Thank goodness for the industrial revolution

Every now and then I will take a drive out to the country and enjoy the sights and sounds of farm life. When I was very young my grandparents had a farm, and my happiest childhood memories are from visiting them on their farm.  Last weekend I decided to take such a drive and found myself driving very slowly behind a caravan of farm equipment. As you can imagine, in the country roads there are not very many opportunities to pass slow moving farm vehicles, so I just settled in for a slow ride; I was in no particular hurry.

Eventually all of the trucks pulled into a long dirt driveway and as I passed I took a look at some of the equipment that was being hauled. One of the things was a huge conveyor belt device that I could only imagine would be used for silo unloading. I don’t know what all of the other machines were, or how they are used. Sometimes I fantasize about living on a farm and driving big farm equipment.  But then I think about the old sit-com “Green Acres” and start to chuckle – I don’t think my wife would take kindly to living the farm life at all!

Milky Way Discoveries

As a kid, we had a lot of U.S. and Russian space program events. There were launches of satellites, rockets, shuttles and the space station. There were kids in my classes who had a parent that worked for NASA. They would bring things into “Show and Tell” like space food, photographs of them at the Kennedy Space Center or standing by an astronaut. And I was fascinated by all of it.

My parents supported my interest in the space program by taking me to museums, a tour of the Kennedy Space Center one spring when we were in Florida for spring Break, and they sent me to Space Camp in Huntsville when I was 12 years old. They bought a microscope for me when I was 15 and several of my friends had microscopes, too. We were a band of geeks, in a way.

So now that we are all adults, we still stay in touch and talk about the space program. We are devastated that the space program has been shut down. Not that we want to be astronauts, but because we believe in space exploration. Some of us still have our childhood microscopes and keep them repaired with microscope parts that we order over the internet. In fact, I hope to pass along my microscope to my son some day.

Urban legend

I have loved Disney World ever since it opened. I was young teenager when it first opened. If I recall correctly my parents took the entire family down to Florida for Christmas vacation first year that it did open. That was my first experience with a large theme amusement park and I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

For that particular vacation I think my parents made a mistake by taking us to Disney World first because they also took us to other places such as Sea World, Cypress Gardens, and Busch Gardens during the same vacation.

I don’t know how it ever became an urban legend that Walt Disney’s body had been frozen using cryogenic equipment and was being stored on one of the Disney properties, but it was something I truly believed was correct! I was quite surprised and to be perfectly honest, but this appointment when I learned earlier today that story was simply an urban legend. Walt Disney was in fact cremated and the first known case of anyone being cryogenically preserved was a couple of months after Walt Disney’s remains were cremated.

To be perfectly honest I was rather disappointed when I learned that was an urban legend.  I rather thought it was a romantic notion that the night in some future decade been brought back to life somehow!

Well, it did pop the corn

I had the chance to try that new microwave pop corn popper that I mentioned a few days ago. It is supposed to pop “one service” of pop corn. That “one serving” was 1/4 cup of unpopped corn.

I used Orville’s pop corn because that is what was given to me. And I guess the commercials about it popping larger might be true because the corn popped so much that the lid had a hard time staying on the popper. So next time I’ll put it a little bit under the 1/4 cup. The popcorn came out quite good, actually. I think I’ll be using this little gadget quite a bit in the future!

Popcorn popping

A few years back I heard that there was a large controversy about how bagged microwave popcorn was bad for you. The kind that was already buttered, that is. Well it seems that the people that worked in the factories were getting sick from something that was in the butter. People were freaking out and throwing their microwave popcorn away! I didn’t do that; I reasoned that people in the factories were exposed to a lot more of the “bad stuff” than the average home-owner that only pops corn on occassion.

I did, however, stop buying microwave popcorn. I figured it was the right thing to do. Last month my niece gave us a big jar of regular, unpopped popcorn. My wife has been hinting at me cooking it. I’ve told her that I would, but somehow it has just never happend. Imagine my surprise when UPS delivered a box today addressed to my wife, and when she unpacked it we found two microwave popcorn poppers! These things are individual serving size, and are dishwasher safe. They are in the dishwasher as I write. I wonder how the popcorn will turn out!