Hug Twice

I am in the process of applying to become an online tutor in chemistry. I have a BA in Biochemistry, so it isn’t a huge stretch, but the BA is from 1996 so lets just say there are a lot of things I’ve forgotten. I’ve been reviewing my college textbook chapter by chapter to brush up on all the concepts I need to be familiar with, and I have my mock tutoring exam on Friday evening.

I guess I hadn’t realized how much that the studying had affected the rest of my consciousness until yesterday afternoon when I was making up a glass of instant breakfast for CJ. He is a very picky eater, and I often give him a glass of skim milk mixed with half a packet of instant breakfast after a meal to give myself a little vitamin peace of mind. Not the best solution but it’s what we do. We have just recently switched from using some playtex straw cups with rubbery flexible straws for the drink to the take and toss kind with the hard plastic rigid straws. CJ bites through the flexible rubbery straw and the cups are not cheap, and I got sick of replacing them. So on to hard plastic straws that are resistant to little teeth. I think.

I put the milk and instant breakfast mix into the cup and stirred it up, and then I put the straw into the lid and snapped the lid onto the cup, and immediately a stream of milk shot out of the straw and hit me in the face. And the arm. And spilled on the counter. And the floor.

And my first thought? “Hey that’s some impressive capillary action!”

For those uninitiated in chemistry and/or physics, capillary action is basically when the liquid likes grabbing on to the walls of the column, ie straw, more than it likes holding on to itself and staying put in the cup. It climbed out the column, basically. There is more at work than that here but really, I am already starting to bore myself :).

My second thought: “Darn I have to change my shirt or I will smell like milk all day.”

So, lesson learned - do not put the straw into the lid before fastening the lid on to the cup. And always be aware of capillary action. Or something. And I did change my shirt.

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