Midnight Musings

Milk and peanut butter

In the mornings, I usually stand at our kitchen counter pulling breakfast stuff together and serving it to my kids. Out come the milk, bread, eggs, peanut butter, apples,plates, glasses -- your normal morning paraphernalia.

Like in many of your households, I'm trying to do four things at once and was feeling pretty good about having things under control for a change. I made toast, spread peanut butter on them, turned to get the milk and grabbed a glass.

I then promptly poured the milk into the the open peanut butter jar.

There I stood, looking at a jar of milk-soaked peanut butter. The kids were busting up and I had to admit that it was a bit odd!

I then proceeded to dump out the milk in the sink, and literally, rinsed out the peanut butter jar with some more water. I figured the peanut butter might be a soggy, but still edible. I have to report that my peanut butter toast this morning tasted as normal as ever.

Lesson learned: slow down and watch out for open peanut butter jars!

Also crossposted on svmoms.com.

Happy Birthday LEGO!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the creation of the ubiquitous LEGO brick. Here's a link to a timeline and interesting facts about the Lego break. The most interesting fact: that three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways. That is the crux of what makes LEGO so wonderful -- they don't require instructions, just imagination.

Legos are a staple in our household -- our son (age 9) just repurposed them this weekend to remod a remote control car of his. We're on the second generation of Mindstorm robotics, and I have to admit, my geeky side has played with the set long after the kids are tucked into bed. We even invested in a stack of pink bricks for our daughters years ago so that she could build houses and cars with them. I find pieces them in purses, stuffed between car seats, and wedged into the fibers of my carpets.

And many weekends, when I ask the kids what they want to do, they say, "Go to Legoland", despite the fact that it's an 8+ hour drive away down in San Diego.

As a testament to the longevity of LEGO, my mother-in-law kept stored my husband's LEGO pieces in the attic, and gave them to my son. As I pick the pieces from around my life, I carefully put them all back into the storage box. After all, I want to make sure that my grandkids have LEGO at the ready to inspire their imagination too.

cross posted on svmoms.com

Showers at JFK and other airports

I recently took an overnight flight from SFO to JFK and was going to do my regular routine - check into a hotel, pay the full rate, and take a quick shower before heading off to my meetings. As I do this regularly, I decided to see if there were showers at JFK itself and thus avoid paying $300+ for the use of a hotel room shower, and also head right off to my morning meetings.

Lo and behold, American Airlines' Red Carpet Club Admirals Club (Terminal 8, Concourse B & C) has showers! At $50 for a day pass, it's a bargain. And more importantly, the bathroom is immaculate and stocked with towels, hair dryer, and shampoo/conditioner/shower gel. The catch - you have to fly American Airlines, so that may limit some options.

It looks from their list that they have many locations with showers, so please comment below if you've every used these facilities, or know of other showers in airports.