Today, in Illinois, is Pluto Day.
The state of Illinois decided that since it was one of their sons, working at Lowell Observatory (in Arizona), who discovered Pluto, and announced the discovery on March 13, 1930, they are legislating, against the International Astronomical Union, that Pluto is a planet, not a dwarf planet. The logic is that since Pluto passes over the skies of Illinois, they can do that.
Illinois is an interesting state.
So anyway, Happy Pluto Day!
1. I wanted to point out that on your left is a little box under the calendar (at least that’s where I have it right now, I like to move things on occasion) called “Recent Comments.” In that box you will see the last 7-10 (depending on my mood) comments made on this blog. I point this out because there are times I want to say something about something I already blogged about, but I don’t feel like writing a whole new post about it. So I just go comment on the post I already wrote. You can subscribe to the comments just like the posts if you want to be doubly sure you aren’t missing any of my brilliance.
2. My pansy bloomed! It’s pretty.
3. This was my odometer on my way home from class tonight. (Yes I was stopped when I took the picture.)
4. The bread I made Wednesday night is almost gone and it’s only Thursday night. The girl scout cookies are gone as well. They lasted longer than this bread is going to last.
5. And finally, a proclamation.
Let the record show…
THE RECORD: The game that was scheduled yesterday, yet did not happen, was won by forfeit.42D
There, now it’s on the record.
I read with interest an article from the BBC about the average number of friends a person has (What’s the ideal number of friends?). They say it averages out to about 150. They arrived at this number by suggesting we have 5 core friends, 10 close friends, 35 friends on the next level. That’s the first 50 and it would be about that number that you would send Christmas cards to. Beyond that, about 100 friends would be just this side of acquaintance.
This got me thinking. On the social networking site Facebook, I only add people I actually know and would probably want to know about, people who are basically actually friends. But there are more than 230 people on that list. So I have too many friends, but not nearly as many as the several hundreds some have.
So as a small experiment, I decided to see if I could categorize my friends into five groups – core, close, near, outside, and those that are there purely for networking reasons. I wanted to see how my numbers compared to the averages.
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. My whole life I have loved looking up at the stars. They have pulled me with their wonder and beauty. So a whole year devoted to astronomy is great. I’ve already enjoyed seeing a few things in the heavens this year and put some pictures up (Perigee Moon, Moon & Venus).
One that I wanted to see was Comet Lulin (picture 1, picture 2, how to see it). There were a couple of problems though. The first is that I only have my bare eyes to look at the stars with. With contacts/glasses though, my eyesight is pretty darn good. But having a pair of binoculars or a telescope would come in handy for a few things (like looking at Saturn’s rings).
The other problem is light pollution. I found a website that matches light pollution with a Google Earth map so you can see where there is really too much light pollution to see the stars around you – Dark Sky Finder. Basically, the entire East coast is too polluted. The entire drive between Tucson and Phoenix is too polluted. I have to drive outside of Tucson on some less traveled roads for an hour to get away from the city lights.
Light pollution is huge.
Sure the pictures of the earth from space at night are neat when you can see all the lights. But it’s also sad that we have done that to our world, to our skies. There are places on this earth (New York) where people can’t see the stars. With all this talk about cleaning up air and water pollution, maybe we should also work on light pollution (A New Push to Turn Off the Lights in 2009). And maybe we could work on noise pollution while we are at it. The places where you can go and not hear manmade noises are dwindling too.
The light on my porch has been burned out for a while. And I’m leaving it off. There’s enough light pollution around my place that it’s never completely dark anyway.
I like quilting. A lot. I like looking at quilts. I like thinking about quilts. I like reading about quilts (two weeks ago I took a quilt pattern book to bed to read before falling asleep). And I definitely like making quilts.
I also like ice cream. A lot.
One of my internet quilting friends is issuing a challenge to her local quilting guild and offered the same challenge to anyone else who wanted to give it a go. Why not? It’s not like I don’t have a whole huge list of other quilts I’m working on. Besides, it’s a small quilt.
The rules are thus (and I’m putting them here so I can remember what they are):
They drew “jamoca almond fudge” for me. It should be interesting because I don’t really ever quilt with browns. I’m going to think about it for a bit while I hopefully finish up another project or two.
And of course there will be pictures when it is finished, and possibly along the way as well.
I have a few more news things to write about, but they all deserved their own longer entry. I actually have a list of things to post about, so posting about lists is actually kind of funny to me.
I am a list person. I have my daily to-do list that helps keep me from accomplishing absolutely nothing during the day. Without a list I can sit there all day thinking of all the things I need to be doing, feel completely overwhelmed about it, and not get any of it done. Or think about all of the things that need to be done, feel completely overwhelmed about it, try to do all of them at once, still not get any of it done.
Time to clean out some of the news articles I’ve been looking at recently. This is your Sunday edition of the news.
I am an educator and PhD. I quilt, belly dance, run, read, and try to grow things. I am a Mormon. I am infertile. I am a daughter, sister, aunt, grand-daughter, friend, wife, and mom.
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