in the late morning i went down to the basement to take my bike wheel out of the rust removal solution. what i saw was pretty startling: the rust was gone! the freewheel had also seemed to change colors, before it was a dull black speckled with reddish brown rust, now it was silver speckled with a few dark stains. the largest cog still had some rust on it and that's because it probably wasn't submerged in the evaporust. once i get the freewheel removed, i can properly soak it again to remove and final bits of rust. but evaporust really works!

i microwaved a slice of baked ziti for lunch. as it was not only rainy outside but cold as well, there was nothing to do but stay inside the house. i left the house in the early to attend a lecture at the harvard natural history museum. i bumped into bruce, who was on his way to buy a burrito for dinner.

the lecture was "a dive into the northeast canyons and seamounts marine national monument" by scott kraus. located 150 miles off of the coast of cape cod, it's a hot spot of marine life. kraus was a good speaker, and slides of animals i'd never seen before was a treat. i learned that fin whales are naturally asymmetrical in their colorations, dark on one side, light on the other, perhaps as a way to herd fish. i also learned that not much is known beaked whales because they dive so deep and stay underwater for so long, not even photos of them underwater, their activities instead extrapolated from echolocation data.

i had another slice of baked ziti for dinner, this time heating it for about half an hour at 350°F in the toaster oven.