarked langorously "I love breathing to the side in freestyle. That way I can just watch all the other swimmers slipping away behind me." LOL! Maybe that swimming thing is just a wee bit inherited also...

Measuring Up

Today Asa told me that if Mary Poppins measured me with her tape measure, it would say "practically perfect in every way".

High praise indeed from a daughter who only five minutes before had been giving me the evil eye about emptying the dishwasher, LOL.

And On The Subject of Caravaggio

Here's a funny kid quote...

I had the book of Caravaggio's paintings open on the dining room table as I was reading his biography and Asa started flipping through them, which led to long discussions of what most of the pictures were about. The longest by far was on his painting of the "Penitent Magdalen" because Asa wanted to know why this woman was so sad, what her story was, etc. I tried to explain as best I could what the painting was trying to represent about Mary Magdalen, but I had never discussed the term "prostitute" with my nine year old before, so that took a little deft explaining.

After which, she came out with:

"Well then, when she wants to become a mother she'll be able to really easily, because she'll have practiced a lot."

That one definitely had me almost ROTFLOL!

Funny Christmas Quote

This morning:


Asa: It's only 7 days to Christmas! A week to Christmas!

Mackenzie: No it's eight

Asa: No look, it's the 18th and Christmas is the 25th, that's only seven

Mackenzie: But Christmas Eve goes so slowly, it counts as two days.