It Seems So Long Ago

Got up at 5 am and was out of the apartment 15 minutes later looking for the moon. I thought it would be visible from the patio, but it was around the other side of the apartment, I had to bundle up, and bring the camera and tripod around the the pool, which gave me a pretty good shot. It was about 35° out, too cold to want to set up the telescope, and besides which, about 1/4 of the moon was already eaten.

I took 95 photos over the course of a little more than an hour. Had to stop when the moon went below my horizon, just a little after totality. If I'd been on the shore of the Bay I might have had another half hour but still would not have seen the full recovery.

Looking at the photos, I made some wrong choices for exposure length - one of the disadvantages to my camera is the viewfinder isn't big enough to tell things like that. The last several shots were at between 4 and 6 seconds exposures, f/11-14 or thereabouts. I would have done better boosting the ISO and going with 1 second and f/11 or 16. Last chance till 2014, I am told, but this summer I hope to try some telescope shots of the moon again, now that I have the right kind of scope.

---

Being up so early confused the cats. As soon as I had the photos uploaded (about 7 am) I went back to bed.

Up at about 10:30, did not make it to the nail parlor in time for my usual 11 am walk-up, but they scheduled me for 2, which was fine, it gave me time to get another case of canned food from PetSmart and some produce at Safeway, and then sit down at the coffee shop next door and write the Charlie Brown review.

Just hung around with the cats, chicken soup w/matzo balls for a late lunch.

Around 6 I headed to Fremont, forgot how much closer my new place is and was way too early for the 7:30 show at Irvington HS. Moon Over Buffalo was one of the best high school productions I have ever seen, and was better than many college shows. The daughter of one of my FB theater friends was leading lady, which was why I went. She and the girl who played her daughter were both superb. Leading man was very good, especially considering the vast amount of lines he had, at least half of them were that difficult kind which are not orderly or in response to cues. He reminds me, however, of the guy who was leading man in most of my high school plays, a very talented actor who knew exactly how talented he was. Not conceited, but not humble either.

The audience was about 250 people, maybe 3/4 students, and they got more and more into it as the show progressed. At some point in the first act the laughter changed from laughing at seeing familiar faces in unfamiliar roles to genuinely enjoying the play itself. The final applause was the combination of clapping and shouting which I last heard at the end of a state championship football game. It felt so good to hear that aimed at a theater production.  

It was closing night and the director (aka drama teacher) had flowers for everyone. Everyone. Cast, crew, staff, assistants, supporters, parent volunteers, raffle basket coordinator. Everyone. And it was clear that he is well loved. It's his first year, and I hope they find a way to keep him despite the draconian budget cuts.

The end of the evening was super high-energy. I'm very glad I went. It totally made up for last night.

---

Used a program called TuneUp to clean up duplicates, correct mistakes in tagging and add cover art to my iTunes library. It took about three passes and a lot of manual intervention for all the art work to show up, and for all the tunes from a single album to show up as a single album. For a couple of albums I needed to download the art work and D&D it into iTunes. But it was easier than parsing 5300 tunes by hand, and it is complete and synced with the iPod which will go back into the car tomorrow.

Plans for  tomorrow:
Laundry
Oil change for the car and maybe wash it too
Football
Clean up & post the best of the eclipse photos

Eclipse pix

Elicpse pix are online 

Click on the photo to see the set

Staying In

Slept till almost 11, not surprising with yesterday's early morning and late night.

Fired up the latest Photoshop and created a macro to crop the eclipse photos to roughly the center 1/4 of the image, and ran it against all the pictures. One thing I was pretty careful about as the moon moved in its arc toward the horizon, was to center it in the viewfinder regularly. After the cropping only three images were without a moon, so I simply removed them from the cropped set. Uploaded those to Flickr, and if I had any integrity I would put notes on each of them with the shutter speed and f stops. I may yet do that. Or not. I am feeling insanely lazy today.

Watched the Jets game until the network pulled a Heidi and switched to a different game which they thought was more competitive. Jerks. Spent the rest of the day flipping between the Raiders-Green Bay and 49ers-Arizona games. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the 49ers need a quarterback. This crap of four field goals from the red zone and relying solely on the defense and the running game is whacked. Raiders got their butts kicked hard early, but they stayed till the end, and even forced a safety. I have a special spot in my heart for safetys. One of the years I was at Rainier Beach HS in Seattle, we lost every game (I was in the band so I had to watch) except the one against Cleveland, which we won 2-0 when the opponent's QB tripped in the end zone, and fumbled, and one of our guys slipped and fell on the ball. Or at least that's the way I remember it.

Will probably watch the Dallas-Giants game tonight, which is on right now.

Got a letter from my insurance company that they are required to tell me that my renter's insurance does not cover earthquakes, and it would only cost $111 to add that for the year. Considering how long it has been since we had a major one, and I'm now on the bottom floor of a 3-story building, and the car is parked one floor below me, it seems like a reasonable price.

Tried to refill my prescription for Lipitor, but the Kaiser computer said I should still have enough left to last me till 12/30. I'll have to call and let them know that I'll be out of the stuff by 12/20. It is possible I lost a bottle of it in the move.

Got a $5 credit to buy photo prints from my nephew's wedding's official photographer. I'll take a look at his stuff and see if it is any good. I took a lot of photos myself, as did the husband of one of our long-time family friends, so I don't need any for the memories, but I like to support young people who foolishly think photography is a viable business model, just for the St. Jude-ness of it.

In response to my complaints on FB about Jesus music, my cousin, the proprietor of a music NYC site called "Now I've Heard Everything"  sent me a tune called Joe Christ. Highly amusing, the concept is that if Jesus was Jesus Christ then his dad Joseph would have been Joe Christ. In the song, Joe is a bartender with ED, and one day his wife comes to the bar to break the news that she's pregnant. It sounds lot like like John Prine, but is by a guy named Dan Bern.

[Error: unknown template video]

Was so bored today I swiffered the kitchen floor. Will have to actually sponge mop it later - this kitchen is about twice as long and a couple of feet wider than the previous place, and all a swiffer does is move the dirt to the edges.

Pumpkin disappeared. I looked all over for him, in the closets, behind the blinds, under the bed. Finally found him squeezed into the 4" strip between the sofa and the subwoofer. He has shrunk so much from the diabetes. I weighed him this morning, he is maintaining at 13.6 lbs. after being >20 lbs most of his adult life. The vet says this is the right weight for him, but he's way too bony as far as I am concerned.

Been reading Terry Pratchett's Mort on the Kindle. The chapters are longer than his usual, it has been hard to find convenient places to put it down. Death takes on an apprentice named Mortimer. I liked the pun. Death is my favorite one of the Discworld characters.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
MNF