Blog Number 316

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Wow, has it really been a week since the last blog?  I really enjoyed my 3 day weekend.  This is not normal as usually I feel the need to log into work from home sometime late Saturday or perhaps Sunday afternoon.  Not this past weekend though as the company laptop remained in its bag (much to the happiness of my wife).  Also, did you know that today marks the 2 year anniversary of my first blog?

Friday night (July 4th) we met some friends from our ABF class at the church parking lot around 8 PM hoping that when 9:30 rolled around we would have a good view of the fireworks show being shot off across the highway from us.  At first we were hesitant because we did not know if we would be able to see anything.  But as 8 turned into 8:30 and the parking lot began to fill up, our fears eased with the hope that someone in the throng of people knew that this was a good spot.  When 9 PM rolled around, the parking lot was full.  There was even an ice cream truck that stopped by.  At first I thought it was pretty cool but by the 78th loop of "Pop Goes The Weasel" being blasted from its low quality external speaker system I was ready for it to leave.  Finally 9:30 came and we were treated to an excellent 25 minute fireworks show.  Some of us were wondering how far away we were from the actual fireworks.  I was up for the challenge.  I thought that I remembered that the speed of sound was around 860 mph so through some math in my head I calculated that we were 5/8 miles away.  Now I know that the speed of sound is really 760 mph.  However, that is not exactly correct and according to this calculator, the speed of sound at 85° F (the approximate temperature at the time) is 782.6 mph (or 1146 ft/s).  Now is where the math gets fuzzy as I did not have a stop watch so I used the reliable "1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi" method of measuring time.  After measuring several times counting from the time of the fireworks explosion to the resulting boom I guessed that it took 2.5 seconds for the sound of the explosion to reach us.  After coming home and using a stopwatch to measure my Mississippi's I think it is closer to 2.2 seconds.  So we were about 2520 feet (1146 x 2.2) from the fireworks (or just under 1/2 mile).  I don't feel too bad about being off by 1/8th of a mile but I will be better equipped next time should the need ever arise to measure such things.

On Saturday we went to our neighbor's house 2 doors down for a barbecue / swimming party.  There were over 20 people there (more than 1/2 were kids and all of them were in the pool most of the time).  Our neighbors have a great back yard that is perfect for throwing a get together.  The food was great...

 

The left photo is some sliced sausage (after we had tore through about 2/3 of the platter).  The right pic does not do justice the the burgers.  They had to be 1/2 lb. each.  In fact, the wife and I just split one (we did have lots of sausage though).  A good time was had by all (the kids all had hot dogs).

Sunday was the first Sunday of the month so it was time for our ABF's "First Sunday Lunch" and we went to Scotty P's (a high class burger joint).  Another great time was had by all (we had salads but we did gang up on the daughter's leftover French fries).  We headed home, cleaned up the house for about an hour and then settled in for a game of Rummikub then an episode of Little House on the Prairie.  I arrived back as work yesterday having truly enjoyed my time off.

Wii Watch

As mentioned in a previous blog, as soon as the wife and I lose a combined 20 lbs we are buying a Wii.  We had a little bit of a set back due to the holiday weekend but as of 5:10 AM this morning we have lost a little over 6 lbs.  We are heading back to Indiana for a vacation on the 17th so we will see how that effects the Wii progress.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon