Tomorrow, April Fool’s Day, sees the birth anniversary of two non-foolish friends of mine. So Happy Birthday to shebit! Sorry I didn’t make a scrolling thingy for you! And Happy Birthday to big sis, aka judiang! Hope you both have a great day (and I’ll see you this weekend, Judi! Woohoo!)

Yesterday I posted about a successful experiment in the making of Banana Bread. warinbabylon asked for the recipe that I used, so I decided to post it today. The original recipe is one that I got from this website. It’s the first one on the page.

Banana Bread

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1 cup Splenda
• 4 oz Egg Beaters or similar (2 eggs worth)
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 large)
• 2 cups flour (watch cat to make sure he doesn’t play in flour)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (get from neighbors if need be)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (ditto)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (or more…)

Cream butter and Splenda together. Add Egg Beaters slowly, beating till smooth. Blend in mashed bananas. (Or add mash the bananas as you add them and then read the bit about the eggs… Ooops!)

In second bowl, stir flour with baking soda, baking powder, salt and nuts (after going next door to get the baking soda and baking powder). Add to banana mixture stirring only to moisten. Transfer to greased loaf pan. Bake in 350°F. oven for about 1 hour. Let stand 10 minutes. Remove from pan and place on plate to cool (well, I have no cake rack). Cut pieces for self and mother. Wrap to store.

So if you compare both recipes, you’ll see very little variation. elsaf had warned me that the Splenda wouldn’t caramelize and the bread wouldn’t look the same color, but it’s weird – it actually turned out a nice color. Kind of orangy-brown on top. She had suggestions using honey and reducing the amount of fat by using less butter. I just had fun using butter, myself. I don’t often treat myself to butter, so I figured I’d splurge. Next time, however, I’ll try cutting down the fat a bit, just to see what it’s like. Assuming I don’t get all of my bananas eaten in time.

(A tip for those of you who love bananas – if you have an overly ripe banana but don’t have the time to make banana bread or banana smoothies or anything like that, remove the banana from the skin and freeze it. Mom says she does it all the time and they’re just fine for smoothies/bread/etc after that.)

Dinner and a movie just not working out? Why not try banana bread and a movie? Heh… Tonight, I finally used up my two old bananas and made banana bread out of them. And mom came over to watch Under the Tuscan Sun with me.

The banana bread was something of an experiment. I have never made such a thing before, so that was a first. I used Splenda instead of sugar. I used Egg Beaters instead of eggs. But I still used the half cup of butter that it called for. Despite doing some of the steps bass-ackward (and realizing once I’d started that I had no baking soda or baking powder – thankfully I have lovely neighbors who loaned me some) the banana bread turned out just fine – and yummy! Mom liked it enough to take some home with her. Hmmm, with a bit more planning and a few more ingredients in my house, I might be able to handle this baking lark.

I do want to know why, as a responsible chemistry teacher, that I can’t seem to follow my own lab rules when cooking? I mean, I tell kids to read through a lab first before performing it, then read as you go. So why couldn’t I do that while making the banana bread? I put the eggs in at the wrong time, I didn’t have all the ingredients when I needed ’em, I didn’t have the right sized bowls, etc. etc. It’s amazing the stuff even turned out! 🙂

The movie was also fun. And as an additional entertainment, we had Leo wandering around the living room and playing with a piece of foil that mom had discarded after having a Hershey’s Kiss. (Did you know they now make dark chocolate Kisses? These weren’t those type, but I might have to buy some when this batch finally disappears.)

Just got a phone call from mom a few minutes ago to tell me there was a double rainbow in the sky. So, being the science geek that I am, I took my digital camera with me and stood out on the back stoop taking photos.

I managed to catch the double rainbow in all but this photo, which is a great photo of the “bow” shape.

Here is a double rainbow over my garage. You can just see the secondary rainbow to the right of the main one.

Here is the other side of the double rainbow.

This shot has one of my neighbor’s houses in shot to give a sense of scale.

