There’s a quarry of some sort behind a treeline outside my window. We got an email this morning that there was going to be some blasting. Three explosions at random intervals in a three hour period. We’ve had two so far. Two glorious window-rattling explosions with giant plumes of earth spouting up over the treeline and I have a front row seat.
Glad you’re enjoying your front row seat. After all, what possible negative repercussions could there be from so close to rocks being dynamited? :dubious:
Cool! What is it with guys and blowing shit up. I was watching Mythbusters yesterday and Jamie and Adam get positively giggly. (not that I get giggly…) 
The email kind of takes the thrill out of it though. I mean, a random explosion has so much more punch!
Hey, south of Chicago they stop traffic on the interstate when they blow stuff up at the quarry. Usually it’s on weekends and they stop traffic for about an hour for the blast and for the dust to settle.
Luckily I hadn’t read the email before the first explosion, so I got the thrill of the unexpected boom and the anticipation of two more to come.
I used to live reasonably near an RAF test range, which was fun when a child. The road near the land part of the range had barriers that came down with flashing lights, similar to a level crossing, whenever something was inbound. It wasn’t just used by the RAF, plenty US planes as well. At one point (ie when I was ten!) I could identify plane types by sound - by far the loudest being the Avro Vulcan.
Dammit, I wish editing was available.
I meant to add that the onomatopoeic “crump”, which turns up fairly often in .mil-porn fiction describing a distant explosion, is in my recollection exactly right.