The Aerobie Throw

On Saturday Mom, Dad, Greg and Katelyn came up to our house for supper. It was sunny, 60+ degrees, and windy that day, and Annika was out earlier throwing my two Aerobies around (those rings made of plastic that fly really far). Later, while the ladies were shopping, the rest of us were outside again. Dad was pushing the girls on the swings while Greg and I threw the big pink Aerobie around. At one point it went off course and landed by the swingset, and Dad casually tossed it back to Greg. The wind caught it and it eventually stopped moving in our neighbors' neighbors' yard. Greg tracked it down and then gave it a moderate toss. It caught the wind just right, flew straight and true, and I nearly caught it, but it went really far. As a quantitative kind of guy, I really wondered how far it had gone. So...I went to globexplorer.com and found the overhead satellite shot of our neighborhood. Knowing the dimensions of our lot, I established a scale for the photo and then measured the length of Greg's throw. The result: approximately 400 feet. That's a long way. The world record, on the other hand, is 406 meters.

All the news that's fit to blog.

Here is some stuff that has happened:

On New Year's Eve we ordered a kitchen table and chairs from Bears in the Woods, an Amish-made furniture store that is very near our house (unlike everything else in the world). It finally arrived and we love it. It's real wood, which is both cool and intimidating, since you don't want to ruin it. We also ordered three matching barstools and a corner hutch, but those aren't done yet, and we don't know when they'll be done.

Yesterday I received official notice from the College of Arts and Sciences at Ferris State that I will receive the promotion I applied for before Christmas. Therefore, this fall I will be an Associate Professor of Mathematics, rather than an Assistant Prof of Math. My astute brother Nicholas pointed out long ago that if I got promoted everyone could call me "Ass Prof", but I would like to point out that being an Assistant Professor lends itself to the same moniker, so everyone could have (or maybe has) been calling me that for three years already.

The feline update: Tate is getting declawed tomorrow, Layla has recovered from her cold, and all the treatments for Marta's heart condition are either prohibitively expensive or stupidly impossible (a pill 3 times a day? ha!). She'll just have to live with it.

Annika's mealtime prayer goes this way: God is great, God is good, thank you for our food and bless Rainbow too, amen. Rainbow is a Betta (sp?) fish that we've had for months and that has been ignored for just as long. We came home today to find his tank knocked over and the water drained (thank you, kitties). We were gone for 11 hours, so who knows how long this fish was sucking air. And just when we thought it was all over, he flopped around a bit. After quickly filling his tank, all seems well, so he can live his neglected life longer.

Name this movie: "It's all illusory - it's ill, and it's for losers."