#heck she tried to use her solver and you can see her shaking

[handfulofmuses]

Friendly reminder that this kid used every last bit of strength she had to warn Uzi. She WALKED from the locker room to that church thing all while her INSIDES were spilling out. We have seen in the flashback how far away that actually is. She was dying and did not even had the strength to teleport and then SLIPS ON HER OWN OIL AND FALLS INTO A PUDDLE OF HER OWN OIL and then points where Tessa is standing and tells Uzi to fight back.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

i actually wrote college AU fluff that’s gen, for once. i would like to thank everyone in the Pidgance Positivity Discord for enabling my chemist Hunk headcanons

and I would like to apologize to Hunk for having to deal with Lance in lab

Read it on Ao3

or read all ~2500 words below!!

Hunk regretted telling Lance his lab section number approximately three minutes into the first experiment.

“Hey, Hunk,” Lance said from his own hood, “can I borrow your scoop?”

Hunk, scanning his procedure for the third time since he wrote it, glanced towards him and asked, “What’s wrong with yours?”

Lance held up the metal scoop. “It’s got these white spots on it,” he said, pointing to one. “What if they contaminate my experiment?”

Hunk raised an eyebrow, surprised by Lance’s concern, but rather than pass over his own scoop, he took Lance’s and looked at it more closely. “Uh, Lance,” he said, “these spots are calcium carbonate.”

“Which is…?”

Hunk pinched his lips together and carefully asked, “How the heck did you pass general chemistry?”

Lance stared at him for a beat before snatching the scoop out of Hunk’s hand and walking over to the sink, mumbling something about all his friends being jerks. And Hunk took advantage of his temporary absence to start setting up his experiment.

“You doing okay, Hunk?” Shiro, the TA, asked when he came over.

“Yep,” Hunk said. Now he held the separatory funnel in his hand, prepared to shake it.

“And you, Lance?” Shiro prompted.

“Peachy,” said Lance.

Shiro crossed his arms as he eyed Lance. “Then why aren’t you wearing your safety goggles?”

Lance’s separatory funnel almost slid from his grip, but he recovered it before it could fall. “I’m fine though,” he said.

“Then make sure you stay that way by putting on your goggles.” Shiro patted Lance’s shoulder as he passed, approaching another pair of students in the middle of their experiments.

Lance looked at Hunk. “You…wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of goggles I can borrow, do you?”

Hunk sighed as he vented gas from his funnel and set in place, turning the stopper and draining the bottom layer of fluid. “I thought I reminded you to bring your own pair.”

“Yeah, well…I forgot. And then I thought hey, at least I avoid those red lines I get after lab.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “Lance, one day you’re gonna be that guy that people tell stories about.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lance said, already busy with draining his own separatory funnel.

They worked in blessed silence for a good few minutes, at least until Lance said, “Hey, Hunk, I think I threw the wrong layer away.”

It wasn’t that Lance was completely inept, exactly. It was that Lance was inept at certain things…like chemistry, and Hunk, for the life of him, could not figure out why the hell Lance chose a major so heavy with it.

“I like marine biology,” Lance said once when Pidge asked him, “and marine biology needs it.”

Pidge, for her part, did not like chemistry and did her best to avoid it, though luckily her interests did not align with it beyond a single semester of general chemistry that she currently procrastinated. “I’ll take it next year,” she said if anyone asked, and then mimed gagging whenever she caught sight of Hunk’s and Lance’s organic chemistry textbooks.

“Chemistry is just applied physics, Pidge,” Hunk told her.

“Well, keep it away,” Pidge retorted, holding her computer over her head as if chemistry was contagious.

Hunk glanced at her computer screen, curious about what she worked on. “Pidge, is that file’s name Mordor?”

“Yup,” she said, glaring at him.

“What is it?”

“It’s the worst coding assignment ever,” she explained.

“And it does…?”

“Well, one does not simply code for Mordor, that’s for sure.”

Hunk took that as a pointed sign that he was invading her privacy and didn’t press her for more details. Odds were it was a differential equation solver…or something like that.

Lance, for once, elected not to participate in their conversation, instead keeping his eyes on the chemistry textbook open in front of him. He pressed his hands to the back of his head, looking focused, at least until Hunk noticed that his eyes weren’t moving and had glazed over.

“What’re you stuck on, buddy?” Hunk asked.

“Huh?” Lance glanced up at him. “Oh, hybridization. Why is a carbon with a double bond sp2 hybridized again?”

Hunk set to explaining, but Lance interrupted him, “Wait, wait, wait. What’s this about pi bonds?”

He looked at Pidge, though he knew beseeching her for help was pointless, and sure enough she focused on her computer again, mumbling something about for loops and iterations.

“You know what?” Lance said after Hunk tried yet again to explain the finer points of hybridization. He stretched across the table until his arms were on either side of Pidge’s laptop, forehead pressed to his open book. “Why don’t we take a break and get some coffee?”

“It’s four o’clock,” said Hunk.

“You don't even like coffee," Lance said.

Hunk looked between his friends:  from Lance, unfocused and annoyed, to Pidge, frustrated and open to his idea. So, despite the knowledge that he and Lance had a midterm in two days, he agreed.

“See, Hunk, here’s the thing,” Lance said as they left the lecture hall, their exam behind them, out of sight and out of mind, at least until the professor graded it. “This isn’t the right kind of chemistry.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Hunk, raising an eyebrow at him. “What’s the right kind then?”

“Well, you know…” Lance waved a hand dismissively. “The kind you have with someone, like romantic chemistry. Like what you and Shay have.”

Hunk rolled his eyes and said, “For the last time, Shay is just a person I met and admire.”

“She gave you a rock,” Lance pointed out with a smirk.

“She’s a geology major,” Hunk said.

“It was a very pretty rock,” Lance said. “There were those crystals on it.”

“Quartz.”

“See?” Lance elbowed him in the side. “You even remember! And I know for a fact you keep it on your desk.”

“All right, fine,” Hunk said with an impish smile of his own. But before Lance could gloat about being correct, he added, “I admire the rock she gave me too.”

“You—” Lance lightly punched his arm, and they both laughed.

Lab got even worse after the midterm when Keith switched into their section.

“What happened that you had to switch this late in the semester?” Hunk wondered.

To his amazement, Keith flushed red and admitted, “I…went out with the TA.”

Lance’s jaw dropped, and Hunk stared at him incredulously. “Like…on a date?”

“Yes,” Keith said tersely, but from the way he very pointedly set up his experiment without even glancing towards Hunk or Lance, he refused to speak further on the matter.

“Now Keith and his old TA had chemistry,” Lance grumbled under his breath.

“We have chemistry now,” Hunk said when he noticed how far behind Lance was in his experiment. He’d only just finished setting up his reaction in the sand bath, but Hunk’s was nearly done, the color inside the flask already changing.

To be fair, today’s experiment was fairly short.

But within a few weeks, Hunk noticed a pattern emerging:  Keith finishing first, and Lance’s work turning sloppier while he tried to catch up.

“You know it’s not a race, right?” Hunk told him.

“I know but I’m still gonna win,” Lance retorted as he scooped his reaction’s product onto a piece of weigh paper while it was still damp.

“You’re gonna get over a hundred percent yield if you weigh it like that,” Hunk pointed out.

“Even better.”

“So you’re okay claiming to create matter?” Hunk asked.

“Shiro doesn’t care,” Lance said. He put the paper on the balance and, without waiting for it to stabilize, jotted a number down in his notebook. “He only cares that we have a number.”

“Okay, this is true,” Hunk conceded, “but you do know that scientific accuracy is kind of…important?”

“Oh, now you sound like Pidge.”

Hunk rolled his eyes and gave Lance up for a lost cause, but he had his revenge when he ‘forgot’ to reply to a text message asking him to correct his post-lab report.

Somehow, Lance survived the lab that semester with decent grades on all of his reports – though Pidge predicted that it was all thanks to Hunk.

“You’re not even in our class,” Lance grumbled.

“I don’t need to be there to know it’s true,” Pidge retorted.

