It's Seattle's largest open house!

Spent the day at the Seattle Home show. We like big trade shows almost as much as large expanses of festival booths, so we had a lot of fun. Not much new this year. A really cool roofing product made from recycled tires that looks exactly like shake roofing was new and we picked up a flier for that. Found a company that does pest removal and crawl space repairs to get our crawl space back in shape. We had a rat problem a couple years ago and lost a lot of insulation and then the furnace guys unplugged our electronic rat chasers a couple years later and the rats moved back in, so the whole thing needs to be cleaned and have new insulation and put in and plastic re-laid. That will set us back $2500 that we don't have, but then, what doesn't?

We had another near-purchase event with the Shop Smith Mark V, but the same problem of needing to store it in the living room (well, that and the lack of funds) kept us from buying it once again (and they would have given us the scroll saw, a $500 dollar value if we buy at the show, for free!) We were sad.

Now it is dinner time. I think El Gallito is calling us.

Mr. Science

Is there a way to check for a vacuum at home? (I don't mean a pager attached to the ol' hoover.)

We just bought some "Touch 'n vac" containers that keep food fresh by forcing all the air out of them. Or at least, some of the air. I'm just wondering how much more efficient our seal-a-meal machine is. I'm sure it is more efficient, I am just curious by how much. There is enough of a vacuum both to keep the lids on, and to help keep foods fresh. But how much of a vacuum is that?

Intellectually I know better, but I keep expecting to see a visual change when we create the vacuum. Ron agrees. We both think the vegetables should float around or something. Strange how the Apollo missions and sci-fi movies have trained us to see vegetables in a vacuum sealed container and expect them to behave like they are in an anti-gravity chamber.

I am somehow doubting that the test will involve anything like the die tablet you use to check if your toilet is leaking.