I know this is a little late for Easter, but I wanted to share the story of those resilient little birds that symbolize Easter for many young ones. Namely, the Marshmallow Peeps.
I was able to find several extensive scientific discussions of the Peeps online during the first years of the internet. Sadly, many of them have faded away, lost to changing times, student scientists graduating and their scholarly papers on the Peeps being unceremoniously deleted from the server.
Fortunately, one of the better Peeps sites still lives. Over at Peep Research, their studies "focused on basic attributes and reactions of Peeps to simple conditions and stimuli," such as heat, cold, low pressure environments and solubility.
They also conducted health-related experiments on the Peeps, showing the effects of smoking, on alcohol and even the adaptive fear response. Another study details the groundbreaking work in separating conjoined quintuplets, a frequent event in Peepland.
Brave researchers, carrying on their studies for the good of Peeps everywhere, of every color. "Here," they explain, "we try to discover just a little bit more about the world around us through the miracles of science, technology, and preservatives."
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On that note we enter another week. We went to the Easter service with David this morning, and he spent the rest of the day with us, doing this and that. We had a very nice supper of ham, baked potatoes and broccoli.
The weather is going to be wonderful this week--highs in the 50s and maybe we will touch the low 60s. But no rain is in the forecast. And that increases the threat of fire. Until we get rain, we don't get to the event known locally as "greenup," when the new grass, weeds and dandelions take over, when the trees start budding and you start seeing a fuzzy haze of green on distant trees.
Fortunately, we rarely have worse than little grass fires around here. But we have had wildfires in the past, and the weather conditions this week, unfortunately, may have the local firefighters hopping to keep up. Breezy weather. Low humidities. Dry vegetation. You don't have to live in southern California to know what that could lead to.
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The highlight of our week is that we will be visiting S and her husband on Friday and Saturday (just one night). We haven't visited them since New Year's, so it will be nice to see them again. The usual plan is to visit them at their home, then we take them out to dinner and then head for our motel, where we all enjoy the swimming pool.
Tonight, the story of the weekend changed. S's husband, who has been out of work for the last several months, apparently is in line for a job--all that's left is the in-person interview. But it's at a city 30 miles away. And his car is in bad shape. It has been leaking coolant--they tried something called StopLeak, but they just found out from a mechanic that the car has a cracked block. That's not something you want to hear if you trying to get a job 30 miles away.
Last fall, when S told me about the car's problems, I thought about a car that could be available. It's my mom's car, a 1986 Ford Taurus, which has been sitting in her garage since she had her fall and went into the nursing home in late 2005. Yes, it's been 3 1/2 years now.
So I talked to a mechanic at a local garage, who told me there's no reason the car can't run again--only put Heet in the gas tank to absorb the water that has formed in the gas tank. Also, the battery is dead and has to be replaced. But we plan to have the mechanic give it a good once-over to see if there are any major problems.
That makes the rest of the visit a little more complicated. The tentative plan is for us to take S's husband--and maybe S herself--up north with us when we go home. It's about 130 miles. Once there, we will probably go somewhere for supper, maybe across the river in Iron Mountain. Then they will pick up the car and head for home by themselves.
Before you ask--yes, I've got the car's title, and my mom signed it some time ago. I have power of attorney, so I can sign papers on her behalf, anyway.
It's an old car, it may not be long for this world, but my thinking is that it will help them along for a while till they can get something better. And if I can do something to help some dear friends ...
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