And happy 2013 — coming in here, I realized I hadn’t posted anything since the new year. Yikes!
My parents reminded me this morning that today is Pi Day. And when I mentioned it at work, a co-worker forwarded this image that should just about explain it all, if you don’t understand why today is Pi Day.
I honestly haven’t been able to figure out where this image first appeared, so I cannot give good credit for it. Just enjoy how cool that image/thought is.
Yes, it’s been a while since I posted something. I hope to post some summer pictures soon. This at least shows that I still remember how to post to the blog.
In the meantime, if I were you, make sure you park in designated spots only when you are traveling in Vilnius, Lithuania. You wouldn’t want your car run over by a Russian tank.
If you like double-parking in your favorite urban city, you might want to watch out if the local mayor is getting a little perturbed with you and your fellow scofflaws.
And it just wouldn’t stop coming down. In fact, it’s still misting outside, even 3 days after things started. It wasn’t ever too hard of a rain — an amateur weather station just a few miles from my house has only recorded about 5 inches of rain so far. But it definitely accumulated.
See for yourself, in this picture of the drainage pond at the bottom of the hill near my house. We don’t border on it, so we’re nowhere close to getting flooded. We’d need a Noah flood to get to our house from here. But those trees on the left, in the standing water, are probably almost 3 feet above normal water stage in the pond. And you can see the water trending toward some of those fences on the left.
Sorry for the fuzziness. The weakness of a cameraphone picture, I guess.
Hope everyone else stayed dry, if you were on the East Coast. Our fine governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stayed dry — by having Democratic Party fundraisers in Memphis and Little Rock after declaring an emergency in the state. (See, both parties’ leaders can be tone deaf.) Have a great weekend.
Someone shared with me an interesting website and a couple of cool videos. The goal is to change people’s behavior by making the desired behavior more fun. The two examples below — taking the stairs, and recycling glass bottles — definitely show how things are different when they are made more fun.
So, what do you think? Both of these cases would definitely be fun for both kids and adults.
Just a couple of observations from the road recently:
Well, for starters, my minivan passed 90,000 miles last week. Woo hoo! Almost 6 years to the day, so that’s a nice round 15,000 miles per year. Ouch.
Now, about our road driving culture. I don’t think we’ve learned our lesson from last year’s gas price hikes. Yes, gas prices are down 30%+ from last year. It’s still not cheap (at least, from a US historical standpoint). But we certainly seem to be driving a whole lot more.
Last year, driving up and down the I-95 corridor between Richmond and NOVA wasn’t too bad, at least at the times we normally drive. You could sense folks weren’t driving as much.
Well, this year, it’s at least as bad as years before last year. In fact, I could potentially make the case it’s the worst ever. Someone in the family has driven the corridor each of the last 3 weekends, and it has been extremely tough and congested each time, especially compared to last year. Part of me wonders if this is the vacation impact due to the recession, with folks spending fewer dollars on vacations, essentially keeping folks more local and/or driving (versus flying).
I guess higher fuel prices are going to be the only way that folks will cut back on driving.
Lastly, on a slightly humorous note (as long as it doesn’t happen to me), be careful if you park a small car near a body of water. I’m guessing many of you are familiar with the Smart Car, one of the smallest cars on the road today. Well, apparently, folks in the Netherlands are finding their Smart Cars being lifted and dumped into the canals as a not-so-nice prank.
I guess my 90k-mile minivan probably won’t suffer the same fate.
This is one that was shared with me online, from the Science Friday show on NPR. Their website has video demonstrations of different experiments. In this segment, part of their Science Fair Projects for the Recession, they show how to shatter glass with your voice.
Have a great weekend. And good luck if you want to try this yourself.
Hard to believe we’re one-third of the way through the year already. Where has time gone?
While you ponder that, enjoy a little rocking-out on the bayou between Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino. That’s some nice piano playing there.
No family news. Just something a little strange and different that I wanted to pass along. (I may use Fridays to pass on news like this on occasion.)
It appears we don’t have to hold the tournament this weekend. The rats down at the Science Museum of Virginia have predicted that Connecticut will win the championship on Monday night, beating UNC. Last year, the rats were 3 for 3 in predicting the Final Four.
Although, given that this is only the second year they have done it, I’m not sure the statistical sampling is good enough to believe in it. I guess we’ll have to see.
