missing kitchen gadgets

Well, crap.

I've just finished going through all the still-to-be-unpacked boxes from my move back at the end of April, and can now confirm what I've long suspected: at least one box went missing. In particular, the box containing my food scale and my oven thermometer. (Presumably there's rather more stuff missing — most of a box full, in fact. But I've been wondering about the scale and thermometer since a few days after the move.)

I feel violated, of course. But I've been burgled and I've been mugged (and just randomly assaulted on the street by guys who didn't even bother trying to take my wallet), had cars vandalized (one effectively totaled) and bikes stolen; presumably this was an opportunistic theft by some punk who walked by the van in an unwatched moment — and who ended up very disappointed by their haul. As personal violations go... So my faith in the fundamental goodness of my fellow humans takes another hit point. Shrug.

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Right. So, a question for the foodies: I need a new oven thermometer and a new food scale. What do you recommend?

My thermometer was the digital one they sell at Whole Foods; a lot like this one, except mine was white and didn't have the clip they show connected to the probe. I wouldn't mind a better one; in particular, I wouldn't mind having multiple probes.

My scale was a cheap one powered by a single AA battery. It claimed to have a capacity of 5kg, accurate to 1g, IIRC. Its only distinguishing feature (but one I very much liked) was that I was able to set it to metric without having it revert to avoirdupois every time it powered down. That, and a tare button, are the only features I really care about.

Let me know what you recommend. Also, if you know where to get it locally, let me know that too. I don't have any immediate need for the thermometer, but I do need a scale by Saturday.

I remember where I was 40 years ago tonight

It may be my earliest memory that I can date. I was staying with family friends, the Ellisons. (I suppose my dad must have been on a bad drunk — that was usually the reason my mom sent me to stay with friends.) I'm sure the whole family must have been gathered around the old black-and-white TV, but I don't remember them. I remember the fuzzy space-suited man jumping what seemed so far down that last step, in slow motion. I remember his famously flubbed first words. And I remember ABC's Science reporter, Jules Bergman, talking over a picture of the face of the moon, showing where the landing site was. (I think I even remember a little (though vastly out of scale) cardboard-cutout of a LEM). I remember at some point going out on the front porch and looking at the moon, trying desperately to spot the Eagle. (I was aware that it was very far away, but I was too young to have any real sense of what a quarter million miles meant, and I hoped there'd be a reflection or ... something.) Someone (one of their teenage daughters (Marilyn, I think) explained to me that it was too far away, and coaxed a by the very sleep and up-way-past-his-bed-time little boy inside.

I'm sure I followed the rest of Apollo 11 with fascination, but aside from a few scattered images (a splashdown that may not be that splashdown; the isolation chamber on the deck of an aircraft carrier, looking as I recall like nothing so much as an airstream trailer), I remember no details. I'm sure I followed Apollo 12 as well, but it was with Apollo 13 that I became an obsessive little geek. I kept my own little mission log, writing down the exact time of launch,first stage separation, second stage separation, Earth orbit, translunar injection.... (When the first reports of "Houston, we have a problem" came in, I was sure that my logging the mission had somehow jinxed the mission.)

But forty years ago tonight, that was all in the future. Forty years ago tonight a little boy stared intently at a crescent moon, hanging over over a wheat field near Puget Sound, and knew that, even though he couldn't see it, he was looking at the most amazing thing ever.