WIAW 2/20: Pluto facts

Posted by Lauren

Happy WIAW! We’re back in the link-up action (via Jenn’s blog) after taking a break last week. I only snapped photos of my main meals, leaving all snacks and sweets undocumented….

I ate both breakfast and dinner at my desk at work (kinda boring), but luckily I went out to lunch in Palo Alto! I met my former boss at Pluto’s, a fast-casual salad/sandwich/carvings kinda place. They’ve got 8 locations in Northern California, with one more on the way in San Luis Obispo! I’ve only been to their Santana Row location once or twice, so I was really excited to try out Palo Alto’s and compare.

Speaking of Pluto’s, who is ready for some facts about our favorite non-planet planet?

• Pluto was discovered on Feb. 18th, 1930, the same year Scotch tape was invented (the guy who invented tape was an avid banjo player, such a hipster).
• Clyde Tombaugh was only 24 when he discovered Pluto, a fact that kind of makes me feel like a slacker!
• Clyde also was a huge UFO nerd… We’re talking eerie rectangles of light and mysterious green fireballs spotted in New Mexico and a deep belief in extra terrestrials!

Breakfast – oat bran with chocolate protein powder and slices of pear (a nice change from banana)

• Percival Lowell, a businessman and astronomer, first proposed that there was an unknown 9th planet and he searched for more than a decade before Clyde came along
• When an 11-year-old suggested the name Pluto, Percy was totally on board because his initials are the first two letters in PLuto
• It takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the sun…. that’s way too long to wait for birthday cake

Lunch – spinach salad with grilled chicken and 7 toppings

My picks: sweet potatoes, pepperoncini, red onion, lima beans, broccoli, mushrooms, sweet corn + a nice slice of foccacia bread on the side

• Pluto is 40x as far from the sun as the Earth (that math = Pluto is 3.6 billion miles from the sun)
• This tiny rock is only 1,400 miles wide (aka half the width of USA)
• A person that weighs 200 lbs on Earth would way 14 pounds on Pluto because it has 1/15th the gravity of Earth

Snacks – nectarine, strawberry flavored Nutrigrain bar, some candy from the bowl at work…. :)

Dinner – Taco Tuesday leftovers – salad, black beans, rice, chopped steak, salsa, and guacamole

• Kids from the 80s and 90s had their world rocked when, suddenly, Pluto wasn’t a “planet” it was a “dwarf planet”
• This change officially happened in 2006 (the same year Google bought Youtube for $1,650,000,000)
• Also in 2006? NASA sent a piano-sized spacecraft called New Horizons to Pluto. It will get there by 2015, after 9 years floating through space!

Dessert – Trader Joe’s cat cookies, one of my all-time favorite TJ items… they are now all gone!

• Pluto’s (the restaurant) makes amazing salads. I already want to go back.
• Pluto is cold.
• And, this:

Question: What’s your favorite planet? I always liked Saturn after doing a report on it in middle school. However, it wasn’t the rings that drew me in, it was Saturn’s moons (especially Titan) that I found so interesting.

-Lauren