Some interesting facts about rainbows (from your friendly neighborhood physics teacher):

• Rainbows are complete circles, but the horizon usually gets in the way.
• The sun (or other light source) must be behind you and the clouds/rain must be in front in order for you to see a rainbow.
• Your eyes to the rainbow make a 42° angle.
• Rainbows have both reflection *and* refraction occurring – one reflection in the water drop and two refractions.
• Since different colors of light refract differently, the more times you can refract light, the more separated the colors become.
• The secondary rainbow is due to a second reflection taking place in the droplets of water.
• Notice how the secondary rainbow is fainter and has a reverse color order than the primary rainbow.

There’s a lot more to be said for rainbows, but I’ll let you find out about them yourselves.

rach74 did this Grammar quiz and, since I had a lovely boring day that I’d prefer not to bore you dear people with, I decided to follow suit.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Mrs W, my 8th grade grammar teacher, I can call upon my grammarly goodness when I need to. (Though usually I don’t…)

Now to get back to grading lab reports…

Today was a good day (current sinus headache notwithstanding). It started out nice enough by my waking up oily in the morning and being confused about which day of the week it was. After a few minutes of puzzling things out, I realized it was Saturday and thus, I got to SLEEP IN! Woohoo!

After my lovely lie in, (wherein every hour Leo would come by and rattle the phone to let me know he thought I should be up) I took my time getting ready for the day. While I was checking my e-mail and other online fixtures, I was delighted to discover I had over 275,000 gold in Kings of Chaos which, with a few judicial expenditures, I was able to use to upgrade my siege weaponry to Ladders. Yeah, that means nothing to most of you, but it was still cool. (Feel free to click the link and give me more men!)

Then I headed off to Curves. Half an hour later, it was time to go SHOPPING! Always a joy, in my book. I started at WalMart (stop gritting your teeth, Amy!) and found a set of metal jaffa block style thingies for only $11 – cool! Picked up the stuff I needed and some other things that I didn’t really need but wanted anyhoo. Needed to go to Staples (an office store) to complete Judi’s birthday gift. They had a set of 100 blank CD-Rs for $15, so I got that too.

I intend to make some banana bread this weekend before the bananas I have turn black, so I needed a bread pan. So off to Kohl’s to buy a Calphalon bread pan. While there, I discovered they had a 3-piece set of bread pan, 8″ square baking pan, and jelly roll sheet for only $25 – got that and a $13 Calphalon cookie sheet – woohoo!

The final shopping stop was Meijers for a few groceries. After parking out in the boonies as I did for the other three shops, I ended up nice and close to the door here. Not only that, but our lovely warm drizzly day was turning into a lovely warm spring day. Not only was I able to leave the jacket in the car, but I also had to have the a/c on! YAY!

Got home and made a late lunch (left over tofu fried rice) and watched 28 Days Later. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the movie and even more surprised to see Naomi Harris in it – I’d last seen her in the new Tomorrow People series (playing my favorite new Tomorrow Person). During the movie, mom called out to me from my window, so Leo and I went outside for a bit to talk to the parentals and to let Leo enjoy the sunshine. (Um, OK, so he was on a harness – I know I once laughed at a little old lady who had her cat on the leash, but Leo’s not an outside cat… And I’m an overprotective mom, I admit.)

So I had a lovely day and it’s only just these last few hours that my head has gotten 10lbs heavier due to the sinuses. But I don’t really mind it tonight. 🙂

It’s Friday! It’s Payday! And even though paying my bills today wiped out most of my paycheck, I had some cash to spend on myself. So here’s what I did with one of the $20s that I got out of the ATM.

(1) Hollywood Video – rented 4 videos for $4 (and tax). This week’s movies will be Bringin’ Down the House, Under the Tuscan Sun, Stickmen, and, starring the new Doctor Who, 28 Days Later.

(2) Krogers – bought a package of No Pudge Fudge Brownies ($3 and a bit) to make elsaf and judiang for next weekend. (Alas, they sell out so fast, there was only the one package. Hoping to get some packages to give the girls for their own brownies.)

(3) BW3’s – supper and conversation with co-workers at our favorite haunt. For a chicken tender wrap (with Captain Morgan Sauce), 2 legs w/ Thai sauce, and water: $9.

