Sick day

I'm feeling ill today, I've had a cold for the past three or so days. I'm working from home, doing low-key things like reading articles and reviewing my projects.

When I was a little kid, I would get excited whenever Dad would take a sick day. Not that I wanted him to get sick, but I got extra Dad time. Even if Dad was lying on the couch, sipping ginger ale, holding a bucket close, just in case, I was glad to just be around him.

One time when Dad was sick, Mom and I were downstairs doing an experiment, we were learning about how water expands as it freezes. I asked Mom why, and she didn't know, so she sent me upstairs to Dad, who was lying ill in bed. I asked Dad why water expands as it freezes. Groggily, Dad told me to go get my Ramagon set.

Ramagon is a building toy that never took off; I have no idea where my set came from. It had a bunch of spokes that would connect to hubs. It was good for making truss structures. I made a bunch of little L's with the Ramagon, two spokes sticking off of a hub at right angles. Dad told me about how these L's are like water molecules, with the tips of the spokes representing hydrogen and the hub representing oxygen. Water, as a liquid, is a bunch of these L's sitting in a puddle, but, frozen, the water forms structures out of all of these L's stuck together, spoke to hub, hydrogen to oxygen, and that's why water expands when it freezes.

I let my rabbit out of her cage today, she's running around. I'm sitting on my futon, and she keeps jumping into my lab and nipping at the articles I'm reading.