Twinners

True to what we said in our riveting work conversation the other day, both Noah and I ordered the Cat Riding a Rainbow-Barfing Space Shark shirts. They arrived yesterday, and we both wore them to the office today.

I will say this: it’s a surprisingly comfortable and apparently well-made shirt. My expectations were pretty low, so I was pleased that it turned out well. And now I have a shirt that’s breathtaking to behold, and sure to start conversations.

A bettin’ man

A few days ago, Laralee and I disagreed about something (I don’t actually remember what it was, but certainly it was of enormous importance). We bet on it, and the loser had to make homemade hot fudge.

I won.

Today, as I’m working on taxes (whee!) I figured it was time to cash in.

Zing uniforms

Out of the blue, Noah suggested at work (via our Slack channel) that we should have “uniforms” at Zing. He directed us to a company with an Amazon page, where they sold the most breathtaking sweatshirts imaginable.

I bought one.

So did he and Ben… and maybe, just maybe, Nick decided to go with the “90’s disposable cup” pattern. We’ll see if, one of these days, the Zing office is a place that will make visitors’ eyes bleed.

Here’s the entire hilarious conversation.

Problem? What problem?

Today I was running some errands, and I had a Kohl’s coupon. I dropped into the store to see if they had some ties that caught my eye. It’s been a while since I bought a tie. My collection is pretty impressive, but I’m always on the prowl for more.

Anyway, I ended up buying four of them:

When I showed them to Laralee, she raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You have plenty of ties. I think you have a problem.”

Problem? I wear a tie six days a week, always with a white shirt and black or grey slacks. I need something to liven up that wardrobe!

Faith

Today in seminary I was teaching about faith, and how sometimes we’re asked to believe in something we can’t see or even understand. For example, take quantum tunnelling: we hear that it’s possible for an electron to literally teleport from one side of a wall to another, without covering the distance between. That’s so far outside what we expect in our world that it’s hard to wrap our brains around. But it’s absolutely true, backed up by experiments and a whole bucketload of math.

So, I thought it would be fun to show the class the “bible” of quantum mechanics, my old college textbook!

I wrote out an equation describing tunnelling and potential wells and stuff, but the class screamed in horror. Math at 6am doesn’t go over well.

Boom

A couple of days ago, a meteor streaked across the sky in Michigan and slammed into the ground (technically becoming a meteorite at that point). This is an awesome photo supposedly showing it:

It reminds me of that classic quote from Aliens: “Nuke it from orbit– it’s the only way to be sure”. Yikes.

Uncle Abe

I’m in Washington, D.C. tonight for a business trip, and after finishing a day of meetings and an awesome Italian dinner, I decided that hanging out alone in my hotel room wouldn’t be all that exciting. So I grabbed Steven (my fellow Zinger) and we headed over to the National Mall.

We walked along the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument, which looked really cool all lit up in the cold winter night.

Nearby was the World War II Memorial:

We continued on to the Lincoln Memorial to see Uncle Abe.

We had planned to stop by the Jefferson Memorial as well, and maybe even walk past some of the other federal buildings (Smithsonian, National Archives) but it was so frigid that neither of us could feel our fingers any more. And I was wearing gloves! So we packed it up and headed back to the warmth of our hotel rooms.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll drop in on a few other landmarks. It was cool to see these after many years, and be reminded of the inspiring history of our country.

Car 17

Yesterday as I was riding the train at DIA to the concourse where my airline was, I noticed a sign in the car that gave a phone number and said I could provide feedback by texting the car number (17, in my case). So I did.

I figured very few people ever give feedback about their train car at DIA, and those who do are probably griping about something. So why not provide some positive feedback? Maybe Maximillian really enjoyed my comment. I’m not sure what the “appropriate department” would be, nor can I imagine what it must be like to be a guy like Maximillian, who apparently spends his day waiting for incoming texts about the DIA trains. But hey, if I can brighten someone’s day with a simple text while I’m riding the train, so be it.