(4) Newton School Gym – $4 to get into the HS play. Tonight’s production was Cheaper By The Dozen. It was fun to watch and the kids did a great job. The majority of the cast were students of mine, and the others either were or will be. I laughed often and loud. I’m never worried about laughing in public. Indeed, it’s crucial to have a good laugher at a high school comedy production – gets the rest of the audience laughing too when they realize it’s OK to do so. At least, that’s what dad told me when I was in the school play. And you know? He was right. Half of the cast thanked me afterwards for my laughter – they said they could tell it was me. Indeed, some of them asked if they could pay for me to come again to tomorrow night’s performance. (Considering we relied upon my dad to get folks laughing when I was in the play, it’s good to see I inherited his Loud Laugh gene.)

Actually, I should have paid $5 for the play, but I’d heard the kids bandy the $4 price during school. Silly me didn’t think that this was the student price until just before getting to the door of the gym… I’d only brought the last $4 from the $20 bill… Still, the boys taking the money figured I was good for it. As a staff member, I can get into any school run event for free, but I usually pay anyhoo. I’ll give Jared and Stephanie (the directors) the extra buck on Monday.

So how did I get to the school? The usual answer is “walked” but as I was leaving my place, 3 senior girls invited me to go with them. (One of my seniors lives across the street and the other two were picking her up as I was going.) I think this is only the third time I’ve ridden with students – not including my cousin Deanna or her friends. The first time was a wild ride from one store parking lot to another by one of the craziest kids I had at Eaton. The second time was in another Eaton student’s purple VW bug (cool car!)

I had brought my umbrella (the one with the London Underground map on it) with me and was able to walk home in the light drizzle.

A nice evening, all in all! And only for $20!

On Sunday, I decided to head to my local (read, next town over) Hollywood Video and check out the new releases. They had a $1 rental special once a few years ago that worked so well, they’ve never ended it. So all rentals are $1 a DVD for 5 days. I usually pick 4. This time I did that, *and* bought 3 others.

The rentals:

• Together: a Chinese movie about a boy and his father who leave their village in order for the boy to learn the violin from a master teacher.
• Chicago: the award winning movie version of the stage musical.
• Lost in Translation: that movie that foolishly tried to compete against LotR in this year’s Oscars.
• American Wedding: the sequel to American Pie and American Pie 2.

The purchases:

• X-Men 2: the sequel to, yes, you guessed it, X-Men.
• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (aka LXG): the prequel to LXG 2 (snerk) – loosely based upon a graphic novel that I liked.
• Coupling season 1: season 1 of the UK series, Coupling, oddly enough.

They were having a 3 for $30 sale on the purchases, which meant I ended up paying an extra penny on Coupling but saved $3 and $5 on the other two DVDs. Works for me! I may have made a mistake with LXG since it’s the only purchase I’ve yet to see. Dad tells me it was boring, but I’m sure I’ll get my $10 out of it.

As for the rentals, I’ve now watched 3 of the 4. Taking a break between Lost and Wedding to write this up. I found Together to be a heartwarming film, definitely one I would recommend. Chicago was simply fabulous and I’ll probably have to buy the DVD for it. They captured the energy of the stage play brilliantly. (Attention davisonweekly folks, I saw the stage version of Chicago with Peter Davison as Mr Cellophane. He did a nice soft shoe routine during the performance.)

I just couldn’t get to sleep last night – I guess I was still wired from the evening’s antics, so I started Lost in Translation after midnight or so (confused the heck out of Leo as he tried to figure out what I was doing on the sofa when I should be in the bed) and watched nearly an hour of it. I just finished the movie during supper. It was a fascinating look at Tokyo and I decided that Tokyo was the star of the movie and those other two were just pawns to show off Tokyo’s talents. The rest of the movie was just OK. Glad the Academy went with LotR, myself. Considerably more entertaining, I thought.

I’m sure I’ll enjoy American Wedding as the first two movies kept me entertained. If I discover otherwise, I’ll be sure to tell you.

In other news for today, I’ve officially lost 10 lbs on my Portion Control Project! More details can be found in my post to monday_gdp which I’ll write up after I finish this one.

