After a long, stressful week I’m happy to say that I checked one amazing event off my bucket list. was pretty exhausted on Thursday night and I was counting the minutes until I could go to bed at a time that was early for me, but late enough not to affect the Schedule of the House. I had just tucked myself in when Eldest, who was taking the dog for their scheduled late-night walk, texted me, “There is a faint aurora to the northwest.”
I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights, and the first time I had a really good chance of seeing them was a few days after I gave birth to my second child. Keeping in mind that I had a three-year-old and a very new newborn, you may understand that when my then-husband told me to come outside and see the Northern Lights, I was beyond exhausted. I did not, in fact, get out of bed to go see the lights — a non-action that was subsequently brought to my attention many times over the years.
In the last 21 years since then I have gone outside several times, either very late at night or very early in the morning, to try to see the lights — to no avail.
This time, I answered the call and was richly rewarded — even though it didn’t look that way at first. To the naked eye, there was just a pale smudge of a pastel pink in one part of the sky, a hint of a pastel green in another. But I had taken my iPhone with me because I had recently read that the colors of the aurora borealis were easier to see through a cell phone’s camera. (Tl;dr: correct!) After some fumbling around on the iPhone, a time-lapse mode popped up that started cranking out wonderful pictures.
Even the early results were pretty darned spectacular. These photos seem to be a composite shot from the dual lenses on my camera; my old iPhone, which now belongs to Eldest, couldn’t seem to work the same trick.
The lights got more and more intense.
In fact, the lights got so intense that they were still quite visible when I turned to the south and took this picture of the moon.
So there they are. Now I’ve seen them. And now I know how to look for them the next time (if there is a next time).
This week I did a lot of reading for my class, and I also applied for a book proposal development program for the research project I’ve been working on. I will hear from that publisher whether or not my application is accepted, sometime in December. In the meantime, now I need to keep doing research and start working on smaller projects that I can prepare for academic journals.
The biggest project of the weekend was what I should probably call the renovation of my bedroom. I wanted to clear out the piles of clutter so I could thoroughly clean the carpet and try to remove the last traces of skunk-smell that I seem to be the only one who can detect. In the process, I managed to set up some areas so well that I decided to leave the rest of the clutter out of the room entirely. So now the dining room is cluttered. One room at a time, folks, one room at a time.
Knitwise, I haven’t knitted a single stitch but I did come across a box containing four huge skeins of bulky grey yarn. It’s Bernat Bounce Back in indigo, and I have no idea where it came from. Seems like a future blanket to me, unless someone has a better idea. The ball band recommends a US 10-1/2 needle, so I would probably go with a US11 or US13. That will be a good winter project.
Hang in there, folks, and keep looking up.
Chocolate Sheep 