Sunday, April 25, 2010

Zermatt's last theorem

I don't particularly like my birthday being Earth Day, as it calls for me to be more self-righteous than I am. But once the birthday's out of the way, I can go for the rest of it.

For instance, today was E-waste day. Or possibly e-Waste Day. STB trucked about 800 pounds of old computers and printers for recycling to city hall. (Who also provided 2 bags of compost to anyone interested, which attracted such a crowd that the gas burned in collecting compost probably outweighed any green advantage in using it.) Possibly city hall was flabbergasted that we could unearth 800 pounds of e-Waste (is that capitalization right now?) in one year, but I guess we could. A couple of hopeless printers and two four year old desktop computers were the bulk of it. If one household can manage this, you can see how e-Waste might be a serious problem.

e-Waste out of the way, what else has been happening?

Well, I took Earth Day as an excuse to spring-clean. And I discovered a packaged fondue in the back of the cupboard that had expired in 2007. Being a biologist, I quickly ascertained that nothing could have possibly happened to a sealed packet of cheese with kirsch in it, so we had a lovely fondue for tea. Sample dialogue:

"Aren't there rituals involved with fondue? If you drop the bread into the fondue like a klutz, you have to drink the rest of the bottle of kirsch, except I don't have any. How about a bottle of vodka?"

"How about I have to eat the Sterno?"

"Ok, not as high class but that'll do."

Yes, we use Sterno for our fondue.

It turned out that being three years out of date didn't impact the fondue at all. As STB said, "they just put the sell-by on there to limit the period they have to re-test [for the FDA]".


Here is a beautiful photo spread and write up of the Dead Weather at Tulsa on my birthday. I still want to marry Baby Ruthless. [link now dead, alas]

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