I was busy during the morning conduting an open house for prospective students in the Intro Labs in the Biology Department. I designed the Intro Labs, so it's fun to show them off to people and talk about the investment that the Department and University have made in Intro Biology. A lot of people were skeptical about the design early on, but the design has worked out well. I've taught labs and other classes in the spaces and found it to be superb -- much better than about any other space at the University. It makes working on the new science building particularly bitter -- or maybe just bittersweet. We'll still have the best space on campus...
The open house was good -- we had 60 or 70 people come through. I had set up a bunch of stations around the room, where people could try out some of our simulations, try to apply a standard curve to a spec20 reading, try to find tardigrades, and the like. I was able to find a few tardigrades and, after the open house was over, I brought home the stuff, got out my microscope, and showed the boys a tardigrade. We also looked at nematodes, chironomid larvae, copepods, rotifers, and other cool stuff. There's a great little autumnal pool up in Pelham that is usually filled with water at this time of year and has dense populations of giant copepods and all kinds of other stuff.
Unfortunately, by doing the open house, Phil and I couldn't play Starcraft -- he is involved with an interesting new project and was busy during hte afternoon getting it started. He's going to volunteer to document an organization in Champaign Urbana building an energy efficient house. The organization is the e-co lab and they're building a house at 1005 West Fairview Avenue. He's just got the first few entries, but I'll be interested to watch it go up and read about the design decisions as the project progresses.
In the evening, Alisa and I played Munchkin with the boys. It was a long, hard slog, but eventually Charlie squeaked out a victory -- he really deserved it, having played shrewdly and cleverly at several tough spots along the way. It was nice to play a non-electronic game as a whole family.