Category: Family

Catching Mercury

I could not have asked for a more beautiful or perfect day yesterday (weather-wise).  Crystal clear light blue skies and a light wind out of the southeast I believe.  I kept my fingers crossed most of the day.  Mid-afternoon I decided to call my father to see if he was interested in joining my Mercury hunting party.  I left him a voice-mail and went back to housecleaning for a couple more hours.  At five o’clock, I still hadn’t heard from him and tried calling him one more time.  He answered on the fourth ring.  He’d been splitting wood all day (not surprising) and hadn’t heard his phone ring or felt it vibrate and had not listened to my voice-mail.  I told him my game plan and that while I didn’t have a specific spot in mind, I planned to leave my house at a quarter to six and start driving west from Lansing in search of a hill with an unobstructed view to the western horizon.  He didn’t know if he could make it, but he would call me once he got back home, retrieved his binoculars and got in his car.

Setting Sun
Setting Sun (Sat 25 Feb 2012)

I took a slightly different path westward, eventually turning south on 187th street and finding a nice wide long pasture with a gravel road field entrance (and no gate) on top of a ridge with an unobstructed view of the entire horizon (not just the western one).  I had about five minutes to setup my camera and tripod before the sun kissed the horizon.  I took maybe three of our photos before my dad called my cell phone.  I told him where I was and he knew exactly the spot I described and headed directly to me.  He arrived just after the sunset and we began scanning the horizon with his binoculars, noting several water towers, silos and a very tall microwave communication tower silhouetted against the red orange glow of the sunset.

Just After Sunset
Just After Sunset (Sat 25 Feb 2012)

I told him we had at least thirty minutes before we would be able to see Mercury.  At that point, we could already see Venus and the Moon, both of them very bright and visible before the sunset.  Jupiter became visible to the naked eye about twenty or twenty-five minutes after the sunset.

Triad Closeup
Jupiter, Venus and the Moon visible first.

Using my father’s binoculars, we could see Jupiter’s four moons, although it was very difficult keeping the binoculars steady enough to see much detail.  Even though the wind was out of the south or southeast, it still cut through our jackets.  We used the van as a windbreak and dad got a blanket out of his car and we used that to help protect the camera from the wind when I started taking longer exposures.  Mercury became visible to our naked eyes about twenty or fifteen minutes before seven o’clock.  I took three shots, only one of which wasn’t blurry or streaked.

First Glimpse of Mercury
First Glimpse of Mercury

I spent the remaining twenty minutes trying to capture all four of the visible objects in a single shot.  Here are two of the best of the set of photos I took:

Clear Evening Sky
Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the Moon (Sat 25 Feb 2012)
Three Planets and a Baby Moon
Three Planets and a Baby Moon

When you click on any of the photos above and are taken to my Flickr site, you can further click into the photo to get a larger better view and then further increase the size (even unto the original) by right clicking on it and using this pop-up menu:

Since we were both freezing by this time, I packed up the camera geer and headed back home.  Dad thanked me for the invitation and he headed north back to Leavenworth.  We can both check off Mercury from our observing goals.

Up Late Thursday With Theodora

I gave up on seeing Mercury (again) as I drove home under ominous low hanging clouds and a fierce northwest wind.  I parked the van and entered my home, apologizing to Roxy for not being able to take her on a walk.  I caught Terry dicing tomatoes for bruschetta in the kitchen, so I retreated to the great room to get my exercising done before dinner. Roxy and Apollo got a special treat for their dinner.  I had to crack open a couple of cans of Pedigree beef stew for them since the large fifty pound bag of dry dog food was nearly empty.  They didn’t seem to mind though.

After dinner, we still had over an hour before my daughter’s concert started.  I had already redeployed my Linux (Kubuntu distro) and integrated it with the AV receiver, Internet and plasma display.  I tested the sound and video quality before letting it apply any security updates and patches it needed since last I turned it on. I flipped the receiver back to the DVR so we could watch the latest NCIS before the concert.

Earlier in the day, I printed out a couple of copies of the program for Handel’s Theodora.  Twenty pages long!  It took me a couple of printings before I finally got the right mixture of duplex printer settings to product an actual booklet.  I kept the program beside me (with a pen) to make notes during the performance. I also found a news article from the local Denton newspaper and a blog post from the Dallas Opera about the performance.

