Today my duties at work were rather varied. I started out helping Michele encourage the new lamb to nurse. The lamb was born on Monday afternoon. One of the kids ran over to the driveway as I was heading toward home to deliver the news, and sure enough, Lily, the mama, was busily licking a shivering, wet blob of wool in the corner of the little pen. She usually has twins, and they’re usually bigger. They’re usually not the offspring of their older brother. They can also usually see. This little lamb apparently has backwards eyelids, according to our local sheep expert Lou, who has a friend who can fix the problem. In the meantime, the lamb has no idea where mama is, walking until she bumps into the side of the pen, then walking along the fence until she bumps into the corner. So Michele and I toppled Lily on her side and held her down while holding the lamb’s mouth up to her mother’s teats. She slurped happily away, wagging her tail (that’s how you know they’re getting milk). We swapped sides until Lily was either out of milk or the lamb was full. Lily got the idea and stayed still until we all left her alone again. I showed the kids who came in the afternoon how to do it too. Now my boots and pants are dirty.

Next I sent out invoices for Duncan’s business, opened and sorted the mail, and wrote a letter to Hawaii seeing if we could get some copies of some documents.

Finally, I settled into my big project for the day, researching patents. One of the good ways to find engineers and chemists is to look at patents by people who have done what you need someone with experience for. Once I have a name, I look for them in WhitePages.com or my new favorite people search engine ZabaSearch.com. I usually use the government patent office’s website, but sometimes one of the private patent search sites is easier to deal with, like PatentStorm.us. They offer amusing bits of information on the side, like the fact that today is the date Alexander Graham Bell submitted his patent for the telephone. They also have a wonderful section called bizarre patents. Here is one of them:

Crispy chip sandwich and process of producing a sandwich product
US Patent Issued on March 19, 1996

Abstract

A food product comprising a multilayer cookie or snack having outer layers formed from a crispy type edible food product such as a potato chip or corn chip, etc. with an intermediate marshmallow layer being in contact with the inner surface of each crispy chip and one or more filler substances such as chocolate, peanut butter spread, etc. disposed between the two marshmallow layers. The marshmallow layers act to bond the snack food item together while insulating the crispy chip from contact with the filler layers to substantially prevent said crispy chips from becoming soggy and non-crispy.