Anecdotal Evidence: Furniture

The weight of a piece of furniture is inversely proportional to its price.

Evidence:

When Son moved out to his own apartment (yesssss,  adulting!  but ach, I miss him!) he took some furniture from our house.  We did not allow him to take the dining room table, as it is currently needed here for storing mail, dishes, campaign literature, and baked goods. Occasionally we use it for Shabbat dinner.

Son moved on a Saturday; he had invited a couple friends over for Sunday evening to play games.  For this, he needed a Dining Room Table Of One’s Own.  On Sunday right after I got home from church Son called me and said, “Let’s go shopping for a table.”  I said, no thanks, but he said he needed my car to transport the table.  Okay, fine. 

We went to one Goodwill, which had nothing.  We went to another Goodwill, which had a very beat-up dining room table, but just the right size for his needs.  Price: One dollar.  I wrote it out in words because if I had put it in numerals you would think I had mismarked the decimal point.  (It was marked down from $10.) 

Price: $1.  Weight:  10 tons. 

According to my exhaustive research of looking at one random website, particleboard can be twice as dense as actual real wood.  I do not know nor care what Son’s ‘new’ table is made of, I just know that it was damn heavy.

Son's table, squinched in my car

So then it was up to Son and weakling-me to carry it out of Goodwill, squinch it into the back of my car, carry it out of the car, up the steps, and into his apartment.  We got it done, but I needed to sleep extra on Sunday night.

It cleans up real nice!

Hint to the wise:  If you are going to Goodwill to buy furniture, bring a tape measure AND two screwdrivers (flathead and Philips head).  That way, if you need to, you can detach the legs for transportation (not the son’s legs, but the table’s legs).

The 'new' table can also be used to store puzzle pieces.

Dear Reader, what is currently stored on your table? 

Physics lesson

Welcome to my TED Talk.

Force equals mass times acceleration.

Wear your seatbelt.

Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.

Do not text while driving.  Just don’t.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Leave a good distance between your car and the vehicle in front of you.

Newton’s Laws of Motion are true and cannot be repealed.

Do not, do not, do not drive while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.  Whether that’s alcohol, pot, antihistamine, opioids, or your mother-in-law’s comments, just don’t.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

* * * * * * * *

Please do not tell my mother about this.  I will tell her at the right time.

On an average day in the US, there are about 18,000 car crashes.  On Monday, I was in one of them.  On an average day in the US, there are about 90 fatal car crashes.  On Monday, I was not one of them. I walked away without a scratch.  Just achy, and very, very grateful.

The force with which the car hit me (from behind) felt stunning and sudden.  But the airbag did not deploy, so maybe it was not that large a force, in the grand scheme of Newton’s Physics Rules.  It felt pretty damn forceful, and it pushed my car into the opposing lane of traffic.  That lane was empty, so I did not get hit twice.  The other driver was not hurt physically, at least as far as I saw.

One of the few photos I have of my car intact.
Mine is the maroon car, third from the front.

One more photo, from back in February, moving
my son back home.  This is such a great car for me.

I do not think that God intended for this crash to happen, nor do I think that a car crash is a good thing.  But I do see some of the hand of God in this:  the hand of God that created the human ingenuity and the political will to invent and implement: 

·      seat belts

·      car bumpers

·      headrests/whiplash preventers

·      fire departments with large brooms to sweep up glass and metal shards

·      taxpayers who pay local taxes to support a trained Emergency Medical Team, trained police force, and trained fire department, with adequate equipment to handle car crashes

·      technology to make 911 calls possible

·      a church full of people to pray for me and the other driver

·      a gas tank that does not automatically explode on impact

·      windows, through which an observer in the nearby school could see the whole thing happen and who then came to me before any emergency officials arrived, to check on me and give me a hug, and waited around to give a statement to police.

 

Thoroughly smashed up. 

* * * * * * * *

A few other observations

O Best Beloved, do not become too fond of thy car.  You never know when someone will smash it to smithereens. 

After the crash, I could not stop shaking.  My husband told me afterwards that the shaking was probably an element of being in shock. 

I found out that the fire department was not particularly necessary for this incident, but the fire station was in a training period.  So this car crash was used for practice.  You done good, fire fighters!   Never have the shards from a car crash been swept up more quickly and thoroughly.

A friend tells me that air bags do not usually deploy in a rear-end collision.  Which makes that seat belt even more important.  Please refer to my TED Talk above.

It still looks pretty good from the front.

But it's all jumbled up in the back.

Thanksgiving Survey 2018: Roads - responses

Just for fun, I’ve put all of the responses, including yours, in a word cloud.

I loved reading everyone’s responses.  Some of us are currently traveling real or metaphorical roads that are difficult, but nearly everyone had fond memories of some road they have traveled.    

For blog reader's responses, please see comments on the original post.

Here are the responses of my extended family.

Question 1. Name or describe a road, path, or highway for which you are thankful.

1. The tunnel under the street that connects the warm Justice Center to the cold parking lot

2. Hudson River Park

3. Crystal Springs Path.

4. The shortcut through the woods

5. I think I’m most thankful for Centre Avenue. It contains one of my favorite places on earth right now.

6. The two roads that are always diverging.  In a wood.    As in, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."   Yogi Berra also said, "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours."

7. Lake Shore Drive.  Not the one in Chicago, but the one in our own local park.

8. /Our Street/ Drive. Because without it where would we live?

9. Mandarin Duck Road

10. Death Road to Canada

(The respondent informed me that this is a video game, not a fanciful description of the Airline Road in Maine.)

11. The Giant’s Causeway (in Northern Ireland)

12. King’s Highway in Haddonfield, because it had wonderful shops, like Rosen’s meat market where we could get a free hotdog.  And Neumayer’s sold comic books!)

13. The Appalachian Trail

Question 2. In your childhood, how did you travel to school?

1. School bus, where I was the first stop on and the last stop off

2. I walked.

3. School bus.  Car pool.  Walk.  Bicycle.  Drove a car.

4. I walked!

5. I traveled over plains, and mountains, going uphill both ways through 15 feet of snow until I finally reached the 1-room log cabin where they held school lessons for all the young’uns around.

6. We were told,  "You must always go down to the light at Strathmore Avenue, to cross Park Heights Avenue", to walk to school.    But we never ever ever did that - it was a full two blocks out of our way!  We always just ran across all 4 high-speed lanes of Park Heights at Pinkney Ave, where there was no light.

7. For elementary school I vaguely remember being in a car pool with other kids.  This involved mothers driving station wagons full of loud children.

8. I walked 10 miles each way uphill in the snow, just like everyone else.

9. #48 bus

10. Silently

11. By my feet and by my bicycle, carrying my violin in my left hand.

12. By foot and by bicycle, carrying my violin in one hand.

13. By walking, and then by bus

Bonus Question:  What is your favorite expression which includes the word “road”?

1.  Keep in the middle of the road

2. roadable plane

(that is to say, a flying car) 

3. And when we both have had enough,

    I will shake him from my shoe,

    saying "Meet your new road."

4. (no response)

5. I like ‘Hit the road, Jack!’. It’s a good song.

6. A voice cries:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

 Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

7. “You’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll get to Scotland before you.”   (For the dark side of this seemingly light-hearted song, listen here.)

8.  Road hog!

     King of the road

     Road to paradise

     Road warrior

     On the road again...

9. I'm on the road.

10. The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

11. “I used the road less traveled.”

12. “May the road rise to greet you.”

13. “If you see a fork in the road, take it.”

Two chocolate roads diverged in a gingerbread wood...