At 7:25, I flipped the receiver back to the computer and made sure the screen saver had sufficient time to not engage for the next hour or two.  Then we waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  As is par for the course at UNT, the performance started  about fifteen minutes past the advertised and scheduled time.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the oratorio sung in English.  The reason I go to the trouble to print the programs is most often they are my only lifeline to understanding the text and usually include the original language text and an English translation.  Thankfully, all that was needed was one language for Theodora.

During Act I, I made special note of several Airs performed by Jeffrey Snider (as Valens) and Richard Croft (as Septimius).  I encourage you to review their biographies in the program.  I can appreciate the skill and versatility of the countertenor, Ryland Angel (as Didymus), but I just can’t sit easy listening to him.  Theodora (performed by Ava Pine) had some of the most beautiful poetic lines in her airs.  Jennifer Lane (as Irene) showed off her range and talents impressively.

The second act included a couple of symphonic interludes bracketing a recitative and air by Theodora which featured mellow soulful melodies sung by wooden flutes.  While not specifically featured in a solo, another quest artist, Richard Savino,  and his strange looking large chitarrone could easily be seen in the center of the Baroque Orchestra next to the two harpsichords.  In fact, I received an e-mail from my uncle asking me what kind of instrument it was and I directed him to the program, specifically the page listing the instruments and their performers.

The highlight of the second act culminated in the final chorus, favored by Handel even above his vaunted Hallelujah chorus (from theMessiah).

He saw the lovely youth, death’s early prey,
Alas, too early snatch’d away!
He heard his mother’s fun’ral cries.

“Rise, youth,” He said. The youth begins to rise.
Lowly the matron bow’d, and bore away the prize.

By this time, the clock struck a quarter ’til ten.  Way past my bedtime and Terry had already succumbed to slumber.  I hung on through the final intermission and the hopefully briefer third act.

Valens and Septimius both had astonishing airs, but the final duet between Didymus and Theodora contained some of the most glorious poetry written by the librettist Thomas Morell (for the complete Theodora libretto, follow this link.  The final chorus to the third act ended about twenty minutes before eleven o’clock. While not as stunning as the previous act’s ending chorus, the words imparted the longed for hope of the tragic figures of Theodora and Didymus:

O love divine, thou source of fame,
Of glory, and all joy!
Let equal fire our souls inflame,
And equal zeal employ,
That we the glorious spring may know,
Whose streams appear’d so bright below. 

I shutdown the computer, turned off the receiver and plasma and trudged upstairs to bed, leaving the dogs and the husband to fend for themselves.

While not a featured soloist in the production, Rachelle participated as a member of the Collegium Singers during the impressive performance of Handel’s Theodora.  She gets to repeat this performance again this evening in Dallas at the AT&T Performing Arts Center.

A Conspiracy of Clouds

Ash Wed Sunset - Tree and clouds.I should have known not to get my hopes up while driving westward home from work.  I so wanted to see Mercury (something I’ve never observed with the naked eye, a camera, binoculars or a telescope) and a tiny sliver of a new Moon – both within five degrees of each other. I had hyped myself up earlier in the day thanks to a blurb from Sky & Telescope. The sun kept teasing me, peaking out between the clouds just enough to make me squint as I dodge traffic and dropped off my vanpool riders.

The first thing I did when I arrived home was to call my father and ask him if he knew of a hill with an unobstructed view to the western horizon within fifteen or twenty  minutes driving distance of my house in Lansing.  He delayed his response, since he needed to put up some wood cutting and splitting equipment, but promised to call me back in five or ten minutes.

Terry, my completely awesome husband, already had dinner ready.  He prepared the most amazing steak fajitas, with perfectly grilled red onions and red peppers.  I so wanted to eat more of them, but restrained myself so I could savor the leftovers another day.

I checked over my camera equipment and secured it in my camera backpack.  I collapsed the tripod.  I stowed the gear in the back of the van and said farewell to Terry and the dogs.  I pulled out of the driveway and stopped at the Fawn Valley stop sign.  The decision point.  I surveyed the western sky and decided my best bet to capture the most of what was left of the sunset would be from Mt. Muncie Cemetery.

