A Duke University researcher has captured an image of a rare case of upwards lightning, or a “gigantic jet” in the parlance of lightning researchers. Steve Cummer caught a photograph of lightning that stretches above a storm to the upper atmosphere in a distance of over 40 miles.
Check here for more photos and a video.
Check out this unbelievable pipe organ built in the house across the street of my friend and fellow Wikipedia contributor Ken Thomas.
Says Ken:
Apparently the guy was a dentist and a fairly high-ranking officer in the Army. He retired after 30 years, and moved to Lenoir. I gather he had both money and time on his hands, and according to my tour guide “He just really liked pipe organs.” She didn’t come right out and say it, but I could tell from her responses that he may have been a little bit eccentric too. Considering what I was looking at, that little data nugget wasn’t exactly a shocking revelation.
I’ve seen pipe organs before, such as the one at the Rosario Resort on Orcas Island and this one appears to have homemade pipes.
I’d consider patching those hoses myself just to hear it play!
We had an active weekend as we wrapped up the last one before school starts again. Saturday was sweltering, with a high of 88F and 74% humidity. We joined Travis for his soccer practice in the morning. Then it took a while for me to mow the lawn as the heat sapped so much energy.
It had begun to sprinkle here and there by the time we grabbed lunch and went to Optimist Pool to dive off their diving boards for a bit. We hadn’t put 20 minutes into it before thunder kicked us out. We hopped over to Target to pick up the game “Clue” before returning to the pool in the hopes that the thunder would pass. We weren’t so lucky as the rain began to come down. So, we returned home, showered up, and played Clue for a while.
Sunday morning we slept in a bit. I took the dog for a walk in the cooler weather. Kelly took the kids to get their pictures taken while I walked the neighboring street with a petition to get its speed limit lowered.
We all returned for a late lunch. Then we scrambled to get prepared for another pool visit in the short time we had until our dinner guests arrived. A fun hour full of dives off the board followed! Then we got home and got ready for our guests.
Last week, Kelly discovered that a high-school classmate of ours lives in the neighborhood next to ours. He and his wife have kids that go to Hallie’s school. Both our families have been living here for a year without knowing about the other. We fixed that by inviting them over for pizza and conversation. The parents and kids both got along very well, so we forsee this as the start of many such visits.
It’s nice to have such cool neighbors in our area!
This morning was the first time since spring that I had to take a flashlight with me on my morning walk with Rocket. Fall is definitely returning.