“Well, Pidge, I guess I can’t see that movie you wanted to see on Friday after all,” Lance threatened, arms tightly crossed.

“That’s okay,” Pidge said, sounding unbothered. “I’ll take Matt with me instead since he’s visiting.”

Lance narrowed his eyes at her. “Then I’m changing my Netflix password.”

Pidge’s eyes snapped from her physics textbook to his face. “You take that back!”

“Only if you take back what you said about Hunk enabling my grades!”

“Why would I take back the truth?” Pidge demanded. “What are you, the Catholic Church?”

“Oh, comparing yourself to Galileo again? How high and mighty of you, Pidge!”

“You understood that reference?” Hunk wondered, interrupting their budding argument and surprised despite himself.

Lance gestured towards Pidge, who rolled her eyes before returning her attention to her studying. And he said, “She’s used it before. I’m just adapting to her.”

“Then why can’t you remember what the Grignard reaction is?” Hunk asked, pointing to the organic chemistry notes spread out over the table between them. “We’ve been over it so many times.”

“Grignard?” Lance narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “That’s the one with manganese, right?”

“Magnesium,” Hunk corrected, “but that’s closer than your last guess.”

Lance grinned. “Ha, I’ll ace the final then. Wait and see, Hunk.”

“There’s a really big difference between manganese and magnesium,” Pidge then pointed out. “I don’t have to have taken chemistry to know that.” But when both Hunk and Lance glared at her, she smiled sheepishly and added, “But good job, Lance.”

“Thanks, Pidge,” Lance said wryly. “I guess I won’t change my Netflix password after all.”

They had assigned seats during the final exam, so Hunk didn’t have to deal with Lance’s leg bouncing and vibrating the whole row of desks. But he did have to deal with the stress of seeing Lance finish before him, and wonder if he managed to answer every question on the exam or simply gave up.

Then again, it wasn’t like Lance to give up, even if he had no skill at something, which, well… They’d studied together every day for hours at a time for almost two weeks, and though Lance spent half that time distracted by one thing or another – usually a game on his phone or a conversation with Pidge – he still learned something.

Probably.

Hunk ignored the anxious churning in his stomach as he returned his focus to the exam. He thought he’d paced himself quite well so far, but between the time on the clock and the questions he had left to answer, he started to doubt himself. It didn’t help that someone in the row in front of him kept swearing under his breath.

Chair, and…a boat, Hunk thought as he drew cyclohexane in its two most stable molecular configurations. He was careful to count sides on each shape, to make sure that the hexagons had six corners and the pentagons had five.

He would not lose points on mistakes that wouldn’t have happened if he’d paid more careful attention to detail.

Name the following organic compounds. Easy, Hunk thought.

Propose a synthetic pathway between the reagent and the product. Oh, and this one had suggestions.

By the time Hunk reached the last question, he was grinning, feeling better about this particular exam than he had about anything in the last eighteen weeks of the semester…at least until Shiro called time.

Hunk glanced up at his lab TA before writing his best guess for a question he’d barely scanned, then, after passing the paper over to the TA that collected them, he mentally calculated what his score would be based on questions he knew he got correct.

Well, at least he would pass, right?

Hunk walked with Keith out of the lecture hall; he tried to ask him what he got for that last question, but Keith said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Why?” Hunk wondered, eyebrow raised. “Did your girlfriend tell you what was on the exam?”

“No!” Keith said quickly. “I just don’t like talking about exams after the fact.” He crossed his arms, and after a beat added, “And the TAs don’t know what’s on the test until we do.”

“I knew that,” Hunk said. “Shiro refused to tell us anything.”

He and Keith parted after that, and Hunk met Lance at the cafe on campus, where Pidge waited for them at a table in the corner. “What time did you have to get here to get a table?” Hunk asked her.

Pidge didn’t look up from the old history exam she held in her hand when she replied, “Two minutes ago.”

“Seriously?”

“Right on the hour, when people go to class.”

“Nice,” Hunk said appreciatively, sitting down right as Lance joined them with three drinks:  hot chocolate for Hunk, who didn’t enjoy coffee, black coffee for Pidge, who didn’t like milk, and iced coffee for Lance, who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘cold’.

“So how do you think you did?” Lance asked Hunk.

Hunk sipped his drink, considering. “Not too bad,” he said. “I think I’ll get at least an eighty percent.”

“Not too bad?” Lance said. “I’d kill for that.”

“You’ll pass,” Pidge said after shooting a brief glance at him. “You’ve been studying your ass off.”

“Look who finally noticed all my hard work!”

“Your lab report grades might bring you down though,” Pidge continued as if she hadn’t heard Lance. She stared straight at him as she emptied three sugar packets into her coffee and drank deeply from it.

“I got decent grades on those,” Lance whined.

“Shiro’s an easy grader then,” Pidge said. “I saw your reports, and I may not know what half those molecules are called, but reports are supposed to be easy enough to follow. And yours were kind of—”

“Don’t say it, Pidge,” Hunk beseeched her.

“—sloppy.”

Hunk sighed, but to his surprise Lance admitted, “I guess I could’ve done better, but I would’ve done a lot worse without Hunk’s help.” When Hunk threw a glance at him, he added, “I was in good hands.”

“That’s true,” Pidge agreed.

Hunk smiled, glad Lance could confess to needing his help in regular conversation, but the smile disappeared when Lance said, “Oh, yeah, that reminds me:  which section are you taking next semester?”

Hunk wondered if it was too late for him to drop out.

[allardjeremyballard]

May 8, 2018 AsktheBuilder Newsletter

New subscriber? Glad you're here!

Seasoned subscriber? - You know I love you too!

Warm WX has finally arrived here in central New Hampshire and that means I'll resume my decluttering project.

Last fall, I started to get rid of stuff that's accumulated in my shed, garage and the attic of my garage. I seem to have inherited a little bit of my Mom's packratitis disease.

Mom had a chronic case that I'm sure made it into one, or more, obscure medical textbooks.

Allow me to share a funny story, well I think it's funny - but Mom may have been a little embarrassed. It's important to realize I was in my mid-teens when this happened and started to get enough life experience that I could challenge Mom's fountain of knowledge.

My room was in the basement of our small house. When I was about ten years old, maybe nine, my Dad and Uncle Raymond transformed our basement garage into a paneled very private and cool bedroom.

I even had my own door to the outside world far away from the ears of my parents. You know those door hinges were well oiled, but I digress.

You got to this sanctuary by going down the stairwell that went from the kitchen down to the basement. There were pegs and hooks on the wall in the staircase. My mom saved the paper shopping bags that had those loop handles and stored them here.

Here's a photo I just took of some modern ones in my own mud room. We now have amazing fabric ones and see-through ones. Anyway, Mom's collection grew and grew until I was constantly bumping into them as I went up and down the steps. Frequently they fell off the pegs onto the landing at the back door.

One day she was in the kitchen and I was in a rush to get somewhere. I bumped into the bags and about twenty fell to the floor. Exasperated I said, "Mom, why in the heck do you have so many of these STUPID BAGS? You'll never use them all up in your lifetime. You just keep getting more and more!"

Her response was priceless. It's as if she just said it a minute ago. In fact, when Kathy and the kids ask me why I'm saving this or that, I use the EXACT SAME LINE.

With a perfectly straight face she replied, "Timmy, they're not going to make them much longer."

Three years before I would have accepted that statement as if it were gospel. But I was now spreading my wings and discovering more of the outside world. I was connecting more dots on my own.

"WHAT?" I shrieked while shaking my head as I was picking them up and trying to get them to stop from sliding off the round pegs.

"Are you crazy? Some other company will start making them. We'll always be able to get paper bags with handles."

Mom didn't have an answer for that and I'm sure I remember her cheeks turning a slight crimson red as I had exposed her soft underbelly of packratitis. It's a fond memory to be sure!

As you can tell in the above photo, I was right and I probably have a few too many bags with handles of my own.

I also have other things that I've got too much of and I'm selling lots of it not only on Craigslist, but also on the special group pages on Facebook that are titled Garage or Yard Sale.