Aw, finally, some other color besides gray.
Ash Wednesday Sunset (click photo to see entire album)

About five minutes later, I had my camera on my tripod just west of the large Stillings monument (a circular plot with the cemetery access road encircling it).  I took a few photos, experimenting with different aperture settings, letting the Canon decide how long to exposure through the shutter.  I left the AWB setting to cloudy since, obviously, the landscape before me consisted mostly of clouds.

I called my dad back, since he hadn’t returned my call and discovered he was driving down the center of Leavenworth County on County Road 5, personally investigating sites he thought might have worked for observing Mercury and the Moon (had there been no clouds).  I sighed, not meaning for him to waste his gas driving all over county back roads.  I told him I was at Mt. Muncie and he said he was on the way.  I continued to take a few photos, but for the most part, both the sunset and my prospects for observing the conjunction seemed an exercise in futility.  Dad arrived and we chatted for a few minutes, eventually spying both Venus and Jupiter through the thinner clouds above us.  I packed up the photographic equipment, showing dad the nice camera backpack Terry had bought me last year.  I had offered to let him use it during an upcoming trip he was planning.

East from Parking Garage
Sunrise Today

I woke up to another gloomy day this morning.  On the bright side, it’s my mother’s birthday (and I finally remembered to mail her birthday card yesterday).  On the dark side (and it was dark when I thought about it), today is trash day in Lansing and the first time for us to use our new trash and recycling bins.  Terry, being the wonderful husband he always is, had already dealt with both the trash (taking it out of the old trash can and placing it in the new one) and recycling.  Since it was spitting rain at 5:30 this morning, I was even more grateful than normal.  I left my camera and tripod in the back of the van overnight, so I had ready access to my camera this morning during the commute, just in case the sunrise surprised me.  Until Daylight Savings kicks in, the sun just starts to turn clouds pink and orange when I pick up my last rider near the Kansas Speedway.  My final opportunity to take a photo until I reach my destination near the Country Club Plaza.  The sunrise disappointed me this morning, just like the sunset did last night.  More gray, with a glimmer of gold, but completely lacking in pinks and oranges.

Experience Handel’s Theodora

Handel’s Theodora

Graeme Jenkins, guest conductor

Ava Pine, Theodora; Ryland Angel, Didymus; Richard Croft, Septimius; Jeffrey Snider, Valens; Jennifer Lane, Irene

UNT Baroque Orchestra–Paul Leenhouts, director

Collegium Singers–Richard Sparks, director

A Cappella Choir–Jerry McCoy, director

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. Central

Watch live online at http://recording.music.unt.edu/live

My daughter, Rachelle Moss, a mezzo soprano, performs as a member of the Collegium Singers.

Theodora is an oratorio concerning the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus.  It is a tragedy, ending in the death of the heroine and her converted lover. The music is much more direct than Handel’s earlier works, transcending the mediocrity of the libretto (which was true for several of his works) so that the characters and the drama are well-defined.  Theodora was actually Handel’s favorite of his oratorios. The composer himself ranked the final chorus of Act II, “He saw the lovely youth,” “far beyond” “Hallelujah” in Messiah.

Back in Hot Water Again

One of my all-time favorite episodes of Mythbusters involves proving (or disproving depending on your optimism meter that day) the myth of explosive, even dare I say, orbit-seeking rocket-like hot water heaters.  Mostly I love this episode (click here to see an excerpt) because of the fantastic slow motion footage (aka high speed photography) in stunning HD (at least when I saw it ‘live’ the first time back in November 2007 on my plasma … the excerpt obviously isn’t available in HD via the web).

Having experienced the detrimental effects of water heaters gone bad, albeit vicariously through Adam and Jamie, I did not wish to be confronted with a similar circumstance erupting from our basement.  Never fear, as proven by the Mythbusters, it takes quite a bit of reverse engineering and removal of multiple safety features to convert your average water heater into a Titan want-to be.  Still, our old (twelve or thirteen years old as far as we can recall) water heater sprung a leak under the burner a few weeks ago, and this week began pooling water on top of the tank.  Terry and I decided it had to go and called in an order for a bigger and better unit.

