Old Snail Crawling through Glue

Old age is definitely catching-up with me. I find every other night I'm waking sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 and after relieving some bladder pressure I can't get back to sleep. Only 11 or so weeks of this and then I can prowl the nights and take afternoon naps.
This week seems to have pulled itself forward like a snail through glue. It started it seems like months ago with the 8th graders completing their rocket car design experiment. This website has info on how to make rocket cars http://www.sciencefairadventure.com/ProjectDetail.aspx?ProjectID=137 .  Every student makes a rocket car and competes with their team to see whose is the best. Everyone then looks at the winning car from each team and has an opportunity to modify their team's best car so it will go the furthest on one balloon of air. All modifications need to be explained in relation to which one of Newton's Laws of Motion supports the logic behind the modification. I've done it for years and with various grade levels and kids always love it. The 7th grade is exploring acid-base reactions. They found the denisity of each of the Honduran coins on Wednesday and we then dropped the coins in acids of different strengths. Today during the double lab period they calculated how the density of the coins changed. The acids weren't too strong, so I don't think they will find much change (shucks!), but I suppose on the good side I don't have to worry about any sort of prosecution for detroying local currency. The 6th grade is collecting data for their science fair. Yesterday half the class did their experiments while the other half helped. One student was trying to test which dog food his dog preferred by holding a bowl of one brand under the dogs nose and shaking it for awhile and when he got tired of that he switched to the other brand of dog food. I had him weigh the food and then put it on 2 different plates and leave the dog alone. My most ambitious project was testing which type of dishwashing detergent is best for extracting DNA from lentil peas. The student forgot to bring the recipe for extracting DNA. After we found one on-line, she  just managed to get enough lentil peas blended to conduct the experiment before the blender burned up. But then she dumped one brand of dishwashing liquid into all the blended lentil pea mush she had. There was no lentil pea mush left to try the other 2 dishwashing liquids on, so we have to start over and now she has to blend up the lentil peas at home.
Now I have talked my way into teaching the whole pre-Algebra class basic skills once a week. They are about to arrive, so this snail needs to get the mini-whiteboards and markers set-up.