French Fry Friday and a Partial Eclipse of the Sun�

2002-07-14

Almost every morning on my way to work I stop at the local Del Taco and get a soda. I have a pretty high tolerance for fast food, but I don't like theirs. Won't eat there. Except on Friday. French fry Friday! A silly thing to look forward to, but I do. It's like the 'Almost the Weekend' sign.

I had my french fries today, but am not really looking forward to this weekend. We're painting the living room prior to putting in the new floor. We'll start the prep work tonight. Removing switch plates, masking off windows, etc. It's really going to be a trick to paint the stairs. How do you paint around carpet?

Tried to watch the eclipse the other day. I'd heard there was going to be one and then totally forgot. Until I noticed that the light outside looked really weird. Not as bright as usual for that time a day, but not cloud cover either. Then the light in my head went off and I remembered. Couldn't look at it with bare eyes, of course. Tried looking through three pairs of sunglasses, still too bright. Tried looking at the reflection in dark yet still reflective object (a Black Diamond recordable CD). Still too bright. The only way I could see it was in the afterimage when I closed my eyes after trying the above.

A long time ago I worked for several months as a temp at place that manufactures lenses. Big lenses for telescopes, etc. One of their divisions made the lense for the Hubble telescope. They didn't talk about that too often. I don't think they found out that the lense was flawed until after it was in space.

The really cool thing was that there was a partial eclipse during the time I worked there. They set up a mirror and focused it down a long hall. An image of the sun was projected onto a wall at the end of the hall. Got to see the eclipse in all it's glory. The image was about three feet across. You could even see the sunspots. Neat.

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