Pre-RAGBRAI: I am in LeMars, Iowa

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in LeMars, Iowa (Home Of The World's Largest Ice Cream Factory-- RAGBRAI Riders Have A Sweet Ride.) And, blissfully, I am on vacation. Earlier today, I sprawled in the shade, put my feet up, and had my ritual post-finals-week half a beer. That was followed by the ritual mental calculations of the catapult size, force, and trajectory required to donate the other half of the beer to someone who would like it, by flinging it at them. (Duuuuuuuck!)

As physics fades further and further from recent memory, replaced by anatomy, physiology, PT Science, and pediatrics-- which were, in their turn, tamped further down in memory by orthopedics, and now by neuroscience-- the ritual mental construction of the catapult gets fuzzier. ("Let's see, I need half a beer, I need to know the weight of the projectile... let's say there are six fluid ounces left in there, okay, so let's further simplify and assume that six fluid ounces of beer plus bottle equals six actual ounces... now what is that in grams? Uh...")

I'm done with that. I really am done. Hooray! I don't think I realized the ambient stress level involved in mastering a large volume of material like that, at speed... at least I don't realize it until I am no longer imminently responsible for accurately recalling it. ;-)