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Humidity

 I think about humidity because my skin gets itchy when it’s too dry outside. We get up in the morning here, it’s warm outside, and the thermometer looks like this; 73 degrees and 99% humidity.My skin is happy. A cold front comes through, the wind picks up from the north, and the thermometer looks like this in the morning.Not nearly so warm, and low humidity.  I notice the difference. The cold weather passes, the air flow shifts back from the southeast, from the Gulf, and the thermometer reads like this again.  High humidity. Even in the cooler weather, in the middle picture, the humidity is still at 32% though, so why do I feel so dry?  32%, that’s still a lot of moisture, right?  I think the problem is that my skin is probably reacting to absolute humidity, not relative humidity, which is what the thermometer reads. Relative humidity is a measure of how saturated the air is at a given temperature.  (Not that it’s actually air holding moisture, it’s really a measure of how much moisture can occupy a given space.  It can be moist inside a container, even if there is no “air” in the container, i.e. a vacuum.)  The lower the temperature though, the less moisture the air can hold.  So if you look outside in the morning and the humidity is high, take a look at where you are as well.  If you’re in South Texas, and the air is warm, it will probably feel humid.  If you’re in Colorado in the winter, and it’s 10 degrees outside, you’re going to be dry even if the humidity is at 100%! 
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I was just thinking about hair

 How does it know when to curl? Hair grows from the base.  The oldest part is at the tip and the newest part of each hair is at the base.  All that stuff most of us see on our heads has already done its growing and is just hanging out as long as it can.  Sometimes it just grows straight.  What puzzles me is how, when hair curls, it all curls the same direction at the same time as all the other hair around it.  But remember hair only grows at the base.  All the hair we can see has already stopped growing, yet it curls and waves in unison. How does it do that?  
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The bus is home!

 All the body, paint, and chrome work is done. Not only that, but we found a local muffler shop that was willing to work with us. It was a tight fit in the parking lot in front of the bay overnight. It was a tight fit inside the bay,In fact it didn’t fit all the way inside. But did they ever do a great job. Remember how the empty spot looked where the muffler was supposed to be.   They filled that empty space up with the biggest truck muffler they could fit in. They built new straps and brackets to hold everything in place.  There is nothing standard about this job, they had to just make everything up as they went along.  They rose to the challenge and did the whole two-day job with good humor. Free again; now we’re good to go; everything done that needs to be done before another trip.  We don’t have anything big planned until March, when we will go visit Matt, Lindsay, and the kids in Phoenix.  Did I mention Matt moved to Phoenix?  They were ready for a change, so they left Colorado last summer and moved to the desert. In the meantime, we’re packing up the bus so it will be ready for any weekend trips we want to take.