10.24.08
Palin Pumpkin
I like a good pumpkin’ carvin’ challenge and just may give this Sarah Palin one a try.
Sunset Over San Francisco
I’m in California on a work trip and yesterday had time to walk around San Francisco. I walked up a ton of steps to get to the top of Telegraph Hill and then the top of Coit Tower, but once there got this beautiful view at sunset.
10.22.08
Station Sighting
Apparently working at NASA turns you into enough of a space geek that seeing the International Space Station from your backyard is really cool. I saw the station for the first time this morning and was (still am) pretty excited!!
There’s been several opportunities to see the station fly over the area where I live but none of them when I was at a place when I could actually go out and look. This morning the station was to fly over at 6:29 a.m. at an almost 90 degree angle from the Earth giving you like 6 minutes to see it. So since I’m already up at that time anyway and went out to the backyard to see if I could find it. I knew it would be moving but wasn’t sure how fast. Six minutes sounded like a long time to cover the entire sky so I expected something kinda slow moving.
With that assumption in mind, I started by looking at stationary “stars” and watching closely to see if they appeared to be moving. I stared at one pretty bright object for like a minute and nothing. So I looked to the right and there was another pretty bright “star,” so I focused on it and after about 30 seconds was like “Yeah, that thing is now higher in the sky than it was when I first looked. So I just stood there and watched it slowly float over my head and then over my house and then out of sight.
When it got almost straight above me it was so bright and twinkly that my jaw dropped just in amazement of what I was seeing. I wasn’t amazed that there is this man-made spacecraft carrying men and women around in space. I was amazed that I could see it. That something that seems so, so far away I could see, and I could see it moving. It was cool, to say the least. Reminded me of the time I saw Saturn through a telescope. With my eyes Saturn looked like a shiny star. Through the telescope I could see its rings! It was amazing.
And, I’m pretty proud of this photo I took. The bright circle on the left is the moon and the small right spot (down and to the right) is the space station. I’m particularly impressed that I took this photo with my iPhone. The iPhone camera is pretty good, but never thought it would take a picture this good of something moving so fast and so far away.
10.20.08
Reliability
I already had plans for tomorrow night when I received an email from my only sister about a family dinner tomorrow night for my oldest nephew’s birthday. (He will be 16.) My monthly Bunco group plays tomorrow night and my husband was taking the kids to Finn’s soccer game. A no-brainer, right? Family first. Cancel on Bunco, no soccer game. End of story.
But I’m bitten by this reliability bug that I don’t want to miss Bunco, not because I really want to play Bunco instead of be with my family on my nephew’s birthday, but because I don’t want to let my Bunco friends down. Same with soccer. I don’t want to let down the team or the coach by allowing Finn to miss yet another soccer game (he’s already missed the last two). But as I put it in my email response to my sister:
“In the grand scheme of things , will the October 2008 Bunco or a 5 year old rec league soccer game really matter 10 years from now? No. But celebrating my first nephew’s 16th birthday will.”
So we’ll be at Applebees tomorrow night, celebrating 16 great years. Happy Birthday Alex!!
10.17.08
The Water You Drink
There’s been talk this week about the safety and quality of bottled water after a study tested 10 of the top U.S. brands and found varying levels of bacteria, Tylenol, fertilizer and plastic-making chemicals, to name a few, in bottled water. All 10 had bad stuff in their water, yet all 10 met the federal limits for drinking water. So the study’s main point is that bottled water is no better than water from the tap.
This should be no surprise, if you ask me. Did we really think city water is that bad or that water companies have a magic process for making perfectly pristine water? While working the city beat for an Indiana newspaper, I reported on the city’s annual water report, and one year did a pretty in-depth analysis of what is in the water, how it gets there, what the city does to take it out, what the city puts in, etc. I very much appreciated learning about the process and it changed my perspective a little on water, to know what it takes for a city to get water as clean as possible, know that tap water is not pollutant-free and know that what cities have to take out of tap water is caused by natural processes and by the very people who complain about dirty water. In case you didn’t know, the city’s goal is not to make clean water. The city’s goal is to make the cleanest water possible and to achieve the least amount of a chemical or toxin as possible and come in below levels the EPA deems “safe.”
