Hope for a better year

It's been a month since I've put up a post. In the meantime, we celebrated our family Christmas. It was a bitter-sweet experience for our immediate family. Our son Derek was not there (as he had predicted a year earlier), but we had a new addition to the family. His name is Alexander, the son of our niece and her husband; he is the first baby boy in the family, since Derek himself was born. The young people had a great time at Christmas - as usual, too many presents (they didn't mind).

My wife and I spent New Year's in Puerto Vallarta, with good friends. Our host (and good friend) had unfortunately contracted pneumonia earlier in December, and had just gotten home from the hospital for Christmas. Therefore, he was not quite his normally exuberant self. Talking to him today, and he sounded a lot better. We met many people we hadn't seen for a number of years and several very interesting people we had never met before.

We have visited Puerto Vallarta for New Year's for many years. The city has improved its beachfront walkway (the Malacon) wonderfully, see picture. It is always nice to walk under palm trees in warm weather when it is miserable at home.

The weather was a nice 23 to 26 degrees Celsius during the day, and not much less during the night; we spent every evening outside, or in open-air restaurants.

The Mexican people greet a new year with fireworks galore. These were going off all around us for almost an hour after the New Year arrived. 

We all expressed the hope that this year will be better for all of us.

The December 10, 2011 lunar eclipse

Any hobby usually requires some "sacrifice". In my case, astronomy normally requires that I be awake and up while it's dark outside (the exception is when I'm using my telescopes to look [safely] at the Sun). A lunar eclipse always takes place when the Moon is full; the Moon is always exactly opposite the Sun then. At this time of year, the Sun rises low in the SE. That means that the Moon sets high in the NW.

This month's lunar eclipse occurred a couple of hours before sunrise, and I could watch it through my west-facing office window. I set up one of my cameras (a Canon Rebel XT SLR) and took some pictures through the double-paned window, and through breaks in the clouds. Before the eclipse started, the sky had been absolutely clear, but, just around the start of the eclipse, heavy clouds began to roll in. This is Vancouver, after all. Midway through the eclipse they totally obliterated any view of the eclipsed Moon. I got only one good picture through the last cloud break. These clouds kept the day dark and gray right through the next night, until the next morning.

Here are some of the pictures:

From the top down:

The Moon before entering Earth's shadow. The area at "11 o'clock" is getting darker.

Clouds are rolling in.

Three quarters into the Earth's shadow. Picture taken through a break in the clouds.

About 5 minutes before "totality" (again a break in the clouds). The star under the Moon is Iota Tauri (Iota in the constellation of Taurus, the bull)

The last "hole" in the clouds. The clouds to the right of the dark tree covered the Moon a short time later.

Midway through totality. This picture was taken just after the one above. About half-way through totality - the Moon has moved, so now is totally covered by the Earth's shadow. The brighter part of the Moon is closer to the edge of the shadow. Notice that the star Iota Tauri is now farther away from the Moon - it's a consequence of the Moon's motion in its orbit.

This is my last picture of this eclipse. A minute later, the Moon was completely covered by clouds and no longer visible.

The orange colour of the Moon in the Earth's shadow is due the sunlight being "refracted" by the Earth's atmosphere onto the Moon's surface. If you were on the Moon, you'd see the dark disk of the Earth surrounded by a reddish-orange ring (a circular sunset). From the Moon, this event is a total eclipse of the Sun. You'd have an awe-inspiring sight.

 The top picture was taken about two hours before the bottom one. It was a cold morning outside. This kind of thing did not bother me in the past, but now, in my old age, I enjoy creature comforts much more. I was glad to witness this in my nice, warm office.

The Green Thing

The Green Thing

(forwarded by my sister)

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this "green thing" back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have "the green thing" in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.  But we didn't have "the green thing" back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have "the green thing" in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have "the green thing" back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the
mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't
have "the green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have "the green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have "the green thing" back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.
Remember: Don't make old People mad.
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

7 months

We raised a toast to Derek again at 5:40 pm. It seems like yesterday. The memory will always be with us.

A beautiful day

Today is one of those "picture-post-card" days. The fresh snow on the mountains and the crisp clear air make for a wonderful view from our living room. This morning, at sunrise, the mountains looked as though they were covered in pink whipped cream, and they'll look like that again in about half an hour, at sunset. We went on our usual walk, and took our granddaughters' dog, Lucy, along. She seemed to enjoy the day as much as we.

I also went for my annual blood test this morning, and picked up the fecal blood test kit at the same time. I strongly urge everyone to have these tests, young or old. Our family can attest to the importance of this (see http://www.penmachine.com/ ).

In Readers' Digest

The November Canadian edition of Readers' Digest features a 30-page excerpt of Derek's blog, available at Safeway, Shoppers' Drug Mart, and others. It's an indication of the impact his writing still has. I'm keeping Derek's memory alive at http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/can-vancouver/guestbook.aspx?n=derek-miller&pid=150846264. It will always be possible to leave messages regarding his life and writing there.

