Things I don't recommend

I don't recommend driving during a tornado warning.

This was the second semi accident we saw when we got back onto the interstate after the wind and rain had subsided.  I spotted 2 police cars, 2 ambulances, and a fire truck.

Blizzards

Thursday night, we decided we wanted shakes.  But, it seems silly to shell out $6 or so for Dairy Queen blizzards.  So, we took that money, went to the grocery store, and came home with Cookie Dough Ice Cream (the base), along with some Snickers bars (apparently I hadn't bought enough during the after-Halloween sales).  Then, we made our blizzard.

The chopped up Snickers bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Kit Kat bar.  (I had bought enough Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat bars during the after-Halloween sales.)  We also added Oreo crumbs and M&Ms.

 Adding the candy.

 Our homemade blizzard defied gravity, too.

It was delicious!  And just the right amount of candy added.  We'll definitely be making this again.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

Back in junior high, on the Science Olympiad team, I competed in an event called "What are you trying to tell me?"  In it, you were given a bunch of visual and written representations of information: graphs, plots, nutrition facts, to name a few.

Then you were asked questions about the information.  I really liked that event, because it was easy for me.  (I think I got 3rd in State one year for that event.)  I could take the information, dissect it, and give back answers about what you would really want to learn from the graphics.  (What is this image telling me, you may ask?  It says that a structure with this cross section, attached to a wall at the left and with a load applied at the right, will fail at the dark red and dark blue points.)

Last week, I went to a conference, and one of the speakers reminded me of this event.  He is an electrical engineering / computer science professor, and his entire research is coming up with new ways to visualize information.  Working with one sponsor, he and his grad students took data that the sponsoring agency already collected, and reorganized it.  Suddenly, the decisions the sponsor tried to make from that data were so much clearer!  It was funny for me to listen to this speaker and just kind of think: come on, anyone can do that.

But you know what?  Not anyone can.  Just look at instruction manuals.  Just read an email with a slew of things you're being asked to do.  It really is a skill to organize information, or to interpret disorganized information.