Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
Two Comets on a Moonlit Morning
http://tomjmartinez.blogspot.com/2013/11/two-comets-on-moonlit-morning.html
Sharing fellow ASKC member and exceptional astrophotographer Tom Martinez latest Comet Ison photo from earlier this week at Powell Observatory.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
I almost missed the sunrise this morning because I overdid it yesterday trying to contain my oak tree’s leaf largesse. I ran out of leaf bags (two left over from last year plus ten more purchased this week from Home Depot) and the rain (or is that reign?) of leaves continues.
I fell out of bed at about a quarter to six and this is what I saw out my bedroom window:
Not bad with just my smartphone camera on “Dawn” setting.
I’m taking the rest of the morning ‘off’ to recover from yesterday. Home remodeling projects will be calling my name this afternoon.
Good morning!
Happy Hump Day!
For the first time in nearly a month, Apollo and I took a pleasant evening stroll around our neighborhood. I didn’t get much exercise, as I became easily distracted by all the beautiful blooming spring flowers and trees. The temperature stayed in the 70s and the sky remained cloudless as the sun dipped toward the western horizon.
The forecast for the next couple of days, however, predicts more rain, so Apollo and I may not get out and about until later this week.
Terry and I also visited our local Home Depot to purchase a replacement day lilly (for the one lost to the driveway re-construction a year or so ago) and a couple of new flowers to add to the bed around the mailbox. As soon as the day lillies bloom, I’ll snap some photos and share them here.
No repeats. No snoozing to ‘You Got Me Babe’ from the alarm clock. Just one single solitary sunrise to greet the groundhog last Saturday morning:
I almost gave up on this sunrise. The clouds stayed a dismal grey until the last ten minutes or so before sunrise. At least I had a cub of fresh made Irish Blend tea to keep me warm while I waited for the drab to transform to gilded.
When I let Apollo out this morning at 5:30 a.m., I saw the moon. I didn’t think much of that until I let him back in and it dawned on me (pun intended) that I could probably see the sunrise today. Today being New Year’s Day 2013. I was supposed to wake up to snow falling, not mostly clear skies.
I groaned, though, because even without a wind, the temperature plummeted over night to the lower teens. I didn’t fancy standing outside for a half hour or more to photograph a sunrise. I made a compromise and setup the tripod and camera in the as-yet-unfinished Purple bedroom, where the window faces east and doesn’t currently have a screen installed. I could open the double-pane window and have an uninhibited view of the eastern horizon (with the exception of the leafless winter tree skeletons silhouetted against it).
I waited until five minutes after sunrise but should have hung around ten minutes or so longer. Instead, I went outside to shovel the driveway and the stairs before the sun, which wasn’t supposed to be shining this morning, could melt the powdery stuff to ice. The sunrise never produced any golden or pink overtones to the clouds, but it did become a bit more dramatic than what I photographed above while I shoveled snow. Oh well, such is life.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
4 out of 5 stars
I waited until the last possible moment to decide to watch The Hobbit ~ An Unexpected Journey this past weekend. If I plan to spend the money to watch a movie in a theater, I do it opening weekend, because then most of the money goes back to the studio, which in turns means more movies that I like being produced. In other words, I vote with my money. And, Terry and I prefer to watch movies from the VIP seating on the balcony of Theater 7 at the Legends. Well worth the climb up the stairs to the third floor Saturday afternoon. We arrived with eight minutes to spare and sat through an amazing number of previews, but not any advertisements, which was a change for the better.
My most recent reading of The Hobbit occurred three years ago, when it was chosen as the book of the month for November 2009 for the Fantasy Book Club at GoodReads. While I like The Hobbit, I’m not really the target audience for the book, since Tolkien wrote it for children. But as with most well written children’s tales, there is much to be gleaned and learned by the adult reader. I’m excited to re-read The Silmarillion next month for the same book club. In fact, I may read it as an ebook and also listen to it as an audiobook.
I loved the increased frame rate speed used to film The Hobbit. I’ve been screaming for smoother sharper filming for years. Really, there’s no excuse not to. My eyes can drink in more than just 24 frames per second so please flood me with clean, crisp imaging.
