dianec42

We drove to Redding (CA) to be in the path of yesterday's annular solar eclipse. It was totally worth the drive! We watched it from Manzanita Lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park. There were quite a few people there, but it wasn't out of control. (Apparently the group at Whiskeytown got a bit rowdy. Glad we drove further!)

I made a pinhole projector (in the field!) from stuff I had brought along. Basically, under $1 worth of crap we had lying around the house. Yay science!

This was thoroughly upstaged when one of the guys made a cardboard cutout - I think it was supposed to be a cat, or maybe Totoro or something - and poked 2 pinholes for eyes. We all decided it was actually Batman. Hilarity!

It is amazing how much astronomy stuff you can fit into a Mini.

Things I could have done without:
* crappy service at the previously awesome steakhouse the second night;
* my husband's awesome super power of getting sick in strange cities;
and
* dire warnings from the Mini half an hour from home (the oil pressure is too low and we're ALL GONNA DIE!) which vanished before we even successfully found a place to pull off. We checked the oil. It's fine.

More on the trip later. Time to get back to laundering ALL THE THINGS.

So the plan was, we were going to go to a baseball game on Saturday and go Mini shopping on Sunday. Saturday around lunchtime, we decided we were bored, so we headed over to the Mini dealer. Our intention was to check out the '11s, decide nothing on the lot was suitable, and order one. Well, it turned out they had a Cooper S hard-top in a new colour "white silver" that had a sunroof and a 6-speed... one thing kind of led to another, and the next thing we knew it was 5:00 and we were home with a new Mini! (And about an hour to get to Anaheim through traffic. Good thing it wasn't a Dodgers game, we'd have never made it.)

So... yeah. I have a new toy. It turns out my manual driving skills haven't completely gone, which is nice. It will definitely take some getting used to. (Le gasp, I now have a vehicle where I put my foot down and something will actually happen!) It's exceedingly easy to park and BOY is it fun to drive.