Since then, I’ve kinda figured the bottled water companies are most likely following the same processes as our cities: settling tanks, neutralizing chemicals, using less dangerous chemicals to remove more dangerous ones. The city water director told me in 2002:
“It’s a juggling act to keep the water bacteria-free and at the same time enough (bacteria) to take care of the bad chemicals in the water and clear them out.”
So the study’s “revelation” that bottled water is no better than tap water is no real surprise to me. Besides, I think most people don’t drink bottled water because it’s better but because it’s convenient and “socially accepted.”
10.15.08
If you like to talk to tomatoes …
I took the boys to Veggie Tales Live last night, and have mixed feelings about the experience.
It was a high-quality production, for sure. I expected something more along the lines of a youth group skit (not sure why), but they went all out with lights and smoke and streamers. At some parts I felt like I was at a real concert. (All the toddlers and babies quickly brought me back to reality.)
The plot I thought was a little weak and struggled to keep my and the kids’ interest. Without giving anything away, basically the Veggie Tales are filming scenes for an upcoming movie and they can’t find Bob. They think Larry’s new “machine” made Bob disappear, so they keep singing sillier and sillier songs to try to get the machine to bring Bob back. It was kinda like watching “Silly Songs with Larry,” except in between the songs they tried to carry the plot. I’d rather have just seen “Silly Songs with Larry LIVE!” or seen a Bible story “veggie-taled” like they do in the videos. The somewhat boring plot aside, the music had some funny moments and the dancers were great!
Caden liked it the most, and after the show made comments like “that orange guy was silly” and “VeggieTales made me laugh.” That was the effect I was going for. Finn, on the other hand, was often bored during the performance and on the way home complained how all the other kids were talking during the video they showed before the show and he couldn’t hear.
So the show was just “OK.” The kids response was just “OK.”
I did take issue with one thing: the Veggie Tales folks hocking merchandise in the sanctuary where the performance was held. In the foyer of the church there was a table selling t-shirts, lights, hats, DVDs, etc. That’s fine. (I bought lights and shirts at the table.) However, inside the sanctuary, before the performance and during the intermission, vendors were walking up and down the aisles selling lights and coloring books like a cold beer vendor at a baseball game.
I was raised to believe (and do believe) that the sanctuary is a holy place and not the place to conduct business. (Matthew 21:12a: “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple.”) As a kid, I wasn’t even allowed to ask the ladies of the church to order something for the school fund raiser if we were inside the sanctuary. My dad taught me to wait until we were outside the church and to have reverence for the place where we came together for worship by not treating it like any other place.
Even if the Veggie Tales performance were in a place other than a sanctuary, I still take issue with the Veggie Tales group hocking merchandise like at a sporting event because it’s just lowering itself to the world’s standards. Some may view it is convenience (I don’t have to get up to get what I want if a vendor is delivering it to me), but I personally view it as sneaky. You may not even want or need the item until someone tempts you with it. And with kids’ products especially, vendors are enticing your child with something in the hopes the parent will buy it. That just seems a little under-handed and too much like the world, to me. There was plenty of business at the tables in the foyer that a Christian production did not need to stoop so low.
10.14.08
New “Blogs I Read”
Two new additions to “Blogs I Read.” The first is Target Addict. I’ve followed this blog for some time actually but just haven’t gotten around to adding it to my list. The second is The Depressionista, which is actually by the same blogger as Target Addict. It is a new blog dedicated to being fashionable and frugal in the current “economic crisis.” Check ‘em out!
I’m scoping out a couple of other blogs to see if I really like them, so perhaps more blog recommendations coming soon.
10.13.08
Alone Time
The cryptoquote in today’s paper was rather fitting for me today.
“Your most precious moments are the times when you can be alone.” (John Miller)
Today is Columbus Day, and I am fortunate enough to have the day off, yet my kids are still in school so I can truly enjoy some alone time … which is how I had time to work the cryptoquote.
