Vacation: Day 2

Went to church, it was really good ... even though I only listened to about 1/2 the message. It gave me some things to think about. I'm getting to know people at church too (besides my family) because of choir, which is pretty nice. I have people to say "hi" to.

Afterwards I have lunch at Bachan's (dimsum) and then went to Borders with Auntie, where I spent over $100 on my Summer reading. My Summer reading list includes Science (Astronomy, Physics, Particle Physics), SciFi/Fantasy, and Sudoku puzzles. Auntie and I are going to join the local Astronomy Club. I'm so excited! We'll meet in the park once a week and look at the skies and then we'll go to the Observatory once a month and hear lectures from people who work for NASA. SWEET!

For dinner we have Lucille's (yummy!) and now I really really really have way too much food in my fridge. That's probably good though, because for once I'll actually be at home to eat my meals! I solved my first Sudoku puzzles today, and after the first one they became a lot easier. At Borders I met a lady in the Scifi section that had the same tastes in books as I do and she introduced me to a new series, so I'm hoping that it'll be good. In the physics department, I got help from the clerk because I found this neat looking book by Smoot called Wrinkles in Time and Auntie wanted a copy so I went to ask after one. By that time I had a stack of 8 books or so and the clerk had read a lot of the Physics/Math books that I had and it was really fun chatting. He said that my science picks were good ones. I can't wait to read them all!

One of my books is really neat - it shows the constellations and then tells you which nebulas and galaxies are connected with them. Orion has a couple of good ones! It would be neat to travel to the Southern Hemisphere and see all the different constellations that they have.

Josh is having trouble writing a paper of his on the ethics of Adams vs Texas. He's still in the research stage and can't find much. I'm going to see if I can't find something to help him out. If you all know of any sources on this (it's also a movie "The Thin Blue Line") then let me know, ok? Thanks! It's his first graduate level paper and I want it to go well with him. Plus he has to learn how to write in APA. I remember wrestling with that on my thesis. Fun times. Please do pray.

That's in on the vacationing front for now. I will leave you with the most striking thing that I learned today - one of those 'I can't believe that I didn't think of that before' type things. There are 4 main forces in the world - gravity, electromagnetic, strong, and weak. The strong force is the one that holds all the positive protons together in the nucleus of an atom. It never occurred to me before that of course the protons wouldn't like sticking to each other. I can't believe I never thought of that before. (I also can't believe how little we know about these forces! What are they exactly? umm... we dunno.)