My Exciting Life...

On Saturday I took my car in to the shop to get my brakes fixed. I left the shop around 11:30. They stay open until 9pm, so I waited for them to call me. They called this morning to say that the cost was going to be a lot more than I thought. And it should be done by this afternoon. In what world does it take a day and a half to fix brakes? So yesterday, bored completely out of my mind, I decided to clean the kitchen. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed every tile in the kitchen. I washed the cupboards. I washed the windowsills. I washed the walls. I even moved the stove, fridge, and 2 cabinets and scrubbed the floor underneath. So while my back, neck, and legs hurt today, at least my kitchen is sparkling clean. I got an e-mail today (thanks Lara) and I thought it was really cool, so I'll put it in my blog to give you something exciting to look at. It kind of puts things in perspective.

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is more than 1000 light years away. Take a look at it:

And so my friends, I leave you to ponder the lyrics from a favorite group of mine. They Might Be Giants, and their song "Why Does the Sun Shine?"

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

Yo ho, it's hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives

We need its light
We need its heat
We need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt
There'd be no you and me

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

The sun is hot
[It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.The sun is large. If the sun were hollow, a million Earths could fit inside. And yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.]

The sun is far away
[About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small.]

And even when it's out of sight
The sun shines night and day

The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's Atomic energy

[Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.]

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees