Holiday Break

The winter holiday is upon me!  I've taken a large swathe of time off with the vague notion that I will write and do various projects.  The first thing that I've discovered is that I'm going to be writing in the morning, I really need to wake up about two hours beforehand to get things like exercising, showering, eating, and generally waking up out of the way.  I also need to maintain a list of tasks to do besides writing.

Aoife has figured out what Postal, FedEx and UPS trucks sound like—apparently, it's pure evil.  Whenever one pulls up anywhere on our street, she goes into high alert, determined to kill whomever it is out there who is obviously a homicidal fiend in human form bent on deeds of depravity and trespass.  She's pulled the brass hood off of our door's mail slot twice since the holiday delivery season began, prompting Mark to replace it with a tasteful wood cover.  

Saturday was the last day of clear skies, and the grey overcast has returned.  I was able to take some photographs of Mars near Aldebaran and the Pleiades, and later the next morning the waning moon.  To my surprise, as I was crunching around on the frosty deck, one of the local hummingbirds came and visited the fountain.  Mark had been raking, and when he realized I was photographing them, he thoughtfully froze.  All I can say is that I am glad I'm not a little hummingbird sticking my bare bird feet into running water on a 30F morning. I don't know how the little things stay warm. 

The first weekend of vacation was taken up with holiday preparations.  We attended an in-person gathering of the cousins on the Burridge side of the family—out-of-state family stayed out of state, and various folks with children cancelled with child ailments; so while it was sad not being able to see everyone, the gathering was less boisterously overwhelming.   The Zoom Gathering was stereotypically Zoom, with a little bit of lag, odd camera angles, muting issues, thrown in to keep things hilarious.  We will have to host a outdoor gathering some time in the spring or summer when more folks can attend in person.

Sunday I went shopping at the local Holiday Market.  I enjoy shopping, much more so than Mark or The Child, and when I go alone, I'm able to do the reconnoiter-commando-raid style of shopping.   In addition to visiting with some of my vendor friends, I made several new best friends by wrapping myself up in a storybook glamour of the green and grey wool cloak, the Assassin's Creed hooded vest (with green shimmery paisley), a pewter Green Man pendent, extra rings, black KN95 mask, and my unbound hair.   Everyone seemed more interactive than I recall from previous years; I'm going to guess that the last two years of COVID has the extroverts overcompensating, myself included.  

The only downside of shopping at the Holiday Market is that I have to remind myself that I'm shopping for others and not myself.  And that I'm a solitary practitioner and not someone in a jewelry coven.  And I'm sure that I have enough ritual jewelry.   

Thanksgiving Astronomy

Over the long weekend I managed to snap some photos of the Moon as it was between Aldebaran and the Pleiades.  The moon was a few hours shy of being full, so there's a lot of moon-flare in the pictures -- I had to use a two second exposure to get the Pleiades to show up at all, so most of the shots were "artsy."  This was a full moon with a penumbral eclipse, or I might have stayed up later trying to get a good shot of a temporarily crescent moon with the stars.  

One of these days, I'm going to have to put a little star on Portable Stonehenge for where Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, and Fomalhaut are.  4000 years ago, they used to line up with the solstices and equinoxes, but they've progressed and now they're roughly 60 degrees from where they were -- so Aldebaran is opposite the late Autumn sun now, and Antares is next to the sun right now. 

Our Thanksgiving was at home this year; just us and no other family members.  I made entirely too much stuffing.  Next year I'll need to remember to use less bread crumbs and more spices and chicken stock.  The Child cooked a (pre-cooked) chicken.  Mark made twice-baked yams.   

This season is hard on my folks, who really would like to see everyone, and who have been cooped up at their house.  We could socially distance ourselves outside their house during the summer and early autumn, but now it's too cold and wet.   We did mask up Sunday and put up their artificial tree that is too unwieldily for them to put up by themselves while they (mostly) socially distanced.  

On the plus side, their house is a large, open-plan building; so it's not like we're all crammed together into a postage-stamp-sized apartment, inhaling each other's exhalations.   On one hand I'm still a little uncomfortable seeing them and risking COVID-19; on the other hand, I'm glad we did help them, because Mark discovered the wiring on their tree was faulty when he got a shock from a string of lights he thought was unplugged (once again, Mark gets Good Husband Points because of a Christmas Tree).  

Moon and Aldebaran

Over the weekend, I took some photographs of the Moon and Aldebaran.  This time around, the Moon was a crescent as she danced through the constellation of Taurus.  I would have liked it if the Moon were visible when it was much closer to Aldebaran, but that would have required taking photos on the other side of Earth. 

More photos of the Moon and Aldebaran may be found here



While I was at it, I snapped a few shots of the Pleiades. 

The Moon and Aldebaran

 After I came home from writing Tuesday night, I saw that the Moon and Aldebaran were out. 

 Rain had been forecast, so I was a little surprised to be able to see them.  Instead of going to bed, I grabbed the camera and took pictures of them.

 Of course, the clouds rolled in.  This isn't always a bad thing, as they can add some interesting effects (and moonbows!). 

Tomorrow night, if it is clear, I'll see if I can get the Moon and Orion in the same photo.

Astro-Photography

 I pulled myself out of bed this morning and tried to take photographs of Orion.

I set the camera for a 15 second exposure time, which made the stars cold and not so twinkly.

Right off the bat, I pressed a series of incorrect buttons as I felt around the camera in the dark to try to find the manual focus setting and turned off the side LCD.

I managed to get a shaky shot of Taurus (I was aiming for the Pleiades) when I tried to take one photo before the 15 seconds was up....

Because the larger LCD screen was turned off (and I still haven't figured out how to get it back on), I really couldn't see what I had pointed the camera at, and had to make a series of guesses by zooming in on Orion's belt (or in the case of Taurus, Aldebaran)

At least the night before I'd gotten an arty shot of the crescent moon.