I felt the focus of the story shifted away from Bilbo almost too much, and became Thorin’s story with Bilbo relegated to comedic sidekick. My foggy memory of reading The Hobbit three years ago recalls an older Thorin, still prideful to the point of arrogance, but not this brooding barely middle-aged dwarf, a veteran of many hard-fought battles. I came away thinking Peter Jackson tried to turn Thorin into a darker, shorter Aragorn.
And the whole albino orc and warg subplot is just a bit much. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t conceived in Tolkien’s mind.
Overall, I’m satisfied with the first installment of the drawn-out film trilogy adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d encourage you to catch it on a big screen near you soon.
Here comes the sun!
I hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving, a successful shopping experience on Black Friday and safe travels home this weekend.
I went to bed a bit disappointed with the cloud cover. My astronomy club’s monthly star party got cancelled because of lingering overcast. I spent a pleasant evening with my husband watching the first part of Sergeant York while he napped. I only made it about thirty minutes myself before I dozed off.
I woke up to clouds creeping up from the south. I didn’t have any chance at all to glimpse the last vestige of the dying moon (it’s turns new today), so I took the lemons the dawn gave me and made sunrise lemonade.
I went up the hill and setup the camera and tripod east of Lansing City Hall. I took several photos over the course of thirty or forty minutes, right up until sunrise, when it fizzled. To see the best of the photos in an album from this morning, click on the image of pre-dawn Venus (centered) below:
I ran out of my favorite blend of tea last weekend when my son and daughter-in-law visited us. I waited impatiently Saturday morning for ten o’clock to roll around so I could head north to downtown Leavenworth to visit the local enclave of British teas, foods and sundries: the Queen’s Pantry.
I brought my empty four ounce tin, already properly labeled for Irish Blend tea, with me to the store. The store clerk suggested I try some iced Elderberry tea, one of the two special daily teas made available to customers. I filled a small Styrofoam cup with two or three ounces of the Elderberry and sipped it while browsing through the rest of the store. I liked the sweetness of the tea and asked her if the iced tea had been sweetened with sugar. She confirmed my suspicion that any sweetness came from the infusion of elderberries when steeping the tea. I ordered a couple of ounces to take home, as well as two ounces of Japanese pan-fried green tea, another favorite variety I had run out of.
In one of the windows, a cute four cup tea pot sported the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ slogan from WWII during the Blackout when Germany bombed Britain relentlessly. I found a set of matching salt and pepper shakers that I decided to buy, since I haven’t had a matching set for the dining room table in decades.
I asked the clerk if she had a set in a box, as I didn’t want to take her display ones. She assured me they had several more on display and in the back so she urged me to grab the pair and bring it to the counter. She returned them to their box and rang up my tea and shakers.
I slipped in the Tune Shop next door, hoping to find some guitar picks for Terry. The selection lacked the brand and size he prefers, but I bought a half dozen just to make him laugh at my inability to select a proper pick.
I almost didn’t stop by the farmer’s market, since it was already past eleven o’clock. But I needed some honey, and the market is only a couple of blocks away from Queen’s Pantry. I bought my honey and tried a slice of locally grown Gala apples. I couldn’t believe they were already harvesting them. I should probably check my own apple tree to see if the apples are ripe.
I’ll be baking more Honey Wheat bread soon, as the temperatures drop, and we use quite a bit of honey when we make a marinade for grilling chicken. I talked briefly to a local farmer and said “Hello” to a class mate of mine from high school who has a stall of soaps and breads.
My final stop before returning home was the local K-Mart/Sears for some triple-A batteries for Terry. I also bought a couple of frames to finally put Derek and Rachelle’s college graduation photos in.
I’ll get Terry to hang them up in the dining area on either side of the front window. I also found a new steamer on sale but none available to purchase. I made it all the way home and all the way to the end of this blog post before realizing I forgot to acquire a rain check for the steamer. I guess I’ll be making a second trip to K-Mart later today to assure I get the sale price on that item. The steamer we have is too small (tiny really) and we’d like a new one so we can steam an entire head of broccoli, not just half or a third of one.
I think I’ll warm up some leftovers for lunch and steep some of the Elderberry for a fresh glass of refreshing iced tea to complement it.