Believe me, there are lots of these groups in your city or town. Your junk is someone else's gold. You can transform just about anything into cold cash. Just be sure it's clean and take LOTS of photos.

CLICK HERE to see a refrigerator I just listed last night. It will be sold and in someone's house in the next 48 hours for sure.

Trust me, it feels GOOD to get rid of crap you don't need nor use any more. You then have cash to save or use to get things you really want or need now.

Getting Organized - Akro Bins Baby!

I've used Akro Bins for years to keep things organized in my garage and workshop. I was introduced to them thirty-five years ago by one of my customers, Dale Friemoth. He was a great engineer and they used him at his business.

These multi-colored bins come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They have a slot on the front where you can put in a heavy paper label. Almost all come with a french-cleat lip on the back so you can hang them on pegboard.

They're built to stack on top of one another. You can use colors to your advantage - storing certain types of things in the same color.

I not only stack them on my workbench, but I also have them hanging from my metal Wall Control pegboard. My metal pegboard gets lots of praise from visitors. The metal pegboard comes in all sorts of colors. It's amazing stuff.

The hooks NEVER come out of the metal pegboard like they do on the standard wood pegboard. No more frustration for me!!

Look at the photo below. You can see the Akro bins hanging from the metal pegboard in the lower left corner.

CLICK HERE to read the story about how I discovered the metal pegboard.

There's a GREAT PHOTO in the story showing my workbench and my own Akro bins hanging right where I need them. Some are also stacked on my workbench.

Cast Iron Pipe vs PVC

You may not know this, but I've been a master plumber since age 29. I love, love, love to do plumbing work. To me, it's a 3D puzzle to make all the pipes connect.

Are you building a new home or doing a major remodel? Do you suffer from Niagara Falls in your home now when someone flushes a second-floor toilet and you hear the CRASHING WATER cascading down the PVC pipes in the wall and overhead ceiling?

Did you know you can eliminate that sound by installing cast iron?

CLICK HERE to see how easy it is to do.

Free & Fast Bids From Local Contractors

What jobs do you have planned around your home this spring? I don't care what they are.

How would you like to get FREE & FAST BIDS from local contractors? No obligation.

When I say FAST, I mean it. Don't believe me?

CLICK HERE and try it out. Let me know how long it takes for you to get a phone call or email. You'll be STUNNED!

Shed Ramps - Easy to Build

Do you have an outdoor shed? How would you like to have a ramp to get things in and out with ease?

CLICK HERE and I want you to pay particular attention to the type of DOOR I use to get in and out of my shed.

Did you know you could get one that small??? I'll bet you didn't!!!

Deck & Patio Cleaning DANGER

My syndicated newspaper column that's now appearing in many papers is about the DANGERS of using chlorine bleach to clean things outdoors.

I still see MANY websites and articles saying, "Mix a 50/50 solution of BLEACH and water to clean your deck, patio, siding, blah blah blah."

The bleach they're talking about is chlorine bleach. The stuff in the white jugs you get at the grocery store.

The chemical name for chlorine bleach is sodium hypochlorite.

Chlorine bleach is the WORST THING YOU CAN USE OUTDOORS.

Chlorine bleach is VERY TOXIC to any vegetation, trees, expensive landscaping, etc.

It's FAR BETTER to use oxygen bleach. Oxygen bleach is SAFE for all outside vegetation. The solution adds beneficial oxygen to the soil!

My Stain Solver, to the best of my knowledge, is the only certified organic oxygen bleach out there.

Kathy and I own Stain Solver. We've made it for 23 years.

You may be one of our tens of thousands of REPEAT customers. If you've NOT TRIED IT YET, you're missing out.

CLICK HERE and just try a sample bottle if you're a Doubting Thomas or Thomasina.

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That's enough for a Tuesday.

Do you have QUESTIONS about Stain Solver? Do you want to know if it's SAFE to use on something? REPLY to this email and ASK ME.

Tim Carter Founder - www.AsktheBuilder.com Uncle Tim's Magic Crystals - www.StainSolver.com Purveyor of Outdoor Adventures - www.W3ATB.com

Do It Right, Not Over!

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