science for tiniers: snow

What do you do with a snow day? Snow science! We filled one bucket of the bucket balance with snow, and one with water, and guessed which one would be heavier. Then we left them on the counter to melt, and saw that the snow melted down to just a little bit of water. Then we re-froze it (outside, just in case being outside made a difference) and saw that it turned into ice, not back into snow.

It's very hard to say how much of this Q is following; he was sad to not get to dump out the buckets. Junie, interestingly, guessed wrong about the balance (she thought they might weigh the same) but did recall enough about doing this before to be dubious of the idea that putting the melted water back out in the snow might turn it back into snow ::grin::.

We also tried some make-your-own-sno-cone culinary experimentation; snow with orange juice on it is too cold and sour, snow with maple syrup on it *I* thought was disgustingly sweet but the kids liked it.

more romance novels

I'm way behind on books.

Courtney Milan's Countess Conspiracy is the romance novel of my heart. I mean, if romance as a genre is all about wish fulfillment (both in the relationship and HEA and also in the lifestyle details, whether that's a fantasy of earls and silk dresses or prairie self-sufficiency or whatever) then this book fulfilled wishes that I wouldn't even ever have formulated to say "oh yes I'd like to see *that* in a romance novel". But there it was. SO GOOD. To squee further would be full of spoilers, so let me just say: Victorians doing science. It does not get better than this.

I also liked Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas a lot. I can see how many people might not - the heroine is all about the stoic acceptance, which some people would find too passive, and she accepts her husband-of-convenience having affairs (before they figure out they really do want to be married, this is not a spoiler if you've ever read a romance novel) which I can see as a turn-off if you're big on fidelity. I am not big on fidelity - I'm big on honesty - and I felt that this book did a much better job than many romance novels of showing an actual *marriage* as a friendship and working partnership and collection of inside jokes etc and not just a sexual romance. (Also there is massive hardcore pining which, okay, yes, pretty much my bulletproof kink.)

However, then I read Sherry Thomas's Not Quite A Husband and it was not good. Like, really icky nonconsensual sex not good, which I suppose I used to take for granted in romance novels back when I used to read Johanna Lindsay all the time, but I have now gotten rather used to not just stumbling into. Also 80% of it manages to take place in India without any Indian characters, which, um.