I saw Andromeda this morning. Like most of us, I live in a place with too much city light to do much astronomy. But I’ve wanted to see our nearest neighbor galaxy for a long time. On a visit to Ajijic, I didn’t have binoculars and wasn’t sure where to look. Later, in Izmir, I was pretty sure I was looking in the right direction with 10× pocket binoculars, but there was a nearly full moon nearby and I didn’t see anything. On this visit to Arizona, I was unable to spot Orion one night and an app revealed that it, and Cassiopeia and therefore M31, the Andromeda galaxy, were below the horizon, so I would have to observe in the early morning. The monsoon season has begun, with risk of storms and cloud cover, and last night the sky was cloudy. But I woke up early and the weather app said it was clear, so I went out with a good set of binoculars. I covered one eye, walked to an open field away from parking lot lights, and located Cassiopeia. Soon after starting to pan around with the binoculars I saw a faint smudge which I thought was probably the target, unimpressive as it appeared. I made a sketch (annotated afterward) which matched up well with the view in Stellarium This is the only galaxy visible without assistance, but there was no way I could spot it without magnification. Satellites were much easier to see. There’s a paradox that the night sky is not as bright as the sun, which I thought was explained by interstellar dust, but apparently it’s more complicated than that. It does appear that the background of the magnified view is not uniformly black, but finely textured with fainter light sources. As the sky brightened, Mt. Lemmon appeared, from which I recently saw the boneyard 20 miles distant. Today’s plan includes a visit to the Titan Missile Museum. In 1980, a similar missile silo in Arkansas blew up because a guy dropped a socket.
I live in an increasingly Office Space reality. TPS reports run my life, and I put in less effort all the time while getting undeserved and un-asked for pay increases fairly regularly. It not exactly as cool as it sounds, but I'm hyper aware that it could be a lot worse.
My old job had a culture like that. It was more important to follow process and procedure than to understand the issue at hand and find the best solution. Great pay and benefits but an uninspiring place to work. My three star review is still the featured review on Indeed.
I booked Thursday and Friday off from work for some travel plans that fell through at the last minute, so now I've got a four-day weekend that's mostly free and unstructured. Feels great, honestly! I should probably make a point of actually getting some shit done around the house, but on the other hand, drinking beer on the back porch sounds pretty good right now ...
To Sydney this evening for the funeral of a friend who succumbed to ovarian cancer. As many of us are attending from Melbourne as a group, I foresee drunken tears.
In the process of packing my and my partner's apartments so we can simultaneously move across the country over a 5ish day drive, while trying to sell my condo, and moving in together, just to put our stuff in a storage unit (nowhere to live yet!) to fly back across the country for a wedding before her job starts in a month. Life is chaos!!!!
huh have a date tonight, girl who climbs/runs/kayaks/bikes/etc. seems very smart and funny at least over text. we have a mutual friend so that's cool. what's making me nervous though is last night. friend just finished her residency and had a little party at one of the local breweries, spent half the night talking with a girl i've met through a running club but never really talked to and felt a lot of chemistry, got her phone number, thinking if i want to hit her up today and ask her on a date. makes me a bit nervous just typing that out! climbing is going well. big mountains this upcoming weekend.
Weird phase. Feels like I've gotten more done and stalled out on more things in the last six months than in years. Had both our old cars failing at the same time in April. Getting it done: got one repaired and bought a replacement for the other. Stalled: sale price of the car we don't need will be about double with ~2 weekends of work but I haven't touched it in a month. Was offered an old fishtank and stand, cleaned it up, re-painted the stand, have some plants and little fish and it's been going steady for 2 months now. Stalled: haven't painted the cabinet door for the stand, it's just been sitting next to it the whole time. Got ahead of the heat and planted a garden a couple weeks before the last frost day. Had to cover it with tarps one night for a frost, but it's been doing great. Been giving away tomatoes. It's kind of a chaos garden and I haven't weeded it as much as I should but I don't care. I'm not giving myself crap about that tonight. Joined a homebrew club last fall. It's been great. Buncha beer nerds and brewing nerds stand around and talk. Been trying to make some changes with mental health and anxiety. Have been journaling a bunch and that's actually been helping. Even got a recommendation for a counselor. Stalled: have not yet set up a first appointment though. Going on vacation to the beach in a week.
thank you, steve. :) things are fine. i think now that things seemed to mellow out (after give or take a year), i've finally gotten a moment to remember what the heck i was vaguely concerned about a year ago. just cluttered headspace i don't want to act on atm...