I don't have eclipse glasses so I may not be outside at 10:16, when the eclipse is to be at its fullest here. Char and daughter Tavie are in Oregon. I just love what Tavie wrote on her Facebook timeline before they left.
I have been teaching Astronomy for the last 25+ years. Every year when I teach about eclipses, I show the students a map of the US with the path of totality for the Aug. 21, 2017 eclipse, and I point out the where I plan on being to view the eclipse. After all this time the day has arrived. When I started teaching, Aug. 21 was during summer break, now school has started but I will not miss this opportunity. I have a great lesson plan for the kids, and I will share all my adventures with them on Tuesday.I am excited for her, after waiting 25 years! I sure hope that it's all she hopes it will be.
I remember the last eclipse we had here, maybe 40 years ago? I was here alone and I probably had a pinhole camera. Like this year, we didn't get totality, but enough that there was a decided diminishing of light for a few minutes. But it wasn't that it was just darker ... it was different in a way I can't describe. I've never experienced anything like it before and hope to be outside again in the morning to see if I experience it again. It will be the last chance I will have in this lifetime to experience this phenomenon.
I'm not a big astronomy buff, but I can recognize the Big Dipper (that's the only constellation I know\). I also remember one time seeing a meteor shower. I don't know if it was Perseids or Leonids, but we were in Yosemite Park with a group of friends from the Newman club at UC Berkeley. We were high up in the mountains where you could see a gazillion stars and it was magic sitting there watching shooting stars for awhile.
As a matter of fact, I didn't know that was a meteor shower until many years later when I was telling young Jeri about the experience and she kept asking me to take her to the "shooting star place," and somehow I found out it had been a meteor shower.
So one meteor shower, one eclipse and maybe another today. Thus ends my travel through the cosmos.
It was a quiet Sunday. The day before I tried to pick up my hearing aids. They were being delivered, and sure enough were delivered while we were at the funeral. I have to sign for them, so there was a note saying where I could pick them up at a UPS office. I set out to do that on Saturday. The address was 1260 Lake Blvd, and I drove up and down Lake Blvd without finding that number. I finally found a teeny number in a dark corner of this strip mall.
I drove around the mall three times and saw no sign of UPS. I even stopped someone getting out of a car, who said that there was no UPS office there and that the UPS office was downtown. I parked and got out to ask a clerk in a store who told me "go to the deli counter at the supermarket." (Did I have to say "Joe sent me?") I went to the supermarket and sure enough there was an 11x14 sign at the bottom of the front door, right where you can't see it if there is a car parked anywhere! I went to the deli counter but there was no one there. I finally found someone who had no key for the UPS storage area. He went around the store looking for someone who did have a key and eventually came back, opened the door and there was no package for me. He said I could come back on Sunday and see if it was there then, but the delivery slip said they would try to deliver it again on Monday, so I decided I'd just stay home and wait for it.
I was hoping to have a report on my hearing aid experiment, but...not yet.
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