The Telescope is Still There

Some of you may know that John uses a telescope in Hawaii for his research. Some of you may also know that it is located on a mountain (Mauna Kea [sp?]) near Hilo. Probably all of you know that there was a sizable earthquake near there recently. I sent an email to John asking him if the telescope was still on the mountain. Here is part of his reply:

Yes, everything and everybody seems to be OK.  We had trouble getting 
in touch with people on Sunday, presumably b/c all the power and 
phone lines were down.  But all the lines seem to be up now.  The 
first thing the Hawaii technical staff did after the earthquake was 
head up to the telescope to check everything.

The rest of his reply was a rant about stupid people (tourists) not understanding that a place with active volcanoes might also get earthquakes. I decided to spare you that.

In other news, I was in Iowa this past weekend for a fall craft festival with Mom and Kelly and there was a mass murder in one of the tiny towns there. We only found out because Kelly's mom, Pat, called to ask us about it. It involved a Menonite family, a will, and a drug addict son who was subsequently caught. Silly me, I thought I didn't have to worry about those things when I go to Iowa!

I have a few more pictures of our apt. with the furniture in it and one of these days, I'll post them. I've decided to try and keep this blog going to pass around what little news we have around here because I'm shockingly bad at calling and emailing people.