09:27 – Our high today is to be 72F (22C), but then the colder weather returns. Yesterday, the forecasters were calling for Sunday to be freezing rain all day, but they’ve now changed that to just cold rain. Of course, they’re also saying the high Sunday is to be 34F (1C) and the low 33F (0.5C). They don’t have to be wrong on the temperature by much for us to have a real mess.
We’re now in good shape on biology and chemistry kits, but forensic science kits are running low. We’re down to four in stock, which could disappear quickly. The problem is sodium dithionite, which we’re completely out of. Back in early September, I tried to order enough for another 60 or 70 kits, but our regular supplier was backordered, and their regular supplier was also backordered. The only vendors I could find that had it in stock were selling reagent-grade stuff, typically a 100 g bottle for $60 or more. Since each kit contains a 25-gram bottle, that’s a non-starter. Even the technical/practical grade stuff isn’t cheap, and it’s more than sufficient for what we use it for. So I backordered a couple of kilos of the stuff with our regular supplier. They shipped it out the day before Thanksgiving, and it should arrive shortly.
14:05 – Random shuffle just brought up the original studio version of Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, which gets my vote as the best rock-n-roll track ever made.
I still remember the first time I ever heard it, in the summer of ’65, when I was 12. I was listening to WKST, the local AM station. (Back then, FM radios were rare, and mostly owned by audiophiles.) The opening riffs got my attention, and I sat enthralled listening to it. The longer I listened, the more I liked it. The local record store didn’t have it in stock, so I started keeping the radio on low so I could hear it when they played it again. A few days later, I was in the car with my mom when it came on again. I turned up the volume and told her she had to listen to it. She did, but was unimpressed. Her only comment was that whoever that was sure couldn’t sing. I kept checking the record store, and eventually got the two-sided 45, which I played to death. I wish I still had it.