Favorite summer dessert?

Late season strawberries with whipped cream.

Beach or pool?

Pool.

Predictions on the overplayed song of summer '05?

Rob Thomas, no doubt.

What was your worst family summer vacation?

We were vactioning in Eureka Springs when I was 12, and Dad woke Mom and me up having his first seizure (caused by an A-V malformation that required suergery and resulted in lifetime partial paralysis). We had a 6am ambulance ride to the hospital with him, and while I was in the ER waiting room they brought in someone who'd had his arm torn off by a thresher. Hopefully that will be the worst vacation I ever have.

your best?

We went to Chattanooga and Gatlinburg when I was very young. I remember riding the incline up Lookout Mountain, seeing the Ruby Falls cave inside, touring Mystery Hill, and driving through the Smokies.

What is this water ice of which you speak? Is it like a sno cone?

Infinitely superior. It's closer to a grainy sorbet, but better than that too.

(With a sno cone, the flavor is just poured over the ice--water ices have the flavors blended in, and the texture is finer.)

What is this water ice of which you speak? Is it like a sno cone?

Kind of. Or like Italian ice I guess. It's either lemon or cherry (although when I was a kid the Wassam's drugstore had all different flavors of delicious icey stuff they called water ice...my favorite flavor was Blue).

I think it's only found in SE Pennsylvania and northern Delaware.

I know my sister-in-law from NJ never heard of it until she came to DE for college. And it drives her crazy! Because of the redundancy. hee hee. We love to torture her by getting her kids to ask for it.

eta Susan describes it better! It's def. more tasty than your normal sno-cones of the world.

how do I find the area of a hexagon with sides of length x?

It's six times the area of an equilateral triangle with sides of length x.

eta: Or, what -t said.

Hmm. Hil, that's what I got. But the website I was looking at said what -t said. So now I'm confused. Because 1/sqrt(2) and sqrt(2)/2...

Oh my god, just hit me on the head and put me out of my misery. There is NO REASON I couldn't have gotten that. None. But I kept looking at sqrt(2)/2 on the screen and back at 1/sqrt(2) on my paper and not getting it. Clearly this is not my day.

Yes, regular hexagon. Thank you, -t. I'm gonna see if that helps me. I may be back.

Because of the redundancy.

It kind of bothers me to, though I think that it's more of an oxymoron.

sounds tasty though. Now I am craving sorbet.

There's a formula for the area of a regular n-gon. I had it memorized at some point, but can't remember it now.

IIRC, it's analogous to the formula for the area of a circle, something like ap/2, where a = distance from the center of the n-gon to a side along a perpendicular bisector of that side and p =perimeter=nx. You can derive a general formula for a, also.

t reserves this spot for cheese slices

Let's see...

Favorite summer dessert: homemade vanilla ice cream--a family 4th of July specialty once upon a time.

beach or pool: To be honest, I don't frequent either one, but the beach gets the edge because it's fun all year 'round and you can hear the ocean.

worst family vacation: I don't recall any bad ones, but I can recall some bad FV moments, like the time I got carsick and threw up on my brother's pillow.

best family vacation: The time we drove up Hwy 1 all the way to Eureka and stayed in this cute cabin and went picking blackberries almost every day.

Poop! I waited too long to get my US OPen Tix, and can only get day Passes for the MOnday of Labor Day weekend and night passes the other days. Off to ebay and craigslist.