Our boys modeling their new clothes. We caught an awesome sale at the Disney Store. Notice that Jonathan is posing as Buzz Lightyear. 🙂 We got each of them a shirt ($3 each!!), Daniel a pair of shorts, and Nicholas a pair of swim trunks (which he has insisted on wearing every day since then!). Nicholas’ swim trunks are Buzz Lightyear, too. Daniel’s outfit is Dash from “The Incredibles”. 🙂 
Nicholas modeling his new Pluto shirt ($2 at the Disney Store!!)Â
the goofball brothers (now you know why we call them that!!)Â
If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma. The Sun’s apparent shift is caused by the Earth’s motion around the Sun when combined with the tilt of the Earth’s rotation axis. The Sun will appear at its highest point of the analemma during summer and at its lowest during winter. Analemmas created from different Earth latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day.
See also – Wikipedia and EPOD
This very unusual photograph was recorded by Dennis di Cicco on a single piece of film that was exposed on 45 different dates throughout an entire year in a permanently mounted camera (44 images were of the sun, with an additional exposure to include the house and tree). It shows the sun’s position in the sky at the same time of day on each date.
Matthew’s test came back benign. 🙂 \o/ woo hoo! However, because it is on the same leg as the bacteria was, the dr. doesn’t think it is coincidental. So, they are waiting a month before they operate. Please continue to pray for Matthew & his family. He was in pain when we saw him on Sunday (he’s unable to fully extend the affected leg), but I am not sure how he is doing now. All in all, we are all relieved that the tumor wasn’t cancerous!!
Matthew, my nephew, is up in Seattle today. He has a tumor growing on his knee. They are finding out if it is cancerous (the dr. doesn’t think so). He will need to have surgery either way, and be in a cast again, and have a bone graph (because the tumor is on a bone) … so please lift him up in prayer! Thank you!!
Oh, yes, this is the same Matthew we prayed for last summer because of the flesh-eating bacteria he had!
Don’t forget to check out the pictures! They are after this really long Snopes article!!
but sometimes it can make a person downright mad.
Here’s an article Jef found on www.snopes.com. It is about New Orleans and the newly re-elected mayor Ray Nagin.
Claim: The mayor of New Orleans turned down an offer for the city to make $5 million on the removal of vehicles wrecked by Hurricane Katrina and instead opted for plan that would have cost the city $23 million.
Status: True.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Origins: This is one of those tales that sounds like it couldn’t possibly be true. And yet it is.
In October 2005, K&L Auto Crushers of Tyler, Texas, approached Mayor Nagin with an offer to pay $100 apiece for each flooded, abandoned vehicle it removed from New Orleans and to have emptied the city of such junkers within 15 weeks.
(The company would have taken title to the vehicles, crushed them, and sold them for scrap). Given that there were then an estimated 50,000 such vehicles to be removed, had that plan been agreed to, by January or February of 2006 the city would have been both rid of its wrecked car problem and $5 million richer.
The mayor turned down that offer, instead opting to pay an engineering company $23 million to perform the same task. That arrangement collapsed, and New Orleans instead ended up joining a towing contract arranged by the state of Louisiana.
Louisiana’s first attempt at getting the state’s Katrina-damaged junkers hauled to the crusher had it inking a $62 million contract in March 2006 with TruSource Facility Services, a small Georgia janitorial firm, and L&L Steel Builders, a tiny contractor based in New Orleans. Concerns were repeatedly raised that neither of these companies had the manpower or experience to handle the job and would not be able to complete the work successfully. However, those concerns became moot once the companies proved unable to secure financing for their performance bond and therefore lost the contract.
The statewide contract has since been awarded to DRC, a construction and disaster services firm in Alabama that bid $33 million for the job. It began the work of removing cars in mid-June 2006 and expects to complete the task by 30 August 2006.
DRC is currently being sued by the U.S. government over its USAID work in Honduras. The 2004 lawsuit (still being contested in D.C. federal courts) alleges that DRC misrepresented its personal and equipment assets, improperly subcontracted most of the work, and submitted false invoices totaling more than $12.6 million, of which DRC pocketed $5.2 million after paying subcontractors. Federal prosecutors are seeking to recoup triple that amount in damages plus other costs.
As to who is footing the bill, in March 2006 FEMA set up a fund to cover 100% of the towing costs for wrecked and abandoned automobiles in southern Louisiana. However, under that fund’s reimbursement formula, the state would be required to pony up 10% of the costs for work performed after 30 June, a date that would have been a reasonable cutoff point if the job had been begun in March, but which is wildly unrealistic in light of the 18 June 2006 commencement date. It is not yet known if FEMA will still insist on collecting the 10% fee or will waive it.
Barbara “this is one waive Louisiana is hoping to catch” Mikkelson
Last updated: 1 July 2006
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/katrina/politics/carcrush.asp
Heard about a new site – thought you all might like to visit it. It is called Let’s Say Thanks and it is a site that sends letters to our soldiers – both in Iraq, Afganistan and everywhere else (abroad) (because all our soldiers are important – no matter where they serve!!). Go there – send a note! It is fun and easy & you’ll make someone smile.
