The perfect day to do lots of things.

Hooman left for his trip this morning but not before being a good sport and fixing the window in our bedroom, the one with the top sash that keeps slipping. It's a temporary fix: just some wadded-up cardboard, which he jammed between the top sash and window frame using a screwdriver. The problem, most probably, is caused by rotted sash cords. Or maybe the weights in the window's weight-and-pulley mechanism are broken. When he comes back, we should take the window apart and fix it for real.

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Much, much later, he calls unexpectedly from the airport just as I come back from Dunkin' Donuts clutching a dollar's worth of jelly munchkins in a bag and a cup of coffee. I said, you missed your flight or something? And he said no I missed... you! followed by ha, ha.

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Anyway, the sash window is a common type of window in the United States but is an English contraption invented 400 years ago, it is said, by a certain Robert Hooke. He was an architect who supervised the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666. It was also Hooke who coined the term "cell" to describe the basic unit of life... who assisted Robert Boyle and built the vacuum pumps used in Boyle's gas law experiments... who built some of the earliest Gregorian telescopes... who observed the rotations of Mars and Jupiter... who deduced the wave theory of light... who was an early proponent of the theory of evolution through his observations of microscopic fossils (via Wikipedia). Among other accomplishments, he invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm, and an early prototype of the respirator... he invented the anchor escapement and the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible (via UCMP). The fellow was no slouch.

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So Hooman asks what I'm planning to do today. Lots of things, I sigh.