The Waggoner's Big Blow-Up

After a fantastic weekend trip to Washington and Oregon (where at last night's concert in Portland, I was shocked and surprised to see a Treasure Valley contingent of females who stayed over for our concert after being part of the Women of Faith conference--just ask Sheila Taylor how shocked I was), I arrived at the Waggoner Scientific Institute bright and early to prepare myself for what could be the first step towards being a fellow of the National Science Foundation. To provide context, last year for Trey's birthday one of his buddies, Noah Mori, gave him a volcano experiment as a present. I told him that we would do it together as a team sometime and promptly forgot about it. Well, he found it in his closet this weekend and set a firm date of tonight for the volcano eruption.

Now my previous experience with science is pretty well confined to my intense studies of Physical Science PACE's 1109-1120 and a very brief foray into chemistry (an elective that I dropped after about 17 pages of work). The closest I ever got to a real experiment was a chemistry set that I received for a Christmas present at age 10. My parents deemed that it was too dangerous for me to tinker with on my own (this after a small incident involving sulfur and a burn in the kitchen floor). I was instructed to only conduct experiments under the watchful eyes of my father, eyes that had no intention of getting near a science exhibition involving me and chemicals. I can guarantee you that the chemistry set is still stowed away in an attic somewhere. A disaster waiting to happen.

Anyway, I tell you that to set the stage for our ground-breaking inquiry into the development of our very own volcano. In short, the experiment involved some sort of sand and cement mixture, water, vinegar, baking soda, and air. The results were quite impressive notwithstanding my so-so credentials.

Trey practices a little reading on me by telling a Bible story about Joseph and the coat of many colors. This has nothing to do with volcanos and I'm not quite sure how it ended up in this post.

Trey "ignites" the volcano drenching Lori in the process. Let's just say this was a massive catastrophe causing temporary damage to the carpet, table, and Lori's clothing. The only casualty was me (I think), because Lori was murdering me in her heart for laughing at her stained sweater.

The volcano, shortly before being buried in an undisclosed landfill somewhere in Idaho.

Trey, being scientist #1 and the recipient of this little experiment, had cool goggles. Being scientist #2 doesn't pay that well and I was stuck with a pair of Akebono's sunglasses. I was allowed to be in the Waggoner Science Institute staff directory picture, though.

And then the secretary asked to be in the picture. Her contributions to the momentous occasion included negative observations to scientists #1 & 2 such as, "this isn't going to work" and "I told you it wouldn't work." In the end, though, our hard work and research was validated with a successful explosion. And, she was sufficiently impressed.

Thanks, Noah, for the present. This was quality family time!