dianec42

There was a comet. It wasn't much to the naked eye but even my little iPhone got a few decent shots.

The one downside of living amongst mountains and forests is that our location SUCKS for stargazing. We ended up driving about 40 minutes to a reservoir near Pittstown NY to get a clear view of the western horizon. It was quite chilly and there was a brisk breeze.

My snapshots all look basically the same so here is one.



Yes, I need to buy more icons on this thing...

I am working on making some bullet journal layouts that are cheerful, functional, and dead simple to update once they're created. I got some stickers and some washi tape to aid in the effort.

I am occasionally pecking at a cross stitch project, currently the Mill Hill "Haunted Graveyard", now featuring TWO shades of purple!

I *should* be working on the memory quilt but my brain has been massively uncooperative for a couple of weeks now. Sigh. Luckily(?) Mom's life is just as disorganized as mine at the moment so there is no real time pressure to get it done before I go visit.

I survived the first week(*) of my job! I'm struggling (see above about brain). Hopefully I will get my groove on.
(*) 3 days. bad enough.

I was supposed to go to a concert. Found it was cancelled AFTER driving 3 hours. Went to Micro Center as a consolation prize; tried to set up my new PC and it is a dud and has to go back. It's a good thing I like driving. (If I keep telling myself that maybe I'll start to believe it.)

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.