Why does ice float?

I've been waiting years for one of my kids to ask me that and really care about the answer. My daughters both inquired at various times but weren't really very interested in the molecular reason that water floats.

Last week my son was concocting pink potions with suds and floating ice in it, and spilling all over the place of course. When he inquired, I could tell he knew he would be interested in the molecular structure of water when it becomes solid. I explained briefly about hydrogen bonding and how the water essentially becomes "fluffy" and lighter than liquid water. He was so interested that I drew the structure for him and showed him where the bonds form between the hydrogen of one molecule and the oxygen of another, forming a triangular structure. He spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to figure out how to draw the molecules with different types of bonding between them and explaining to me what he was trying to do. I didn't really have a chance to explain how the electrons are shared in order to form these bonds, but I think I may have explained it to him once before so maybe he was basing his ideas of bonding on bits of what he remembered from that discussion.

I've always been a fan of hydrogen bonding in water that causes ice to form on the surface of lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. Although my girls weren't exceptionally interested in the molecular bonding in water, they were able to appreciate that liquid water in the bottom of ponds was a very handy thing to allow fish, frogs, toads, plants, etc to overwinter. Maybe the next time they walked the dog by our neighborhood pond they thought of that as they contemplated the life at the edges.

I love Google's misinterpretations of keywords sometimes

I belong to a group on Dog Scouting- seriously- but we haven't done any of the activities with them because they don't happen in Boulder. I just got a reminder about a Pooch Plunge happening in Fort Collins coming up at the end of the month. Google ads (or is it AdSense?) apparently noticed the word "plunge" so the ads on the right side of my gmail message were mostly for bras- *plunge* bras, I suspect. Probably a lot of people interested in dog swimming events are probably interested in plunge bras too so it's probably ok. I often look at those ads and follow them since I've found some very interesting things by doing that- probably including at least a few plunge bras.

Boulder has a dog swim also. They've been doing it for many more years than I've been going. My last dog liked swimming but not in pools so those events weren't of much interest. My current dog LOVES dogs, playing with dogs, swimming with dogs, seeing dogs, smelling dogs- anything with dogs. We went last year to Scott Carpenter for at least a couple of the doggy swim times and she loved every second of it. I can't imagine how Ft. Collins will get dogs to leave after less than an hour since I know how hard it was to get Keeyush to leave after two or three hours. I can't imagine how she would feel watching other dogs leave after only an hour either.

Just when I get one thing figured out, things keep changing

Once upon a time I put together a website on "The Advantages of Formula"- the reasons people give for not breastfeeding. At the time, it was state of the art, but nothing moved, there were no ads, no area for reader comments (other than my email address), and so on. For awhile it was fairly easy for me to edit but then I had a third child, new computers and just forgot how to do it. Luckily the basic information is still there and current, but I suspect many of the links aren't. I don't want to have the updated, current, maintained version only as a blog but I guess having it current someplace will be useful.

Oddly enough, there's a woman who keeps publishing my site on hers, no matter how many times I ask her, tell her even, not to do that. I wish she'd stop. It's at "Labour of Love" listed in the "breastfeeding category" as "Advantages of Formula Over Breastfeeding (all-the-reasons-refuted!)". It's pretty rude, I think. She takes the page down sometimes when I ask her, but then somehow it just ends up back there on her site, almost as if it has a will of its own! I've repeatedly told her that she can publish a brief excerpt and then link to it, but she's either too stupid or pigheaded to do what I ask, despite repeated reminders as well as a note to the same effect on my site. Pathetic.

Periodically I get my friends at Parent-l and PY-TeenAP to remind her as well. It seems to be time to do that again but this time I'll recruit my readers here to come to my aid. I'm not providing links to her site here but it's pretty easy to find. I would so love it if some numbers of you tell this woman (whose name I have forgotten again) to cease and desist. She knows better so she needs to act better.

Sometimes I'm really out of touch

I know there have been murmurings of a change in liquor laws in Colorado for quite awhile. Liquor stores have been closed on Sundays for as long as I've lived here, creating a minor inconvenience. The bigger issue for me has been the lack of a Trader Joe's and a lack of the wine selection available at Costco in other states. Around the beginning of July liquor stores started to be able to be open on Sundays, but I haven't taken advantage of that yet, probably because I'm just in the habit of NOT buying beer or wine on a Sunday. Part of the problem was also that I'm out of touch- I didn't really realise that the stores really were open on Sundays, despite the signs that said, "NOW OPEN SUNDAYS". I don't know how I missed that, but I guess I really didn't believe it.

Now I wonder what else has to change to allow us to have Trader Joe's and Costco come in with their power buying and power selling. I'd heard for years that the licensing laws were such that there could be "only one store of a given name with a license"- hence, only one Costco could possess the liquor license, and it wasn't worthwhile for Trader Joe's to open stores here if only one could sell beer and wine. Then, I heard that no food can be sold on the same premises as liquor, leading to the same problem. More recently someone told me that Colorado just doesn't issue enough licenses.

Humph.

I could embark on a search to figure this out- using The Google, you know- but instead I'll sit back and see what answers my new readers rushing to my brand new blog offer.