sick and tired of...

being sick and tired. Other than the fact that i've been able to spend about 5 days home with M&L, which would have been much better had they not been sick too. Yeah, snot running everywhere, dried boogers, crying all the time, achy, sleeping a majority of the day, and a minority of the night...the girls haven't been feeling well either. So, here we are one more day at home, a beautiful day outside and we are chained to the couch and Tom and Jerry. Of course, i guess its better than 8 hours of Olympics snowboarding reruns. So far today we've watched Madagascar, the last half hour of Cinderella and a boatload of Disney Channel. Tammy will be home soon and we are taking the girls to the Dr. Its time for amoxycillin and some relief. They do have a little more energy today. L had enough to spread most of the popcorn i made them all over the living room floor.

Last night, i was up from about 1230 to around 4 a.m. I just couldn't go to sleep. And i was trying to keep L from choking on all the drainage in her throat. I kept having this name "Archimedes" going over and over in my head. I couldn't get it out of there, and i had no idea who that was or where i'd heard it. So since i wasn't sleeping i decided to Google it and found some cool stuff. Archimedes circa 287-211 BC lived in Syracuse, Sicily. He is called the father of integral calculus and integral physics. Of his many inventions, mostly war machines in defense of his own city/state, legend has it that he invented the first man-made "death ray". Syracuse was under attack by the Romans, as were most non-Romans at that time. They had sailed into the harbor of Syracuse and were preparing to invade, when Archimedes had a "light" go off in his head. He began to build a huge multiple lens magnifying glass which he in turn used to set the invaders ships afire, thus repelling the attack. According to the legend, the Romans were annihilated without ever setting foot ashore. This was a VERY short summation of the entire story. If interested here is the link for the Archimedes home page

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html

Also, check out the monumental Italian silent classic Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone, released in 1914.

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Mirrors/Cabiria/Cab

So, my sleeplessness wasn't all for naught, i'm certain i'll be able to use that information in some trivia based game sometime.