Fireside Chat

Before Christmas, I was walking through Sam's Club and encountered this scene on a very large TV screen.

You can now have a crackling fire in your home without having to chop any firewood. Even tho I didn't buy it, it's probably a great idea. Why stop there? Perhaps we could have a pet dog in our home without having to feed it or do any nasty cleanup. During the summer, a nice big rotating fan would give the appearance of cool air flow. Why not show a live webcam view of crashing ocean waves to give your home that beachfront feel (without tsunamis). "They" probably already sell all these ideas along with the giant aquarium scene. I once had two goldfish named Alfie & Omega. They both died when I placed their fish bowl too close to the crackling TV fireplace.

Fireworks

When it comes to Fourth of July fireworks, some of the best fireworks are growing in our backyards. Flowers are the original summer fireworks. Even tho this particular bloom isn't growing in our particular backyard, we will probably end up sitting on our elevated deck this Fourth of July evening and watching all the fireworks going off around us, just like we did last year. Happy 4th of July Independence Day!

Milky Way

Do you ever feel like your problems that you're dealing with are becoming rather large? It always helps to zoom out for a second to put everything in perspective.

If your life has what seems like some big problems, let's compare them to the size of our Galaxy. Our Solar System is located in our Galaxy which we call The Milky Way. This spiral galaxy is in the shape of a big disk which is around 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1,000 light years in thickness. One light year is approximately 5.8 trillion miles. Our Solar System is about 26,000 light years from the galactic center of the Milky Way, which is estimated to have about 200-400 billion stars, and thought to be about 13 billion years old. Size-wise, if the Milky Way was reduced to 100 meters across, our own Solar System would only be about 1 millimeter in width. The Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the Universe. Now, maybe your current issues that you're dealing with, don't seem quite so big. The next time you think you have a big problem, keep it in perspective, relative to the big picture.