Gratitude Challenge: Day 19

Today was good. Really good. I think I still have permafrost in my backside from the bleachers at the football game though. :-\

*Hearing about renowned "DNA" bobby pins. They are reputed to equal roughly 80 regular pins, which is wonderful given my thick hair.

*Eating chili with crackers for lunch. And enjoying my sister's company simultaneous.

*My sister will be in advanced skating with my other sister! She just got an email saying they think she's good enough to skip the last to basic levels and move up to advanced! Woot! Go Little Sister!

*Finishing several assignments.

*Playing Music Box Dancer - again and again and again.

*Trying to overcome writers block.

*Looking at other people's blogs.

*When really amazing gentlemen bring silly girls coats at football games because the silly girls were to silly to bring their own. (Erm...Ahem. Thank you Sir!)

*Knowing that somebody prays for you.

*Having quiet time to just talk to God.

Gratitude Challenge: Day 7

Life. Is. Good.

And it's entirely due to God's grace. A couple of reasons I know that's true:

*I have sisters who love me.

*I have hilarious friends.

*We have hilarious conversations.

*That I can talk dead-seriously about things like majoring in chickens and yard work to perturbing images of hippos in pink wetsuits.

*That I can sit up late at night and hear the music of silence. It sounds somewhat like the wind blowing and the fridge running and typing on me laptop and absolutely nothing else.

*That when I randomly looked at a model in an advertisement, she had the same haircut as me. (I am not paranoid about weight and name brand clothing etc., but it's encouraging to see a model showing off the same style and color hair as you have.)

*That I had cheese and broccoli for supper.

*For goosebumps. Because they necessitate blankets and cocoa and fires in fireplaces and good books and no homework.

*For a mumsy who likes to play with my hair.

*For sleep.

Goodnight.

Sky Dancing

Walking the dogs was not what I wanted to do. Outside on a dark, cold night was definitely not where I wanted to go. I wanted to sleep. But I live in a family and my opinion is not law. So outside I went to walk dogs.

*Sigh*

I trudged through the snow, trying to convince the dogs that they should hurry without having to drag them through any deep drifts - more for my sake than theirs. Bored stiff and cold stiff I walked around the corner of the house. A chill wind welcomed me forbiddingly. Then.

*Gasp*

The sky was adance (it's a new word...the Storyfingers Revised Dictionary) with northern lights. (Now you understand why I could say ablaze!)

Green magic slipped, shaped, twisted; made a silent music as I turned to stone under enchantment. Vibrant color waved and danced freely, boasting unreplicable beauty. I wouldn't have known if the dogs had tied me with their leashes and run away until I tripped when I tried to walk.

Mean while my conscience poked, jabbed, screamed and all but hit me upside the head to get my attention. Reluctantly I ran to the window to make my family aware of the beauty they were missing. Whether my muffled shouting and wild gestures actually meant anything to them, I remained unaware. Duty performed, I charged across the yard to get ouside the shelterbelt which hampered my view. I was soon joined by family members whose broken-record Oo-ing and Ahhhh-ing disturbed the night like small but self-important ripples in a lake.

I don't live on a lake but the image was to good to pass up.

I remained spellbound (and frozen) longer than anybody else, but it was worth it to see the northern lights. Later, my little brother asked for some pictures of the northern lights (since we can't see them extremely well from our home) and I showed him these images.

I love how bright the lights get further north.

Isn't the dancing and motion of the lights breathtaking?

I only saw green lights, so I had to find some pictures with more variety for my own sake.

A lot of the time they went straight up like this. I didn't notice any spectacular curls or twists.

*Yawn*

I went to bed a happy person.

(Pr)Icy Starlight

Ttttttttooooooodddaay................IIIII mmmmmeeeeaaaann toooonight, *pauses to blow furiously on fingers*...I went ouside for my first observational lab in my Astronomy course. I appologize for the wacky spelling, my fingers were a bit numb.

I'll provide you with the story.

I had the advantage--for such you could easily call it--of not being able to do the observation right away. Basically, a bunch of people who are taking this online class with me did the observational rather half-heartedly, or on a cloudy night, and my professor sent out an email warning us that we were expected to see more than three or four constellations! (He didn't put it so gently.) It behooved me to take note.

So tonight (and incidentally my father) found me practicing piano dilligently at about 8:15. Dad pointed out that the sky was clear and I shouldn't take my chances or sit on my duff (something I have done before). Sumarily he told me to make hay while the sun shines.

An aside: Sun shines? Truthfully? What is the world coming to? Something tragic, to be sure.

So I gathered a skymap that I'd printed off (here), a pencil and notebook, and booklight, a real flashlight, and a garbage bag-turned-desktop to protect my scientific studies from the snow.

I'll admit I was a bit queasy as I left the circle of light and the yard in favor of the open prairie/CRP where I could actually see the sky. It felt strange and alien to be outside of the protective windbreak of trees.

I crunched through and over the snow until I had a reasonable view of most of the sky. The snow was hard enough that my garbage bag did make a nice desktop. With the precision of a mad astronomist (astronomist sounds more mad than astronomer, agreed?) I arranged my notebook, pencil and skymap by the light of an LED flashlight stuck between my teeth.

The actual observing came by way of looking at the map with the light and then back at the sky while I muffled the light in my coat. The skymap, being such, has the directions reversed, so that facing north, east is to the left. It makes sense when held up against the backdrop of the stars, but that was difficult, and the light affected my night vision. The process ended up going something like this:

Locate a constellation on the map. Check the orientation of the constellation against the printed directions on the map. Close your eyes and try to re-orientate yourself to the sky. Lay down and look for the constellation, but only notice the few brightest stars. Sit up and look again at the skymap. *Lightbulb* Lay down and look at the sky. Pick out a few more of the stars in the constellation. Look at the skymap again. Oh, duh, those ones. Right there. Yep. I got it this time. Look back at the sky. Squint because you forgot to hide the light. Pick out a few more stars, enough to see the general shape of the constellation. Roll over and hold the light between your teeth as you try to write the name (usually borrowed from Greek and Roman mythology) with your mittins on.

Blow on your hands.

Start the whole process again.

It was a blast! I really did have a good time. I missed the Great Square of Pegasus, but I think that's because I got outside a little to late. Missed Jupiter too, but there was light pollution on the horizon where he was supposed to appear, so that wasn't my fault. Mom came out once I'd been out there a half-an-hour and we finished up together. I did find 13 constellations total.

I should mention the individual stars that I found too. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, was out and in his glory. He was a part of...something Major. Can't quite remember. And Polaris, the North Star, was twinkling from his position on the end of a jeweled dipper.

Here's a picture of stars taken from a camera with a shutter left open. It shows how the stars rotate through the night.