Putty, putty

I spotted a mouse in my room, so we've made a big effort to clean it, including ripping out the carpeting in my closet.  I was stuffing steel wool into the gap at the bottom of the walls, but put in too much and ran out.  You haven't lived till you've stuffed steel wool into those gaps!  Some British writer in The Guardian was wondering why anyone would want to live to 100, but there are always these new experiences...

Yesterday was the Mathematicians Meetup.  We were discussing Paul Lockhart's The Mathematician's Lament, and I wondered how his way of teaching math would work in practice. (Educational reform has been full of ideas that looked great on paper but didn't work well in practice...)

Speaking of theory vs. practice, I just finished the Beginner's Guide book about the French Revolution and started the Short Introduction by William Doyle. (Why read just one book about it?)

Today we were pouring liquid concrete on the kitchen floor to level it out.  My job was to provide water from the bathroom in four-litre batches to mix the concrete. (The kitchen water was out of commission, of course.) It reminded me of this episode of M*A*S*H where they were laying a concrete floor and Father Mulcahy was singing the song "Cement mixer, putty, putty." I didn't watch the show much but I do remember that scene!

I've been binge-watching the anime Sailor Moon again.  I like the moments where she uses the first-season lunar pen to transform herself into an adult appearance. (Like in the pic above.) Some of us grownups feel like kids in disguise--I'm typing this with the Julia doll in my lap...