Great read:

What did you do yesterday? I read Stephanie Meyer's The Host for 12 hours STRAIGHT. I started at 1 p.m. and finished at 1:15 a.m. Yes, it was THAT good. Awesome, really. It's also 619 pages long! I couldn't put it down, and yesterday was the perfect day to read: the kids were out of the house, the hubby was out doing some shopping, a fresh 6 inches of snow covered the ground. Just me and the cats curled up on the couch.

I loved this book, loved the suspense, the characters, the otherworldly touches. I cried several different times (6 or 7, maybe more) and felt completely immersed in this world. Such an amazing feat, imo, to be able to create a foreign, yet believable, world. And being able to lose myself so thoroughly, so completely in a story is pure, unadulterated joy.

Winter

It seems that around here we're on track for the 6th warmest winter ever. And with news like that, you'd think I'd be hip-hip-hooraying or engaged in some other sort of celebrating. But I'm not. Why? Well, because it's still winter. And, yes, temps of 39 or 40 or 45 are really mild for this time of year, and those kinds of temps are definitely better than, say, 20 or 0 or -10, but it's still winter. The grass is still brown and dormant, the trees are still leafless (though they all are sporting new buds, have been for several weeks, in fact, which is WAY too early and makes me wonder what will happen to the tender shoots when the inevitable hammer of winter falls), and the gray days still far outnumber the blue ones. Maybe spending the few extra dollars in my pocket as a result of this season's heating bills being less than last year's bills would be a good way to mark this record-setting year. But I probably won't. Why? Well, because -- say it with me -- it's still winter. Bleh.

February.

For being the shortest month of the year, I sure seem to have a hard time getting through it. If I were to look back at posts made around this time last year or the year before, I'm sure I'd find similar rants against winter, against the cold, sunless days in general. Even though I've lived up "north" for more years than I care to count, I'm still a Southern girl at heart. I need sun. I need warmth. I need spring flowers poking up through the soil, our arms joined and raised skyward heralding the end of winter.

When will we see spring around here? March? April? Yes, sometime in April. Too many weeks away to count.

It's clear that I live in the wrong part of the country.

Good read:

Earlier this month I read Abide with Me. I wanted to love this. The 1st book I'd ever read by Elizabeth Strout was Olive Kitteridge and I LOVED, LOVED it, so I had high expectations. Really high expectations, in fact. Maybe this was unrealistic, might even have been unfair, but how could I not? I found the prose itself elegant and flawless. The characters, though, were less engaging for me. Same with the storyline. It was slow going and I had to invoke my daughter's you-must-give-a-book-50-pages rule and then again. At about the halfway mark, I felt like I was finally engaged. More of a struggle than I wanted it to be.

Lunar Eclipse

Did you get out and see the lunar eclipse this morning? I did and it was something to see. It was also brutal weather-wise, at 10 degrees with a slight wind. I learned my lessons well after my recent trip to Lone Pine and Death Valley, so I was prepared, dressing in multiple layers with one of the layers being wool. I've yet to find a way to keep my fingers from freezing though.

So when I say the eclipse was something to see, there is a caveat, of course. It seems that the real event was happening west of the Mississippi River. And if you happen to live on the west coast, well, then, you were in for a real treat. But here in Wisconsin, the whole thing lasted less than 30 minutes, and the totality phase - the phase when the moon takes on vivid reds and oranges - began nearly an hour after moonset around here. I did manage to capture a shot where the moon is pinkish, and I think this is because the sun was coming up as the moon was setting.

This was taken shortly after the eclipse began as evidenced by the moon's disk beginning to disappear:





This one, taken about 8 minutes later, shows the progressing eclipse and the brightening sky. About 3 minutes later, the moon was below the horizon.

Star Trails!

So here's the result from my 1st night at my star trails workshop last month. It was a terrific learning experience and I'm pleased as punch with the result.

This was taken in a place called Alabama Hills near the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, west of Lone Pine, CA. These hills are full of rock formations and are a popular location for TV and movie productions (in fact, they were shooting a car/truck commercial while we were there...). Some classic movies have been filmed here, like Bad Day at Black Rock and How the West Was Won and Gunga Din, as well as more modern films, like Tremors and Gladiator and Iron Man.

We were in a little spot called Gunga Din, though I don't know if the movie was actually shot IN this little area or if the area was given this name because the movie was shot nearby. It was VERY cold and VERY windy (elevation is approx. 4600 feet) and I froze! But I ended up with a really cool shot, so I'm not complaining. On subsequent nights I put on everything I'd brought with me to keep warm!

The trails form a circle because I was facing due north. The white dot in the center is Polaris. I didn't realize at the time that I WAS facing due north - I was hoping I'd get some circles (as opposed to lines) but didn't know where the center point would be.

I'm amazed all over again every time I look at this.

Keeler, CA

Here are a couple of pictures from my recent adventure through Death Valley. These shots were taken in Keeler, CA, in between Lone Pine, CA and Death Valley. Population in Keeler is 50. No kidding. It's semi-abandoned with things left to die where they sit. We found an old International truck (pink, no less) with 4 rotted tires and the keys rusted in the ignition.

The light was fantastic. And I LOVED the colors on display in this almost forgotten place. Simply gorgeous.






Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background





A lone lamp over a cracked, grass-covered inground pool




Gas at .48 per gallon! Almost 40 years ago...

Night Sky

I'm back from my fabulous trip to Lone Pine, CA via Death Valley. It was so awesomely wonderful that I'm not sure I can find the right adjectives... the scenery in Death Valley was beyond anything I had imagined. The terrain and geological makeup changed every 15 miles or so, and at times it looked like I was on a different planet - truly spectacular and jaw-dropping.

Getting up for sunrise photos and then staying out at night for hours on end in the cold makes for an exhausting experience - exhilarating but exhausting. I took the red eye home from Las Vegas (arrived in Milwaukee at 5:15 a.m.) - it was brutal and exacerbated the whole sleep deprivation situation. Slept 14 hours Wednesday night, 12 hours Thursday night. I'm hoping that a nap today will get me all caught up.

I haven't yet had the time to examine the photos I took (over 1000 of them!) and will post some eventually. But, in the mean time, here's a shot I took one night in Death Valley. I was able to stand in the middle of the road because we didn't see a single car during the entire 6 hours we were out there! On the left side of the picture you can detect the beginnings of star trails. I was actually going for a still shot (read: no star trails), and the exposure seems correct for this for the stars in the right half of the shot, anyway, as they appear as distinct points. But the stars on the left are closer to true north and so, as they move (or, more accurately, as the earth rotates), the trails they leave are much closer together, more concentric.


Scotty's Castle Road, just south
of Mesquite Spring.