Monday, October 1, 2007

Counting the stars

Many thanks to all of you who wrote in to respond to the challenge in my previous post. Things are looking up! It's really amazing how much we don't see in the sky anymore. With just a bit more light pollution, we're in danger of being like the inhabitants of Krikket! Well, maybe not really but you get the idea. Douglas Adams is my hero and I had wine with dinner. Bear with me.

Speaking of wine with dinner, our current favorite sells for less than $8/bottle at Trader Joe's. They're seriously pushing the '03 model, but we like the '04 best, especially after it's aired a bit. For what it's worth. And now you understand any typos you might find in this post...

We had a busy weekend here. On Saturday, Elise and I headed for an astronomy conference and left Andy to recuperate from his new and fantastic cold as best he could. It was a good, fun, long day and I think I pretty well wore Elise out. On the downside, I didn't get to hear Pamela Gay's talk. On the upside, we got to look at the sun through various telescopes and even watched a sunspot for awhile which was pretty nifty.

Sunday, we took Andy to the doctor. It's "just" a cold, but man is it a doozey. Then we drove up to Mill Valley for a birthday party. Then we drove home, loaded up the telescope and drove down to see friends. They have a great view from their front yard, and I'm jealous. Very, very jealous.

Of course, all of this means that Elise has been operating on limited sleep. She didn't wake up until after 7 this morning, but I could tell it was going to be one of those days from the start. I love it when she's active and into everything, but when she's tired it always leads to tears. Today featured lots of creativity, intractability, and inscrutability. Stories a mile a minute, but I couldn't figure what she was on about and generally everything was a fight. I like that I'm able to just sort of roll with this as a few months ago I think I'd have run screaming from the house after a day like that. But today was okay. And I think we're looking forward to a better one tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, Flapjack gets to go to the vet. She's due for her annual exam, but honestly I've been a little worried about her. I hope the vet can sort out why she's not as good at jumping as she used to be, why she's not chewing her food, and why she's been so much more vocal lately. And snuggly. This cat never snuggles. She must be ill. Or something. She's definitely been losing weight, so it'll be good to get her checked out. No telling how Elise will feel about that, though. She generally doesn't like to see Flapjack distressed at all. I told her that I'll be counting on her to talk to Flappy all the way to the vet tomorrow to help reassure her that she'll be fine, and that seemed to relieve her. We'll see.

The aluminum rolling/folding table I ordered online came today and I'm a mite disappointed. There is a reason that most of them cost more than $35, lemmie tell you. But, I think it will be fine for eating off at the upcoming star party/camping trip. Just a little more wobbly and flimsy than I'd like. Costco should be delivering a snaztastic camp stove to our door on Thursday, and then everything will be in place for a great camping trip. I hope. There's still some question as to whether Elise will actually sleep in a tent. But, the trip is 4 days/3 nights, so I figure she'll sleep eventually!

Finally, I'd like to mention that I had a giant crush on Wil Wheaton when I was in high school. I mean, he was on Star Trek! What a great life! He has moved on from there, retained his geekhood, and become an author. His third book is out now, and I just ordered it and am looking forward to reading it. No Star Trek, "just" stories. Good for you, Wil! And hooray to Fark for pointing it out to me.

No comments: