Look what they've done to my brain, Ma

Am I losing it or merely forgetting where I've put it?

One of the problems of teaching a course like robotics where you buy new gear for the students is dissuading them from trying it out until you have set the groundwork in place. ("I wonder what happens to the $400 oscilloscope if I plug the probes into an electric socket?")  So when I bought a couple of minorly pricey kits for the end of year projects, I put the first one to arrive "somewhere safe" so the students couldn't do odd things to it and so that both groups of students could start their projects at the same time.  If you're saying "..and then you forgot where you put it," you are clearly paying attention.  Darned if I could find it.

So, let's see if you can solve the mystery.  

Where would I hide a robotic crane kit?  (a) In an old coffee can marked "Christmas tree lights", (b) in my bookcase behind a can of Spam that I won (?) in a competition when it was safe to enter such things or (c) in a large yellow box with pictures of a robotic crane all over it.  If you guessed anything but (c), I hope you now realise what a plonker I felt when I found it.  So now I have two great groups of students building a crane and a walking humanoid from nothing but pictures of the finished article and a large supply of parts.  They're doing great but can someone please persuade them that building the bots a bit at a time is better than building the whole thing and then finding it doesn't work?

Fish for dinner - it's Wednesday, the trash is picked up on Thursday so what could be easier than picking up a Scottish salmon steak to share with Susan for dinner?  (Sam is in the opening night of Much Ado About Nothing tonight so he won't be home for dinner).  The only decent place to buy fresh fish in Asheville is Fresh Market so I called in on the way home.  Hadn't had lunch - been fixing a knackered electric pencil sharpener - who at Xacto thought that plastic was a good thing to make worm gears out of?  So I was starving.  Bad move.  Put on the blinkers and head straight for the fish.
Someone presumably also having chemo had cut all the salmon into 12 ounce pieces so no option of getting one big one or two small ones and 12 oz didn't seem enough.  So I got two, with a view to cooking both tonight and noshing most of the second for lunch later in the week or chucking it on the barbie when everyone else has steak (I'm not allowed rare steak and I'm darned if I really relish it well done).  I wonder which night I'm barbecuing steak next - forgot to consider that.  (Turns out it's Sunday so the lunch option it is).

On the plus side, a copy of the Oldie was in the mail - I had completed the February genius crossword correctly with help from my Italian speaking beloved - along with a iigsaw from Uncle Sid & Aunt Rosemary to while away the next snowstorm.  The picture on the box of a tractor ploughing a field bears no relation to the pieces which appear to be a map of somewhere but that's only to be expected of Sid and Rosemary who had very kindly put all the plain white pieces of the jigsaw in a separate zip lock bag.

Finally, my magnificent brainfade bashing of my index finger is now more or less behind me and I can once again type with my customary ineptitude (love that word).