Google Earth

Last night, I spent probably 4 hours googling Earth... It's a free downloadable from Google (well, it's free as long as you don't want all the GPS live-feed bells & whistles) found here:

http://earth.google.com/

Anyway, I spent all this time just looking up places I've lived, schools I've been to, I even found our house & one of the neighbors has a mint-green De Soto that showed up in the photo. I know the image has been from the last year, too - because even though we've had gravel in the yard for 2 years, the other neighbor's lawn has only died since the new college guys have moved in. It definitely looks like scorched earth over there.

Something that utterly surprised me, though, was how hard it was to locate Hoover Dam - to me, that seems like a really big landmark, but to Google it must be wholy unremarkable (it's at 36d 00' 26.87"N & 114d 44' 27.04"W) and Mt. Rainier in Washington was the same - even though the blast site of Mt. St. Helens was marked, and kind of hard to miss. The picture of Hoover Dam was pretty clear - you got a great aerial view of just how deep Lake Mead is, and how little water the Dam actually lets through into the Colorado River.

I found Rancho HS here, Napavine HS in WA & Chaffee HS in Ontario, CA, but no sight of Frasier Middle/High in Memphis or the surrounding areas. I can't remember the name of a single elementary school I went to, and street names have escaped me as well, except for Sandyhook in La Puente, which I couldn't find. I looked at Puyallup & Sumner in Washington, found the major railway line in Sumner, remembered that our apartment complex faced the railroad (I saw a kid get hit by a train one day)... but couldn't remember the name of the street, and none of the existing street names looked familiar to me. I didn't even see the street we lived on when me & Rob were in Salem, and that was a pretty major road. I didn't explore Metairie too much - it & N'Awlins was covered by a cloud & the image was taking a long time to load.

Went up to the college yesterday to start the student loan application process. Had to come home & take some stupid online entrance exam... meh. It means I have to go back next week to turn my 'Certificate of Completion' in. Told Rob that if he doesn't want to start working again, we're just going to be stuck here & he might as well get used to the idea, because I definitely can't put any extra dosh away w/only me working. Not enough for an apartment here, and not enough to move anywhere else.