Coriolis…a Fictitious Force

fictitious force, n. Coriolis isn't even a real force, since it doesn't make anything speed up or slow down -- it only explains why things appear to speed or slow as the world spins out from under them. This sort of impostor is known as a fictitious force.
Ohhh…one of the myths of my youth (and even older age) has been shattered.  Sarah hasn’t reported back to us yet, but it seems that the direction of spin in a toilet bowl is controlled by the direction of the jets and not a coriolis effect (note the use of the word effect and not force, something I did pick up from all of those engineering classes).  While the effect is felt on air masses 1000’s of kilometers in diameter, the effect on a mass of water only about a foot in diameter is negligible and can be overcome by changing the impulse direction.
Enough Engineering!!  On to the party to send Sarah off to verify this hypothesis—even if it isn’t true.
Sarah had been with us for several weeks already, but time was marching on to send her on Down Under.  She’d done all the fun things of staying at the cottage in NH for a few nights, traveling to VT for the Harvest Market weekend, and driving down to Washington, New York City and Philadelphia to visit friends, cousins and Aunt Debbie.  Now it was time to have a party to send her on her way.
An event invitation went out over Facebook and several personal invitations were sent out as well.  The calendar moved towards the weekend as the first guest arrived. 
It was too bad that Sarah was going to move 15 time zones away from us—ahead of us actually—without a chance to visit with Jess.  So Cheri and I connected with Jessica and planned a surprise visit back to Connecticut starting late on the night of October 8th.  Cheri made up an excuse of being called by another nurse to help fill in a late night shift and I appeared appropriately disgusted that she would go in on one of the last nights Sarah would be home. 
Cheri picked up Jess at the airport around 11:30 pm and brought her home.  Sarah was still up when they arrived and the surprise was complete when Jess walked into Sarah’s bedroom with Cheri. 

Thomas quickly fit right in and enjoyed being surrounded by several members of the Swenson family for a while.

It was great to have the girls home and around the kitchen table when I got home from work on Friday.  We did start the party a little early (okay maybe a day early) with some lemon drop martinis for the ladies.  Then it wasn’t too long before the next guest of the weekend showed up.  We hadn’t told anyone that Jessica was coming so it was a nice surprise to everyone that walked through the door to see both Jess and Sarah.  We cooked up some steaks, opened some beer & wine and started the weekend on the right foot.  Kristina was suppose to join us for dinner, but with her schedule we ended up starting without her. The next day the surprises continued with people coming to send Sarah off and getting the chance to see all of the Connecticut Swensons!

Cheri had planned a big lasagna dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Of course this was also a good time to get various group shots with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grand-Parents…all in all a very photogenic group!

The evening wore on and then many people needed to head back north.  Soon we were down to a core group…and out of that group, Cheri and I were heading to bed!  So everyone else headed out to the hot tub.

I have since had to add several inches of water back to the hot tub…and I’m still finding beer and malt-ernative beverage bottles around the deck.  So obviously a good time was had by the core group well into the evening.

People were up and gone the next morning…everyone had things to do.  But we looked forward to later on Sunday having Michelle and Justin showed up to visit with Sarah. We did relax Sunday evening and enjoyed a selection of items from our local Thai restaurant…something we all like.

The next day, being Columbus Day, we all had off and some people lounged around while Sarah and I made eggs benedict for everyone.  Then it was a slow quiet day before we took some family pictures (thanks to the gorilla tripod) and then took Jess to the airport. Then came the first of many hugs…this one to send Jessica on her way back to Phoenix.

We had a couple more days with Sarah around.  I took Wednesday off to spend the time with her and so Cheri and I could both take her to the airport.  We spent some time with her in the airport and then sent her off on the first flight to Los Angeles…she called us about 11:30 that night to let us know she had made it that far and was waiting for the big flight from there.  More than half a day later we got a message from her in Sydney where she had a final layover and time for a shower and some rest.
She is now in Canberra and seems to be settling in…we haven’t spoken, but we’ve exchanged some E-mails.  Now we need to set up a Skype schedule so we can tele-visit with her occasionally.
Sarah is off and starting this adventure in her life!