Chemistry

I can not believe that I have not written anything in 10 days, and it is not from lack of things to say, I just can not seem to get near the keyboard, but we will get to that in another post.
First a story.

The bathtub drain has been blocked since I moved in and I have tried everything to fix it, aside from taking it apart.

Two bottles of Draino and one of 'Professional' Drain unclogging stuff, and it moves just as slow.

I am starting to think there is something very wrong going on down there.

So my friend Cassie tells me that baking soda and vinegar works really well, so I thought it sounded good and dumped an entire box of baking soda and vinegar down the drain, was really impressed with all the bubbling that went on, but the drain is still clogged.

When I told Davíð he laughed at me and pionted out that mixing a base and an acid was like putting water in the drain and he could not beleive that I didnt realize that.

Thinking back, I can not believe that I did not realize it either, and am actually feeling a little sheepish about the whole thing now.

Ill be having a talk with Cassie later.

But this all reminded me of another story:

Rewind 5 or 6 years to when we lived in Canada, in my in-laws house while they were in Iceland.

Now one day my sister was helping me get things ready because Inga and Rob were coming back for a visit.

The path leading up the the house was a skating rink of death, I needed to do something about the ice.

Under the steps I found a large pail full of a white powdery stuff, labeled Selt.

This made me think it was Salt and that selt meant Salt in Icelandic. I did not actually know any Icelandic at the time.

If I would have read further I would have seen that the instructions were in English, but anyways,
I spread this 'salt' all over the sidewalk and on the large chunks of ice in the yard.

After waiting a few minutes I noticed that it did not seem to be melting very well, so I added more.

Then while I was waiting for some melting action I started to read the label, and discovered this was not salt, it was cement mix.

This explained the clumping rather then melting.

When my in-laws arrived, my sister and I were outside, with children's shovels, trying to scrape up this wet concrete mix. It was impossible and it was a mess.

Lucky for me, I married into a family with a sense of humor, and that day will forever be remembered as the day I tried to add a concrete patio to the back yard.