This is assessment-testing ("you can't spell assessment without A-S-S" the rebel in me says) week, so classes are a lot lighter for me (no Wednesday morning classes and my Thursday lab is cancelled).

Which means I'm trying to get some research done.

I've already been out this morning to collect 4, 5-gallon containers of soil for the allelopathy experiment I'm starting. Do you know how heavy 5 gallons of soil is?

Well, I don't for sure, but it's pretty darn heavy. It was absolutely at the upper limit of my ability to lift and carry - I'm guessing each container topped 50 pounds.

(There's an old saying that a "pint's a pound, the world around" and there are eight pints in a gallon - but I think that just applies to water-based liquids. I'm sure soil's heavier by volume than water is.

Heck...a typical soil bulk density is about 1 gram per cc (or slightly more, if you're talking compacted soils. Let's see...a gallon is about 3800 cc's, so...a gallon's 3.8 kg, which is 8.4 pounds....Dang! The old saying is just about right for soil! [unless it's compacted soil, which I think some of mine was]. So the total weight of each bucket was around 42 pounds, if each gallon weighed 8.4 pounds....

Naw, they seemed heavier than that. I can lift 40 pound bags of soil without difficulty and it was hard for me to lift these.

Actually, the bulk densities we measure for our soils are closer to 1.2 g/cc, so that would be just over 10 pounds/gallon...which puts the buckets at about 50 pounds.

I like noodling around with math and doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, even for stuff I don't need the calculations for. It's kind of like doing crossword puzzles but with numbers).

Other than that - I pulled out the second "Neapolitan" sock last night. Turned the heel and started the gusset while watching a re-run of Mission: Impossible (the older series, the one from the early 70s). I get some channel that's allegedly the "Baby Boomer" channel or somesuch that shows these old programs (and I can tell I'm totally not in the demographic, because all the ads are for Hoverrounds and Centrum Silver and that "I've fallen...and I can't get up" thing. Probably not really aimed at baby boomers, for that matter, because it seems that many of them are doing the stick-the-fingers-in-the-ears and going La-la-la-I'm-not-aging thing.).

At any rate: I had forgotten how FUN Mission: Impossible was. (I used to watch it when I lived in Ann Arbor: one of the Detroit indie stations ran it at like 3 pm, which was just when I got home from teaching or school and needed some entertainment.

The show kind of stretches the limits of credibility (especially with the make-up jobs to impersonate people), but I can suspend disbelief because it's so much FUN.

And somehow - even though there's violence and coups and danger and stuff, it's not depressing in the way I sometimes find "Law and Order" depressing - it's not so grittily realistic, or something.

And: "Cinnamon Carter" is the BEST female spy name ever, I think.