the village buzz

Breakfast Club

this is merle. on saturdays, a bunch of friends and i work at a soup kitchen called “the breakfast club..” there’s an official name for the breakfast club, but it’s not very memorable. so much in fact, that i don’t remember what it is..

merle is one of our regular clubbers.

one saturday, he asked douggie (seated on the right) what $50 could do for a needy family. douggie said it could probably do alot, feed them, clothe them, etc.. so merle pulled a benjamin out of his pocket and said, “take this, keep fifty for a needy family, and make the other fifty into more.. and bring it back to me in a few weeks..”

so, to make a long story short, douggie challenged his church congregation (he called it merle’s challenge, but i thought merle’s millions sounded more snazzy..) and they went nuts. they sold pennies for a buck, sold freshly roasted coffee, sold photos, all sorts of things..

in the end, they turned merle’s fifty bucks into somewhere over two thousand bucks.. amazing. the coolest part was that this all came from within the ranks of breakfast club and helped out a family right here in town.

without all the bureaucracy and headaches, merle took the bull by the horns proved that people really can help each other out in a meaningful way..

that rocks..

if someone out there worked on this project, i would totally dig if they left in the comments the total brought in for merle’s millions and left some links where people find find more info..

thanks, merle..

okay, i did my first observation tonight..

i did see the moon, as on the photo on the website, but the one thing i noticed was that the moon was cocked a few degrees counter clockwise over here. i will take a few more peeks as the night progresses, but i seem to be seeing the little belly button thing on the moon shifted around ten degrees..

also, i checked the binoculars i have, and found that they are bushnell 10×50.. they don’t adjust focus, which strikes me as odd. almost sounds like i am making some sort of optical tradeoff here.

anyway.. i will check on the moon again in a bit, and see if it is revolved.

while i was out there, i tried tuning in to some amateur satellites. i heard TWO!! i am not sure which ones they were, but i heard them loud and clear. it was awesome. the first one just passed some packets, the other was voice. i will be checking more and more of these out tonight.

another thing i did was use Stellarium to figure out what is where. i found that saturn is supposed to be up somewhere, but it is too cloudy to see it.

i think im gonna try this. i am gonna haul myself outside each clear night to see if i can find all the doodads this guys is pointing out each night.. i will blog it and see how it goes. i have a small telescope, but it looks like i can do at least the first part of the year with my binoculars. i don’t know what kind i have, but i will check into it and let you know. they are some crap ones i got at kmart a long time ago. maybe i will buy some new ones.. we’ll see..

for the sake of completeness, i will add where i am. i have been using heavens above for awhile, and this is the observing site i have been using. the elevation is not correct, but i would guess it’s close enough for observing:

Coordinates: 40.8690 N, 82.3180 W Elevation: 0 meters (0 feet) Region: Ohio, United States of America Time Zone: Eastern Standard Time (GMT - 5:00)