The magical world of chemistry.

Today for lunch I had Indian food, and I was craving something sweet afterward. I ran across the box of Harry Potter jellybeans I'd gotten from a friend at Christmas and decided that would do the trick.

Mind you, I have not read the books, seen the movies or kept up with any fanfare about Harry Potter. I also hadn't examined the packaging very closely at all. I figured that "jellybeans" was really all I needed to know.

Fortunately for me, I first offered them to someone else. "You really want to eat Harry Potter jellybeans?" she (who HAS read the books and HAS seen the movies) asked incredulously. I shrugged as if to say, why not? Turning the box over, she read off some of the flavors: "Earthworm? Grass? Dirt??"

I honestly thought they were kidding.

LET THE RECORD SHOW that she was the first to try a dirt-flavored jellybean. But her disgust at how real it tasted intrigued me, so I popped one in my mouth. Peat moss. If I ever eat peat moss, that is what it will taste like. I was a bit fascinated so I tried an earthworm, just for fun. It was gross, but not "cut your tongue off" gross or anything, and I imagine that if I ever eat an earthworm, that's what it will taste like. We spilled the box's contents and reviewed the rest of the options, and she watched me as if I were nuts as I made some wise choices in what I tried next. Spinach - wasn't bad, sure, I kind of felt like I was eating spinach. (Couldn't tell till the second one if it actually was spinach - or green apple - or grass. But it was definitely spinach.) Spaghetti actually tasted like spaghetti. However, I drew the line somewhere and ear wax, soap, black pepper, boogers and vomit all went in the "NO WAY JOSE" pile.

Yes, VOMIT. LET THE RECORD ALSO SHOW that the vomit jellybeans look an awful lot like the spaghetti jellybeans. And just as the spaghetti jellybeans tasted like spaghetti, the vomit jellybeans actually TASTED LIKE VOMIT. After running screaming from the room in search of a napkin before I actually did vomit, I quickly downed some grass flavored jellybeans - hey, it works for pets, maybe it would work for me. But, alas, I spent the rest of the day suffering a bad stomach ache.

Ye be warned.

In other "dumb things I did today" news, my workout buddy was running late this morning so I started without her. This is only the second time I've done the circuit weight lifting thingie, and the first time she led the way and handled all the weight adjustments. I remembered that we started with the lowest level so I put the pin in the first slot on the first machine and started lifting. DEAR GOD but it was hard. Much harder than Tuesday. By the second machine I was whipped, but I attributed it to still being sore from Tuesday and pressed on. But at the triceps machine (#4) I simply could not budge the weight no matter how hard I tried. This is when she arrived and upon starting the first machine, asked, "did you increase the weights?" That's when I learned that Tuesday we'd been operating sans-pin-in-slot - so at about 20lbs rather than 35. Things suddenly got a lot easier...