An adventurous trip

We returned from a three-day repositioning cruise with an added three days in Las Vegas this last Saturday. The cruise had an "interesting" period. The "Golden Princess" is a 109,000 ton displacement cruise ship with wonderful amenities, excellent food, nice lounges, great music (including the kind of music we like to dance to). We enjoyed all this on the night we left. By midnight, just after we went to bed, the ship left Juan de Fuca Strait and turned south towards the next destination, Los Angeles. At that point we ran into an extreme low pressure system with hurricane winds and huge waves.   This extreme storm was strong enough to toss the ship around like a log, making walking almost impossible. Because of the violent motions, and winds in excess of 110km/h, access to the open decks was blocked, the swimming pools were emptied, and the ship had to reduce its speed to about 13 knots. The noises generated by the wave action kept me awake all night - the most annoying noise was the constantly clicking of the empty coat hangers in the open closest hitting each other, funnily enough. After we took them off the rack and stuffed them between our suitcases, my wife got some sleep, but I didn't.

While my wife has better "sea legs" then I, she managed to get to the dining rooms at the centre of the ship at the lower levels on the following day (which was just as violent as the night). I stayed in our cabin, which was located just one level below the open decks, and near the bow, close to the ships bridge, and tried to get some sleep. In that location, the motion is probably the most extreme. I could time and anticipate whenever the ship breached a wave, and then slammed down on the next one. At that point, everything in the cabin banged, creaked, and groaned, and I felt like being inside a drum being worked by a heavy metal band drummer.

This episode lasted just about 24 hours. When we finally got out of this extreme low north of San Francisco, the day turned into a much nicer one, and the previous day was soon an "interesting experience". The captain brought the speed up to over 22 knots, trying to make up for the lost time running slowly through the previous days' storm. None-the-less, we arrived three hours late, which played havoc with many people's travel connections. As usual, it takes about three hours to disembark the passengers and go through customs.

Our own travel connection was a bus to take us to Las Vegas - we had no trouble with that because the driver had to wait for all his passengers (who were making the same trip we were). We arrived in Las Vegas around 8pm. There were two stops at hotels before we got to ours (Harrah's). The first two got people off the bus to a well-organized reception by the travel agency; our destination had no one to "receive" us. That was somewhat chaotic and meant individual check-in. We finally got to our room after 9pm, and called it a day.  Our room was nice enough, but little things left an impression of neglect (loose shower head and hot water tap covers, a bit of rust here and there, hallway carpets showing wear and tear and so on)

The next day, after a so-so and expensive breakfast with indifferent service at Harrah's, we walked the strip, and started looking at the various hotels, especially the new, luxurious ones: Bellagio, Aria, Caesar's Palace, Excalibur, Mirage, Venitian, Wynn's, etc. They were all superior to Harrah's. If we get to L.V. again, we'll probably stay at one of those. They incorporate large "shopping concourses" with many nice restaurants and other amenities. In the evening, we enjoyed watching both the "volcano" at the Mirage, and the "water ballet" at the Bellagio. Since we are not gamblers, these activities were our main occupation.

The shows which might have been of interest to us (Cirque de Soleil, and other high quality ones) were always either sold out or had long box-office line-ups. We had only two days in L.V., so we passed on them. Most of the other shows were "imitation shows": Sinatra, Elvis, Rat Pack, etc. They were expensive, and, since we have seen the real artists in the past, of little interest to us.

There are very few benches to sit down in L.V. - obviously on purpose: the businesses want you to spend time in the ubiquitous casinos (almost all hotels have one or more - they all look alike, and are just as noisy). You are also almost always forced to walk through them in order to get to the shops and amenities. The nicer hotels had easy chairs and tables in the long hallways, away from the casinos, which enabled us to sit down to a leisurely coffee or ice cream and watch people (which both of us enjoy).

We went to downtown Las Vegas on the following day - bought a day pass on the "Deuce" (a double-decker bus system which runs 24 hours a day). This proved to be the most efficient transportation for us. Fremont street downtown has a two block long arched cover which is actually the worlds largest video display. It's advertised as the "Fremont Experience". We arranged to be there early for the 7pm "showing" - it was a bit of a disappointment. While technically impressive, with a Hallowe'en-related theme, the show was only 7 minutes long. The real fun part for us was watching people from a sidewalk seat at a Starbuck's - the bikers had a convention; it made for some interesting viewing.

The flight home was somewhat convoluted. We were flown from L.V. to Phoenix, changed planes there, and flew right back over L.V. on the way home. Airport security is highly inconvenient (body scanners, numerous identity checks, etc.) and takes a lot away from the actual flying, which we both enjoy. The flight itself (US Airways) was on time, we actually arrived home early.

So, what is our overall impression? Las Vegas is a city of "imitation" and flamboyance, with relatively little cultural substance. It exists to "pull money out of your pocket", and that may be it's "talent", if it can be called that. Superficiality comes to mind; everything is "show"(off). Some of the new hotels are really beautiful from an architectural point and can be considered to be counterpoints to the shallowness evident elsewhere. We may get there again, someday, passing through, but it's unlikely that we'll make a special trip with this city as the destination.

Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/6213529854/in/set-72157627696025357/