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After much running around from school to school today, the day ended up okay. I managed to write about 800 words and also help run the family night theme of preparedness. Uh, not that DH or I were especially prepared, but we're good at winging it. One kid complained that we just did this, but we pointed out that we are in a new house now, and have to learn fire safety all over again. And we pointed out that nobody knew how to get out of the downstairs windows in case of emergency. (The gas furnace and water heater are in the middle of the finished basement, and all the kids but one sleep down there. If something happened, the only way out probably would be the windows.) Well, we had a refreshing twenty minutes all practicing going out the different windows and climbing up the crinkly aluminum "wall" that makes the window well. A Good Time Was Had By All.
Completely unrelated, but I was reading a book about Idaho geology today and managed to learn something new about plate tectonics. Who would have thought there was more to it than what we learned in school? I learned, among other things, that the western edge of today's Idaho used to be at the edge of the continent, and there was a subduction zone there. Basalt rock is heavier than the granite of the continental crust, so it sinks, right? But if you have islands, they are like marshmallows in hot chocolate, and they don't sink--they get slammed against the continent and fuse with the rock already there. And so a whole new subduction zone gets formed further out, on the other side of the new coastline. I had no idea. I also learned that our town sits in the dead center of an ancient caldera, and that the lava flows on I-15 to the south of us are a scant 28,000 years old. (Which is like, yesterday in geologic time.) I knew that the Snake River plain (the "smile" the interstate follows in southern Idaho) was formed by the hotspot currently under Yellowstone--but I didn't know that the hotspot was most likely formed by a meteor hit in eastern Oregon. It's always refreshing to read something that teaches you new stuff instead of rehashing the same old, same old.
The troops appear to be asleep. Shh...I'm going to go write!
Completely unrelated, but I was reading a book about Idaho geology today and managed to learn something new about plate tectonics. Who would have thought there was more to it than what we learned in school? I learned, among other things, that the western edge of today's Idaho used to be at the edge of the continent, and there was a subduction zone there. Basalt rock is heavier than the granite of the continental crust, so it sinks, right? But if you have islands, they are like marshmallows in hot chocolate, and they don't sink--they get slammed against the continent and fuse with the rock already there. And so a whole new subduction zone gets formed further out, on the other side of the new coastline. I had no idea. I also learned that our town sits in the dead center of an ancient caldera, and that the lava flows on I-15 to the south of us are a scant 28,000 years old. (Which is like, yesterday in geologic time.) I knew that the Snake River plain (the "smile" the interstate follows in southern Idaho) was formed by the hotspot currently under Yellowstone--but I didn't know that the hotspot was most likely formed by a meteor hit in eastern Oregon. It's always refreshing to read something that teaches you new stuff instead of rehashing the same old, same old.
The troops appear to be asleep. Shh...I'm going to go write!
