Twenty Mule Team Borax and the Silver Cloud

Here we are visiting the University of Illinois campus. These photos are actually from several weeks back, but we are just getting to them now. Part of the campus was under construction and we found a Caterpillar E318 L. Engineer R did a project at work dealing with track excavators and this was one of the machines he worked on.

Ant Experiment.

In keeping with the loose overall theme of occasionally doing actual scientific things on this blog, we are going to write about one of the domestic experiments that we performed recently.

When we moved into our current apartment, it was overall a large improvement over our last apartment (see previous post). However, one slight issue with the new apartment was the infestations of ants. Although we live 20 feet above the ground, a colony of ants had seemingly established itself between some gaps in our baseboards. Insofar as can be determined, the species of ant that we had was the Monomorium minimum, aka the "Little Black Ant." As the name suggests, these were black ants that were little. After a week or two of living in the new apartment, we became tired of finding ants crawling everywhere as we were eating.

There are numerous suggestions online for how to rid one's house of ants, but the solution that seemed to be reported as the most effective was borax. Borax, also known as sodium borate, is a salt of boric acid (Whatever that means). When mixed with powdered sugar, Little Black Ants cannot distinguish the borax from the powdered sugar.

20 Mule Team Borax.

We took a trip to the local Meijer and purchased one box of 20 Mule Team Borax (not to be confused with the Las Vegas band by the same name), and indeed, when mixed with powdered sugar, it acts as effective ant removal mechanism. We have since had one small breakout of ants in another room, but we have for the most part been ant free ever since.

The bait bringing the ants in.

Engineer J Builds a Layered Cake.

A few weeks back, Engineer J decided to make an ice cream cake. I am not sure of all of the sources that she drew from, but the end result was quality. Note the well executed layering here.

The basic set up here is a thin brownie bottom, a layer of mint chip ice cream, a middle layer of brownie, and then a top layer of mint chip ice cream. One of the trickier things about making an ice cream cake like this is successfully placing the second brownie layer on top of the first ice cream layer without destroying the delicate brownie. You have to be in top form to remove the middle brownie layer from the baking surface and place it on top of the lower ice cream layer.

Chicago.

Since we are living at least somewhat close to the city of Chicago, we decided last weekend to pay a visit to the place. Before going into the city proper itself, we stayed a night in Glenview, Illinois. According to Wikipedia, Glenview is an "affluent suburban village located in Cook County, Illinois." (Although, for being an "affluent" area, their roads were in pretty bad condition in places. For as much income tax as we pay in this state, you would think their roads would be in better condition).

One of the main attractions in Glenview is the Chicago Illinois LDS Temple. I think we actually can indeed call it a main attraction, too. Of the three photos of Glenview on Wikipedia, the Chicago Temple is one of them.

The Chicago Temple has a twin temple in Boise, Idaho, although the Chicago Temple retains its original variegated marble exterior. (In 2012, the Boise Temple was remodeled and the exterior was changed). As far as I can tell, the floor plan layout is quite similar in both temples. 

The next day (Saturday), we rode the L (the train) into Chicago itself. It just happened that there was a Chicago Cubs game going on that day, as well as the Chicago Blues Festival in Millennium Park. Long story short, everything was incredibly busy. We saw all sorts of people ("Diversity." See below.) on the streets. There were your basic pink-haired girls with a belly button and/or nose rings. There were your 13 year olds dressed like 30 year olds (they too probably had belly rings). There were the super buff guys who constantly wear those "fashion" shades that probably do not even block any light. I saw a woman who was about 6'5". I saw a man who was about 5'0". We even saw a few guys trying to sell perfume from shoulder bags. I will let the photos explain the rest. We saw very little of the city, mostly because we were on foot and it was hot and there were 6 million people out on the streets that day.

Engineer R plays an Epiphone Masterbuilt acoustic guitar.
An Epiphone Riviera (with Bigsby) gold top is on the right.
The Epiphone Emperor Swingster Royale is on the left.
Directly behind him is the Epiphone Casino, which he already owns.

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan

A panoramic view

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A small side comment on "Diversity." Since moving to Illinois, we have had several people inform us that where we are living now is much more "diverse" than Utah. I always think, "Well, no. We have our freaky nut cases as well." But seriously. Engineer R's home town has a lower percentage of Caucasians than our current locale. And, based on the overall weak, weak, weak Mexican food here, the diversity blanket didn't quite reach that part of the bed either. (Well, and based on the 2010 Census).

