The Big Boom

Today at school the lights blacked out for a few seconds. Since my room has no windows (only two doors with some panes of glass), it was dark like a cave when the lights went out. I didn't know it at the time, but a local refinery about a mile away from our school had an explosion. A home near the refinery had all its windows blown out and the house was pushed off of its foundation. It is now uninhabitable. Many other homes nearby also sustained some damage to windows, soffits, garage doors etc. Fortunately, in the worst damaged homes the people weren't home at the time of the explosion and no people were injured. The explosion was heard and felt as far away as parts of Farmington. Our school must be pretty solidly built because it didn't shake. A cloud of dust from the refinery left a white powdery soot on all of the cars in our parking lot. It looked like a light dusting of snow. I washed my car after school to get rid of the dust. Jan and Buzz's house is up the block from where the explosion occured, and it had some (hopefully) minor damage, but the insurance company for the refinery seems to be moving quickly to help the homeowners. So far there has been no explanation for the cause of the explosion. I share a room with the IT guy and he spent the rest of the day addressing computer problems that resulted from the power outage at school.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

I am now re-reading Walden Pond by Thoreau.

Here are a few of the thoughts from the first two chapters. Enjoy!...

--To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independendence, magnanimity, and trust.
--All men want, not something to 'do with', but something to 'do', or rather something to 'be.'
--It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth.
--To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
--Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
--Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
--Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.
--Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
--I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Things you may not know about Alaska

After a wonderful, cruise-tour to Alaska, I would now like to share with you some facts about
Alaska:
--of the 20 tallest mountains in the USA, 17 are in Alaska
--Ketchikan, Alaska gets 300 days of rain a year (and we happened to be there on a clear day!)
--if there were no mosquitoes, there would be no bears in Alaska
The female mosquitoes bite you, but the male mosquitoes drink nectar and they act as pollinators for the flowers in the high alpine areas of Alaska. Bears in Alaska eat
thousands of berries as part of their diet, so the berries didn't get pollinated the bears would have to leave to find food elsewhere.
--Fireweed is a pretty pink flower that grows like a weed in Alaska. It is called fireweed, not because of its color, but because it is the first plant to start growing after a fire. The flowers bloom from the bottom to the top, and when the last blooms fade at the top, the Alaskans say there will then be six more weeks until winter.
--moose antlers are very heavy--I could only lift one at a time. But I could lift caribou antlers.
--if you encounter an angry moose--RUN and hide behind the nearest tree (even a skinny
tree will do). An angry moose won't stop until it has stomped you into the ground.
--however, DO NOT RUN FROM A BEAR--if you run, it will think you are food. Stand still and talk calmly to the bear--if you can.
--Be careful about walking along the banks of rivers that flow from the glaciers. The silt from the glacial waters is so fine that it can make the banks of the rivers like quicksand.
--one of the bays near Anchorage has tides that rise 38 feet overnight.
--there is an Abraham Lincoln totem pole at the museum in Anchorage.

How Do Ya Like This, Martha Stewart?

... aka... De-wect-able, De-wishus Wat-o-melon. Look good enough to eat? It is!!
Tonight was our turn to host the volunteers at SDCH for a get-together after FHE.
This is what I served our guests. I decided to carve the watermelon in a decorative way.
After spending the day getting things ready, we all enjoyed the good food and conversation.
Katie was sooooo helpful.