09:27 – I just canceled our Amazon Prime trial, which would have automatically been billed $79 on Tuesday. The only thing we ended up using the Prime trial for was watching four streaming episodes of Inspector Lewis that weren’t yet available on Netflix streaming. Otherwise, I found nothing we were interested in watching that wasn’t available on Netflix. The free two-day shipping wasn’t really worth much to us. It’s no problem for us to get to the $25 minimum order for free Super-Saver shipping, and we’re never in that much of a hurry. Also most of the Prime-Eligible items I looked at were available for enough less as non-Prime-eligible items, even with paying separate shipping, that the “free” shipping wasn’t really free. Finally, the one-free-ebook-a-month offer wasn’t tempting. Barbara found one the other day and asked me to get it for her. I found that I couldn’t get it on the web site. Instead, I’d have to have searched for it on and downloaded it directly to her Kindle, which is clumsy. I ended up just paying the $2.99 for it. So much for Prime.
Other than the methyl cellulose, which is still on back-order, yesterday we finished up 60 sets of all the chemicals for the biology kits. As usual, I put off the really obnoxious ones–6 molar solutions of acetic acid, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide–until last. The first three emit strong fumes, which are difficult to avoid while filling bottles, and the last is extremely corrosive. But all those are complete now, except that Barbara will label the sodium hydroxide and seal the caps with tape today. We’ll also make up the small-parts bags for the first 30 sets today. Once we have the first 30 kits assembled and boxed up, we’ll make up the other 30 sets.