General Updatey Things (For Those Who Are Playing at Home)

1. It looks like my step count will likely be a lot better for June than it was for May.  It’s bedtime on June 9 and I’m done with my average step count through June 11.  I will still have to get the actual steps on those days, but if I’m two days ahead already, I doubt that I’ll end up behind like I was in May.  Also, hopefully July will be pretty easy to take care of, despite the 2nd and 3rd being weekend days because July will be our big vacation and I suspect that between running through two airports twice and visiting the Fishlake National Forest*, Salt Lake City, the Golden Spike National Historic Site, Yellowstone, and Dinosaur National Monument (also, possibly Craters of the Moon National Park), I can probably come up with a few steps. It probably won’t be as step-heavy as Italy and New York were because we will have a rental car with us. I have pretty high hopes for August, though, since we’ll be spending four days in Chicago without a rental car.

2.  Originally, our 2017 vacation was supposed to be our return to Europe.  To that end, I started saving up for our 2017 vacation when we returned from our 2014 vacation. Since we’re not going to Europe, but Canada instead, I’m now done saving up for that trip.  Now I am going to continue saving money for two smaller trips next year — a long weekend in Southern California (the last time I was there, Alex was a baby) and the eclipse weekend.  Let’s see how that goes.

3(a). I still have a box full of envelopes of pictures to scan, but the other day I passed the 20,000 picture mark.  I really need to remember to pick up two more SD cards to back up the pictures. Then I have to remember to take them to my safe deposit box. No sense making a backup if I then lose it in a fire or something.

3(b). My dad has a shelf full of genealogical materials.  After I finish my photo scanning project I will, likely, begin scanning all of that in.  Wish me luck.

*Because if you’re that close to the most massive single organism on the planet, it would be foolish not to see (and photograph!) it.  I doubt we’re going to get far enough east on our planned 2018 trip to Washington and Oregon to visit the largest organism in terms of area.

September 2015 Supermoon

Alex and I just returned from looking for the “blood moon.”  It was too cloudy in San Antonio to see it, so I looked at the Clear Sky Chart website and saw that the sky seemed clearer out west on Interstate 10.  It seemed that the farther west you go, the better viewing conditions were, so Alex and I headed west.  We drove until we left the city lights behind and then went even farther west on local roads.

When we finally reached a place where we could see the moon, we put on our hazard lights and pulled over to attempt to take some pictures.  A family in an SUV stopped to make sure we were okay, and we explained what we were up to.  They recommended that we drive even farther out on that road, so we did.

We stopped just about at the maximum of the eclipse and attempted to take some pictures.  I say “attempted to take” because it was still pretty cloudy, so all we got, for the most part, was darkness with a little smudge of light in it.  I am thinking about getting one of those apps that will average them together and perhaps bring the moon out a little more in the pictures, but maybe I will decide that just having made that drive and seen the moon is sufficient.

All I know for certain is that it’s getting towards 11:00 here and I’d better get to bed if I want to get up to see Alex off to school in the morning.

I played around with the edit functions of my phone last night and came up with some kind of image representing the moon that I saw last night. It’s not perfect and, in fact, is kind of blobby looking, but at least it’s visible.

September 27, 2015 Blood Moon
The supermoon eclipse of September 27, 2015, seen from northwest of San Antonio, Texas