If you’d’ve asked me at 4pm what I was going to do this evening, I would have said “I’ll go to Curves and then have left over lasagna and watch one of my DVD rentals. Then probably watch some Tomorrow People.” What I would *not* have said was “Go down south to Kettering and watch dad teach a class on homosexuality and the Bible.” I would not have said that because, until 4:30, neither of us even knew that was a possibility…

Before I headed off to Curves, I stopped by dad’s place to show him a computer print that I did of Leo (turned out as nice as a real photograph) and Judi’s birthday gift which arrived today (she’s gonna love it! Even dad was impressed). Mom was off at a baby shower for a co-worker. While I was there, dad gets a phone call from a lady who was supposed to be teaching the 4th (and final) course on Homosexuality and the Bible at a UCC church down in Kettering (part of south Dayton, basically). Dad didn’t really have any plans for the night other than heating up a frozen pizza and watching a movie (hmmm, similar night to my original plan, I see). So he said yes. Now he’d never met this lady before, but she’d first called a mutual friend who couldn’t do it (another retired pastor who’s very gay friendly) but he’d suggested dad.

Once dad gets off the phone and explains to me the situation, I asked if I can go along with him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look more relieved. He doesn’t care much for driving and he especially doesn’t like driving in south Dayton. It’s not the other drivers he fears, he assures me, it’s just that he doesn’t trust riding when he’s driving… Or somesuch. I volunteered to join him for that reason and because I simply enjoy A Grand Adventure. You have no idea when you set out what’s going to happen, but you do it anyhoo.

We agreed to do supper on the way down, so dad and I got in the truck and headed doon sooth. He even took the Interstate. (My sister, who’s probably reading this, is now VERY surprised.) Well, when we arrived at the church, the only restaurant nearby was an MCL Cafeteria, so we decided since there was less than an hour to the class, we’d eat afterwards. We entered the modern offices of the church and I was impressed – it reminded me of university offices more than church offices. I’m used to smaller churches, I guess. A fellow there showed us to the copier so dad could copy his “clobber passage” info sheet that he brings to similar workshops. Then he invited us upstairs for supper. The church was doing a series of Lenten courses on Wednesday nights – supper at 6 followed by a series of courses at 7. Dad and I are never ones to pass up a free meal, so we headed upstairs.

Once again, I was impressed with the size of the church. I never did see the sanctuary, but I’m sure it was impressive too. There were some friends of dad there from other pro-GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered) gatherings that we’ve been to and we sat with them while we ate. Supper was a casserole consisting of chicken, rice, water chestnuts, cream of chicken, cornflakes, and cheese – and it was damn good. There were also the best cooked carrots I’ve ever had – and I’m not very fond of cooked carrots, usually. Applesauce and cookies followed.

After dinner, we went back downstairs into the classroom and dad did his best to discuss Authority. My dad’s a bit anti-authoritarian, so it was funny to think of him talking about authority. A heckler was there as well, and he even asked me a question – he wanted to know who, despite dad saying he wasn’t much for authority, had the authority when I was growing up. Um, well, of all the kids in all the world, he had to ask me? I assured him that, as far as I was concerned, I was in charge of myself growing up. 😉 The folks in the course had a lot of good things to say and good questions to ask. Dad answered things as best he could, but, as I figured would happen, he managed to get parables into things again. “When your only tool is a hammer,” he admitted “every problem starts looking like a nail.” So just about anytime dad talks about Biblical scholarship, he has to talk about parables.

I found the folks in the class to be very well educated and most seemed to want to be there for more information and more perspectives. It’s a shame dad only had an hour for the class – and didn’t have as much time to prepare as he usually does. Even the heckler was kept under control (though I saw a lot of head shaking going on anytime he got the floor again). So I had a good time and talked dad’s ear off the entire way home. We talked about the issues in the discussion and then got onto talking about the problem of taking an oral tradition and cementing it with the written word. As dad said, just like on the Internet, you miss out on the wink and the nudge when you read the oral story instead of seeing and hearing it for yourself. I could probably go on with my thoughts on written tradition vs oral tradition (cuz I did yammer on for some length in the car – it takes nearly an hour to get back from there), but I’ll spare y’all (this time – bwa ha ha ha!)

Oh, if you’re wondering about Curves? I’ll go tomorrow instead. 🙂

(Hmmm, to go on with my Biblical studies post I need a Biblical studies-ish icon. Wish I had a decent screen capture of Sylv as Kev the Rev…)

This year saw the return of Channel One to our school. This is a service whereby students are shown a “hip” news program (and 2 minutes of commercials) each day to keep them up on current events. I actually enjoy Channel One (though I let my kids talk through the commercials) – Lisa Ling who’s on The View (at least, I think she’s still there) was a former Channel One reporter.