We have also had some hilarious ideas thrown at us about what the weather is like in Utah. I have had people ask me if it ever gets cold in Utah. Yes. It indeed does (See previous post). I wonder where these people were during the 2002 Winter Olympics. On the other side of the coin, I have also had people ask me if it ever gets hot in Utah. Maybe that is actually a legitimate question. (See previous post).

1400 Miles Later

As many of our readers know, our updates have been sparse over the last few months. We hope to be better about updates over the coming weeks as we will have more free time. As a brief update, Engineers R and J have moved to Champaign, Illinois for the summer. We have moved the 1,411 miles for Engineer R to pursue an internship with Caterpillar. While Engineer R is working Engineer J will be thus occupied with 17 online credits of school, in pursuit of a technical sales marketing minor.

The next few paragraph will focus on the events and travels that have occurred since we left Logan, Utah. Most of this was written in “rant” style by Engineer J in the times were no Internet was present and frustrations were high. You have been warned.

The days were rough and the rough kept goin'.

The first few days of travel were pretty much as expected. Long drives past towns with two radio stations: the good old country station and a station playing 1980s rock music. All this, in the most desolate land you’ve ever seen out your window. It took a total of 23 hours to drive from Logan to Champaign with brief interludes in hotels. Not much more can be said about the drive because frankly nothing eventful really happened, which is a good thing as well. Overall, we arrived in Champaign very tired but also in one piece, at least physically.

Here are some pictures. If I had to describe Wyoming it would be “brown”, Nebraska would be “windy,” (and also brown) and Iowa would be “water tower” ( I guess that’s two words but you get the picture)

Nebraska. That's pretty much all there is.

 

Winter Quarters LDS Temple. (Omaha, NE)

Altoona, IA. We visited their church branch here.

Crossing the Mississippi River. The picture makes it look much smaller than it really is.

 

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It was what happened upon arrival that was perhaps the most stressful. The apartment that we had agreed to lease from two girls, who were supposedly law school graduates, were not there to let us into our apartment. We spent three hours sitting on a curb trying to get into touch with them but to no avail as did not answer there phones. Come to find out that one was “passed out” (in her own words), probably from a post-graduate hangover (this was 6pm at night). 

We also tried to call a maintenance man who had an “angry” hick accent, that made him to sound like he was yelling at you. Finally, after some hairs were pulled and some tears shed, we got into our apartment via an emergency key. Relief! Or so we thought. The apartment was in such a state that it was unlivable, and we immediately were overcome with stress and anxiety about our new very, very, humble abode.  I don’t really want to go into the details of what was wrong with the apartment, because they could take up the entire post, but needless to say it would have cost about $700 to clean the place. So, in defense to our safety, our time, and our sanity we set out to find a new apartment. 

This task of finding a new apartment was mostly undertaken by Engineer J,
as Engineer R was working 8 hours a day at his internship. This was not the best because Engineer J spent hours and hours over the course of three days looking for apartments instead of actually doing homework. This caused a great time of stress for both of us, especially for Engineer R because he was worried about Engineer J trying to juggle too much. However, a fortune cookie from the previous night did provide a great deal of wisdom: "Life’s greatest gift is a sympathetic wife." You can’t make this kind of stuff up! Anyway, on Wednesday, three days after we arrived we were able to secure a quite posh apartment that was a hundred times better. 

Here are some pictures of the old apartment (unfortunately it is impossible to convey over the Internet the smell of cigarettes and cat urine that met you as you enter the apartment):

You know. Just your usual trash heap.

 

The picture does not capture the crustiness.

 

Here is a picture of the new apartment:

In order to not disclose all the details of where we live, we are only posting this one photo.

The new apartment was indeed quite posh but it was one of the only apartments that was available and was priced quite low, so we got it for a steal of a deal. For about a day everything went quite fantastically. Engineer J was finally able to catch up on homework and Engineer R’s internship has finally picked up so he could began his projects (the first few days were orientation and a lot of waiting for security clearance). However, on Friday, lightning struck… literally. Yep, a lighting bolt struck our building and fried our internet router. I mean seriously!!!! How does this kind of stuff happen?! So Engineer J was stuck at home waiting for a tech guy to fix the internet unable to do homework again. Keep in mind this was 5th day internet struck out,  out of 6 days! Needless to say, the internet was fixed and all things seem to be back to normal, at least for now.

Regardless of all the unexpected roadblocks in the first few days these last few weeks have been much better. 

We will post another blog post soon with more updates on recent events such as Engineer R's birthday.