We took a weekend trip down to Philly a few weeks ago. The girl half a couple we befriended turned 50, so it was time for a party. They are both physics professors at Temple University, so I got a tour of the boy half’s laser lab. This is a million dollar laser:
This is Alex powering it up to give me a demo:
His team recently made some unexpected but important discoveries in how to use one laser beam to modulate another.
Helen powered up an ancient Singer sewing machine she has had forever. Inspired by the Judy Adams Levi quilts that Nick and Zach have, she collected some old jeans and flannel pajamas and worked some magic:
Here I model the final product, using a modeling pose I learned in engineering modeling school:
Zach dropped by for a visit last week. 
He borrowed a friend’s sports car (S2000) and drove out from MN to NJ to visit his good friend Serjey. They joined up with a bunch of other sport car enthusiast down in TN to drive ‘The Dragon’, a fun 2 lane curvy mountain road in the Smokies. With his driving skill and his white helmet, he pulled away from most of the others and became know as The Stig (famous driver from the TV show Top Gear):
To achieve the ultimate stick to the road experience, he bought some wide sticky tires, but you don’t want to use them on the interstate as they wear down quickly. Somehow he managed to pack those tires and a bunch of tools into the nooks and crannies:
He also put in a racing car seat with 5 point harness. Those seats bolt in, with not much wiggle room:
Definition of a sports car enthusiast: Driving 4600 miles in an uncomfortable seat snuggled next to tools and tires.
Definition of a sports car fanatic? Someone who tattoos a race track layout on their back:
He had a good time and made it back safely without thrombosis a few days ago (whew).
Our friend Ben came for a weekend visit. Here Helen criticizes the muscle anatomy of one of the statues on campus:
And here is this month’s mystery photo. It has a story, but I’m going to first let you try to guess what this is (no cheating and looking at the next picture):
A few days ago as i was working away, solving IBM chip puzzles, I saw a grey blur outside of the window I sit next to and I hear a thump. On the shingles for the porch below us I see this baby squirrel, flattened out on all fours, like you might see in a biology lab dissection table, except his guts were still in place, and he was breathing 200 times per second, with a wild look on his face like that of a squirrel who was just run over by a herd of wild elephants but somehow managed not to get squished.
I grabbed my camera to take a picture and his Mother shows up. She sees me about to shoot her child and she gets that motherly ‘You better not shoot my child or I will break into your house at night and claw your eyes out at night when you sleep’ look on her face. You can’t quite see it in this photo, but believe me, it was there:
Then she jumps down, and after several failed attempts, manages to bundle the child that is almost her size into her mouth and runs away to safety, which is when I took the mystery photo.
Any one figure the mystery photo out? I’m guessing you non-medical types were guessing it was a squirrel barfing up a big hairball. The medical types probably knew squirrels don’t do hairballs so were guessing goiter, caused by a classic case of iodine deficiency, very common with those Great Lake squirrels who often lack access to good table salt.