The plumbing contractor for Home Depot must have been strapped for work, because they wanted to install the new water heater the very next day (Tuesday the 14th, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day).  Terry asked them to hold off a day, because we needed to tidy up the basement and deal with some minor electrical wiring projects we’d been putting off for months.  I asked my father, my favorite electrician, if he could spare a couple of hours on Tuesday afternoon to help Terry complete those projects.  He agreed readily.  By the time I got home Tuesday evening, they were finished in the basement.  Dad stayed for a steak dinner (with a side of freshly sauteed asparagus).

Terry called me the next day before noon to let me know the new water heater, expansion tank (required by city ordinance) and a pressure regulator had been installed and everything looked and worked great.  When I got home that night, I had less water pressure (previously, I had over 100 psi, but with the new pressure regulator, it throttled back the pressure inside the house to less than 80 psi) but more hot water.  I grabbed my camera (something I forgot to do when Dad was on site on Tuesday) and took the requisite ‘after’ photos of the newly installed equipment.  I had to dig way back in my photo albums to find a ‘before’ photo of the old water heater, taken in December 2010, when we installed the new furnace and air conditioning units.

Before Photo of Water Heater and Furnace (Way Before - circa Dec 2010)
New Bigger Better Water Heater
After Photo of New Water Heater (2/15/2012)

Terry and I hope this is the last (and really there’s nothing left to replace) large appliance or utility expense we make in this house.  Especially since we opted to buy a water heater with a twelve year warranty.  We are both looking forward to years of worry-free non-explosive hot water.

Service Review: Safe Harbor Pet Boarding & Daycare (Basehor, Kansas)

Roxy and Apollo visited a new home away from home last weekend. I planned the day trip to Abilene not knowing exactly when we would get home. Without having a large pet door installed at our house, I can’t leave them at home, trapped in the house, for twelve or eighteen hours.  Sometimes, if the weather’s nice and I know we won’t be gone for long (like over night or late into the night), I leave the back patio door cracked just enough so Apollo can nose his way out if he feels like it.  But Saturday’s forecast didn’t call for temperatures to climb much above freezing, so I went searching for an alternative.

The place I normally board the dogs doesn’t encourage pickup of pets on Sundays and doesn’t provide the normal bath their slightly inflated prices for boarding include if you pickup on a Sunday.  I drive by the Safe Harbor facility twice daily to pickup and drop off one of our vanpool riders.  She has mentioned several times how much she likes the place and that they board their dog there frequently.

I called and spoke to the owner and got all my questions answered.  Safe Harbor’s boarding rates were much less expensive than my usual boarder in Leavenworth.  And, since Safe Harbor allowed me to pickup the dogs on Sunday morning, I only needed to board two dogs for one night (instead of two dogs for two nights).  I had her fax me the forms to fill out.  I contacted our vet to get them to fax Roxy and Apollo’s records to Safe Harbor, only to discover that Roxy’s three year rabies shot had expired two days before.  I didn’t earn myself any favors with my husband when I asked him to take her up to the vet that very afternoon and get her re-vaccinated.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, we loaded up Roxy and Apollo and headed south to Basehor.  Safe Harbor opened at 7:30 a.m. and we arrived shortly thereafter.  Roxy and Apollo were eager to meet the owners and some new pet friends.  I arranged to have Apollo bathed and left the Rotties in good hands while we continued west for a couple of hours to Abilene.

Sunday morning, I wiled away the time reading two books (alternating between the non-fiction The Devil in the White City and the scifi space opera Honor Among Enemies).  I left Lansing shortly after 9:30 a.m. and headed south on K-7 to Basehor to retrieve Roxy and Apollo.  I paid the boarding and grooming fees and wrestled the Rotts back into the Bonneville.  Safe Harbor sent them home each with a bag of doggie treats and, in Apollo’s case, in squeaky clean splendidness.

I liked their location, their facility, their prices and their service.  Apollo and Roxy will definitely be spending more time at the Safe Harbor Pet Boarding and Daycare.