Meteor Attack!!

September 12, 2006
I was sitting at my desk at about 2:55pm today when there was a very loud sound that shook the whole house and vibrated in my chest. It lasted quite a long time - maybe 20 seconds or more. I ran outside thinking that jets must be going along the shore breaking the sound barrier or something but couldn't see anything. Then I turned on the radio to see if there was some kind of alert going on. And I thought that I had put enough distance between me and George Bush and all his "fallout"!

Well it turns out that they think it was a meteor, probably not any bigger than a basketball. Hard to believe something that small could make such a racket! I haven't heard that they found any remains of it. So all I could find was a photo someone got of the vapor trail. Not very exciting but here it is. And here's a link to a previous NZ meteor that was thought to be the size of a car! I'm glad I didn't hear that one!

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9907/08/new.zeland.meteor/ (the spelling is correct. I guess they can't spell at CNN.)

I just had tea with an interesting woman I met at the pool a couple of weeks ago who was actually at the Stanford World Masters Swimming Championships in August (didn't meet her then though - there were 7000 people there). She spent the first 20 years of her life as a sheep shearer and after having a back injury about 5-10 years ago, she went to law school. So now she's an attorney for the largest union in the country and does workmen's comp cases. How's that for a major career switch?