"My Fortune Cookie says....."

One of my new students (that sounds too possessive, but I don't know a better way to reference him) Jeff Rood, is checking in here once in a while. I know that because? In class today, he says, "how's the construction project going"

"Funny you should ask," says I.

The Bullydozers, 20 of them show up at 6:30 every AM. They race back and forth, over a mile and a half distance, at a minimum of 40 miles an hour. They do it all day long.

That's except for the five minutes just prior to five PM, quitting time. At that point I think their tachometers are maxed and they are likely hitting close to 60.

As mesmerizing as that can be? It is not as mind boggling at the amount of dirt they've moved.  It's clear to me now why they call them EARTH MOVERS.

And that got me to thinkin? As a kid, digging in the dirt for no good reason?  Mom or Dad or some other adult would pass by and say (come on baby boomers, you know what they say!), " You keep that up and you're going to end up in China."

Well I don't know if I've questioned it before? But I am now! CHINA?

So I go over to the globe. If you start in Denver?  And just follow the lattitude and longitude reference lines?  ( you'll be digging at an angle I think if you do that.)

You get close to China, but mainly you'll come out close to Tibet, Pakistan or India.

If you take all of the U.S.?  Using the same coordinate procedure? You'd mostly re-surface in India.

But now here I am in the sandbox digging straight down and it's pretty clear I'm going to pop up somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.  Where?

Right in the middle of the Indian ocean, about a thousand miles from the Australian West Coast, and not that far from Antarctica. Fascinating stuff, huh!

Peggy is flying to L.A. tommorrow? She is fretting over all the new security procedures, and what she can and cannot take. As she will occasionally do? She asks ME what she can take on board? She knows I've not a scintilla of intellegence in that field. I think the query fits into someone's definition of a rhetorical question?

She never learns, though.  With me the response is typically some wisecrack? Yeah, I am true to form.

But this time? Instead of the blow to the tricep and the ensuing bruise?

She laughs hysterically.  Well close to hysteria.  That's the only reason I'm bringing this up.  I want it on the record.  And if she thinks my retort is funny? You're going to be rolling on the floor.

With less than a seconds thought? I'm saying, "Your shoes can go, but you can't."

Oh, come on.  It isn't THAT funny.

I don't think there is even an Island in that part of the Indian  Ocean.  Who will you talk to when you get there? That conversational Mandarin Chinese course we took?  All for naught!