Well, this year, we had a freshman who wanted to start a news program for the school to be shown over the Channel One system and, with the support of the “media specialist” (formerly called librarian) did so. Each Monday, now, the Newton News report airs. And I decided to take advantage of this and advertise physics. I asked the physics students if they’d be interested in making little 2 minute “PhysBits” to be shown on Newton News (or N²). They jumped at the chance. They researched physics demos, wrote scripts, even built equipment to use in the demos.

So a couple of weeks ago, we spent physics class filming 4 of the 8 PhysBits. One group chose to show off air pressure by crushing pop cans. Another proved that air has mass (or as their poster read “Gases has Masses”), which was entertaining when it *didn’t* work. They had two balanced balloons and then let the air out of one balloon. Unfortunately, the balance (a balanced meterstick) swung the wrong way. They weren’t too phased – they bumped the balance and finally it tilted the correct way. A third group did Action/Reaction using a water rocket. While the two girls in the group talked about Newton’s Third Law, the boy was busy pumping at the water rocket. As soon as the girls finished their talk, the rocket went off. They couldn’t have planned it any better.

The fourth group of that day went over and above the call of duty. While looking through the text book (Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt) they saw a photo of Hewitt breaking a cinder block on the chest of someone laying on a bed of nails. They looked at a number of other demo ideas and finally settled on building their own bed of nails for the trick. Sure enough, by the day of filming, they had a rather crude, but effective, bed of nails. One of the boys then stood on the bed of nails in his stockinged feet and then he laid down on the bed with just a thin layer of shirt, and his partner stood on him (and did a surfing pose).

I was really impressed with the first four PhysBits and apparently a lot of the students were impressed as well. So today, we filmed three more of the PhysBits (alas, one group had a partner who was sick today). The first group demonstrated the three primary colors of light (red, green, and blue) and their complementary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow). The next group demonstrated the van de Graaf generator. They started with one of the boys having his hair stand on end, then they shot a bunch of confetti in the air. (And, to my eternal gratitude, cleaned up the confetti afterwards – without my mentioning it – woohoo!) The last group was the most entertaining, however.

They’d asked to do the “throwing an egg into a sheet” trick that I’d done earlier in the year. So they worked at figuring out how that worked (hey, it was half a year ago, don’t expect them to remember about Impulse and stuff…) and came up with a good script. They asked if they could throw an egg at a wall, and I said, sure. They also asked if they could throw the eggs “naked” (as I always had them in a plastic bag, just in case). And I said “sure.” Heh – foolish teacher…

So today they brought four eggs to do the trick. When the one girl threw the egg at the wall (which was just outside the superintendent’s office and my chem lab), it shattered and splattered most impressively, getting on the carpet leading into the super’s office area, etc. The girls all laughed, but recovered their composure and continues filming. So the thrower now throws a new egg at the sheet – and this one rolls up the sheet, unbroken, and then falls down behind it, breaking on the floor. The two girls holding the sheet collapsed in laughter. Thankfully, they’d brought 4 eggs.

Attempt number two at the sheet saw the egg shatter when it hit the sheet and making a huge wet splatter on it. Once again, the sheet holders were on the ground in laughter. Turns out that egg was the one with the hole in it and the thrower assured me that it broke as it left her hand. So they cleaned the guck off the sheet and explained at the start of the next take that they had a defective egg and were going to try again. The third time, as is often written, was the charm and the egg flew into the sheet and remained unbroken (albeit a bit wet from the previous egg mess). I got the girls a bucket of soapy water and a roll of paper towels and they managed to (hopefully!) clean everything up.

Ah, I just love teaching physics! Physics is Phun!

As if I don’t have enough icons as it is… But while responding to one of shebit‘s journal entries just now, I was inspired to make one in honor of folks getting older. Indeed, this May 1st I shall be turning 33 1/3. And before then, on April 1st, judiang will be turning – well, I shan’t tell you, but it’s been awhile since she was 33 1/3. Heh. 🙂

So Judi and anyone else with an upcoming (or recently going) birthday, this icon’s for you! 🙂