Cool Toys

As adults I think we’re still into toys.   The toys become more expensive or more advanced, but they’re toys nonetheless.    Neighbor has a new television?  Let’s go have a look.    A friend installed a pool table in their bonus room and wants to invite you over for a game?   Definitely!  A colleague got the latest in running shoes you haven’t seen on the market yet?   Bring them in to work so I can see.   The new, the upgraded, the latest and the fun—it’s what adult toys are made of.

Tonight we had some good friends over for dinner.   My husband made Indian butter chicken from a new recipe he found.   I had two-and-a-half bowls it was so delicious.   Then, we got into toys.   We talked about the latest things we’d been reading about, seen or had bought.   My husband took them downstairs to show them the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and software he’d recently gotten.   This is a very, very impressively cool toy.   Everyone who’s seen it has been more than impressed with the realism and the feeling of being in the scene, even though some of the scenes are cartoon graphics.   The fight or flight and vertigo messages your brain sends to you, even though you know darned well you’re standing on carpet in a safe room speaks for the technology itself.

We talked about the camera at our front door and how easily and quickly it reports video to our phones when someone is at the door—so quickly, you can call to your child to tell them which friend is there so they can run to greet them.

Then, we played with some gallium, an element that is a liquid metal at eighty degrees and a solid at room temperature.   It’s non-toxic unlike mercury and it melts in your hand.    We didn’t quite know what to do with it other than watch it change states, but it was fun to see a metal behave in such an uncommon manner.

I think all adults like toys just as much as kids do.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a new favorite cereal—it’s called, “five cereals at once”.   One day a while back he told me he wanted “every cereal mixed up” and after deciding five was enough for one bowl I told him he had five different kinds.   He’s decided he likes cereal mixed now and has been requesting it frequently for breakfast.   He doesn’t pick the cereals so we get to put in the ones we prefer for him while adding some that look more interesting to his pallet on top.    Everyone wins.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to talk to Brek, who was visiting for dinner tonight.   She couldn’t remember her name and didn’t know where to find her so she came over and whispered to me, “where’s that lady who’s in our house that doesn’t live here?”