The Salad's in the Bowl, the Rice Is on the Stove

[austin_dern]

Sunday we had the time and chance to visit bunnyhugger's parents. Not for any special occasion, past that we hadn't seen them in a while and the next obvious time to visit, early April, will also have us busy with egg-dyeing. So it was a good chance to visit and talk with them and we were totally ready to bring board games except. You know how I mentioned the weather Friday was extremely windy to the point of being dangerous driving? The weather Sunday as extremely windy to the point of driving being annoying, but not actively hazardous. But they were warning about thunderstorms rolling in over the evening and our choices would be either to leave early enough we missed them or late enough that they passed. Given that I had to be up at 7 am, leaving early seemed the less bad course.

Still, there would be time for some pleasant ordinary stuff, like finding out just what had gone wrong with the iPad bunnyhugger's mother was using to read electronic books. (The system had logged her out and she didn't know how to tell that.) And they have a new induction stove, paid for by some federal program for energy efficiency that also saw them get a heat pump for the house. The heat pump we didn't see so much of except that the house was at 74 degrees which, even granting that the outside was at 70 degrees, seems like a lot. But I'll sometimes set my car that high while driving, if it's cold out, so I'm hardly a thermal innocent.

One side effect of the new stove is that they were very anxious to explain just how it would work should I make tea (which, somehow, it ends up I didn't). It turns out to be that you turn the dial, and use the induction-friendly tea kettle, which isn't really different from the old process. I think they're just anxious; they said they hadn't made anything with it yet, although they'd only got the new stove/oven two days before.

The other side effect is they offered us first dibs on all their old, induction-hostile, cookware, which, sure, we can use some new pots and pans. Also one of those big spaghetti pots with the built-in strainer which is going to change everything. Mostly pasta, and in small ways.

Her father, having sworn off weird impulsive eBay purchasing obsessions, has what are allegedly foghorns. When I got the chance to confirm I heard this right it turned out there was controversy about whether he had a legitimate foghorn. He demonstrated and it sounded, really, more like scooting the stool backwards in shop class, but I guess there are circumstances that might be a useful noise?

We set out so very early, and missed all but light sprinklings of rain getting home, when we discovered bunnyhugger had left her favorite travel mug with her parents. It'll be safe.

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So on in to Dutch Wonderland. Hey, remember when I said I was going to be sharing fewer photographs so I could pick the better and more interesting ones instead of sharing five views of the same Tilt-a-Whirl ride sign? Me neither.

You enter the park through the castle building and on the side is this event space, where we saw what looked like the mascot performers doing a pep rally.

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Right? You'd only be doing a Simon Says sort of thing to get everyone in synch at the start of a walkaround shift, right?

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Duke the Dragon is the mascot we're most interested in, of course, but they have a knight and a princess and royals and all and, most recently, Merlin.

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Clock tower as we enter. Note that it had the time correct.

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And here's Duke, getting a picture with some kid! This is three parks in a row we've seen the mascots for!

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So we got a picture with Duke and learned that actually, he was going in so somehow what we saw in the event room was the end of their shift? But they were taking spot photos while that lasted.

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Trivia: Vanguard I had the highest apogee of any International Geophysical Year satellite. Source: Project Vanguard: The NASA History, Constance McLaughlin Green, Milton Lomask. NASA SP-4202.

Currently Reading: The Book on the Bookshelf, Henry Petroski.

PS: What's Going On In Judge Parker? Who arrested Randy Parker and what for? December 2025 - March 2026 in one of the last two comic strip plot recaps still touching the long-ago distant past year of 2025.

Comments

old, induction-hostile cookware

[moxie_man]

So, they had a lot of aluminum/aluminum clad cookware? If I recall correctly Induction is basically rapidly changing magnetism, so you need steel/iron cookware for it. The magnetism reverses back and forth very rapidly, which causes the molecules in the steel/iron cookware to heat up quickly due to internal friction or something like that.