Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Japanese Ingenuity

I'm back from my multi-state trip. I had dreams of some nice easy runs each day I was in Chicago, Madison, or East Lansing, but because of my knee I was constrained to 3 miles on the treadmill in Madison and 3 days of cussing because I did 3 miles on the treadmill. I did do a TON of walking and some short sprints (from one end of the hotel to the other with a projector case over my shoulder weaving in and out of hotel guests....OJ would be impressed) while part of the conference staff, but only one day of actual running.

I did come across a little known piece of Japanese ingenuity today. In my car there is a Hershey Bar holder designed to keep one bar cool while I am driving on a hot summer day. I stumbled upon it quite by accident. I was eyeing a chocolate bar that a vendor had given me. I unwrapped it slightly and noticed that it hadn't turned to liquid, but was pretty close. Feeling an overwhelming sense of potential loss at losing a fine piece of chocolate, I did what any logical human male would do in this situation. I cranked up the AC and stuck the wrapped bar right in front of one of the vents.

As I was waiting for the bar to cool down, I got tired of holding it, so my finely-honed male genes took over and stuck it right between the teeth of the vent. It is a perfect fit. No longer is it blocking all the cool air coming through, but it is cooling much more of the bar than before. No wonder the US car market has suffered. This is almost as exciting a discovery as the day I discovered I could roll down all the windows in the car just by holding down the unlock button on my car remote.

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