Thursday, July 19, 2007

important developments!

Two major breakthroughs to share.

First, I found a Dairy Queen. I'm not kidding. I haven't been to one in years because they aren't around here. Other states, sure, one on every corner, but we are distinctly Dairy Queen deprived and I don't mind admitting that I've been rather bitter about that. Turns out, there is one about 15 minutes from home which I happened upon the other day. Who knew? Of course we stopped, and I think the girls would have given it two chocolate-covered thumbs up each, if they had stopped eating long enough.


Second, the turbo bubble blower actually works! John bought this gadget/toy at Toys R Us a few weeks ago--you are supposed to be able to fill it with solution and turn it on and have it create a virtual bubble storm. The question of why we need something to create a huge bubble storm in the first place and why we should be disappointed in continuing to be deprived of one got entirely lost because of the following events: it conked out after about 5 seconds. Hmmmmm. Try other, different, sets of new batteries, same thing. So John returned it and got another one but it didn't work any better, or longer. He didn't know what the problem was and some time later when I asked him if he'd taken this latest model back he said he is keeping it and considered it a "personal challenge".


First he tried hooking up an AC adapter instead of using batteries for power. Still no worky. Then he decided to "bypass the thermal fuse" inside, which required using a soldering iron on some of the wiring, and that's about all I know about that. Yes, I took four physics courses in college and I did quite well in all of them. Yes, we studied circuits at some point. Yes, I still know jack squat about circuits.


And it just goes to show that even when you have a zillion bubbles per minute spilling out of a machine right next to you, blowing them one at a time with a cheapy little wand is still pretty cool.

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