Every muscle and joint in my body is in agony.
But the sunset gradient is exquisite!
Category Archives: Sunsets
Forever Home – July 28th
Finally – I got to view a sunset at our new home in the High Desert.
No trio of tall palm trees any more. Lots of trees, but they’re lower and block less of the view. Can you spot the four-day old crescent moon? Click on the image to see it full sized. It’s there!
There it is, a little more zoomed in.
Looking the other way, across the back yard wall, we get that “purple mountain’s majesty” thing going on. The Golden Hour. With high-tension power lines everywhere, carrying electricity from Boulder Dam to Los Angeles.
A half hour later it’s more purples and blues than oranges and yellow, and it’s getting cold quickly. It may be 87º during the day, but it drops into the high sixties fast once the Sun’s down!
Welome home!
Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Forever Home – July 25th
The movers were in and out quickly today, done by noon. Now we just have to open all of the boxes, unload the PODS, make another trip to the old house tomorrow to clean up the loose ends, and then try to search for a new normal and something resembling a routine.
The sunrises here are amazing – a pity that they happen at 05:45!
I am deleting emails from Zillow as fast as I can, with the desktop computer set back up online and no need to try to do everything on the phone. It’s the little things…
Like cancelling emails from Zillow. No need every again.
Like turning on the phone’s setting to send unknown callers to voice mail.
Things aren’t normal yet, but you can see it from here.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Forever Home – July 18th
We signed loan documents today. I sent wire transfers for more than $80,000. It doesn’t get much more real than that.
We should fund on Monday, and close escrow on Tuesday morning. After five years of living on Zillow for hour after hour and looking at house after house, it’s a bit unreal to actually be at this point.
We still have to get everything packed and ready to bug out on Wednesday and Thursday next week. It will be an exhausting weekend.
Another “last” tonight, as SpaceX had an almost perfect launch out of Vandenberg after sunset.
A couple of minutes before the launch, the light fading, a bit of color in the clouds. (That white, comet-like thing above the wire isn’t the rocket, it’s a lens flare from the neighbor’s security lighting.)
The launch was fantastic, complete with four or five teenagers pulling up mid launch with one girl screaming about “that thing in the sky,” some dude telling her it was the Moon (it was not the Moon), and some olde phart (me) yelling across the street to tell them what it really was.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Space, Sunsets, Video
Forever Home – July 14th
How many more pastel sunsets for us will have this silhouette?
It’s not something that I dwell on, but I’m most certainly aware. If we can overcome one final hurdle with our escrow, it’s probably less than ten more. If all hell breaks loose, it might be 40 or 50, but it won’t be 100 or more. We’re packing and moving, much sooner rather than later.
The uncertainty and stress is a significant drag. I am desperate at this point for some boredom, preferably in a new home that we love. With spectacular desert sunsets and a new horizon silhouette. (With far fewer trees – the view to the west from the Potential Forever Home is quite flat, no trees, low mountains in the distance.)
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Forever Home – July 02nd
It’s really happening. I’m still sort of in shock, moving ahead one step at a time and juggling a gazillion details at once, but it’s happening.
How many more sunsets will we have with this view after seven-plus years of this?
Not many, at least, not with these trees. Which way is the new house oriented? Which way is west? Ah, yes, the lots behind us are still empty, it should be clear.
The sunsets will be spectacular. And there will be snow on the mountains in winter.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
High Desert Sunset With A Smoke Kicker
We’re up in Apple Valley and Hesperia looking at open houses. There’s also a large brush fire (currently at 478 acres with zero containment) about a dozen miles south of us. We’re fine, no significant danger, it’s burning in a wilderness area, but the smell is STRONG and there are literal TONS of particulates in the air.
At the left, above the palm trees, is the crescent Moon.
In the wide view, over on the right, is a windmill with neon all over, a part of a minigolf course & some rides next ti the hotel.
MARVELOUS! Now if we could just find a house, get through escrow, and get moved!
Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Proof Of Life – June 27th
Time moves on. The work week ends (-ish), The Long Suffering Wife finishes yet another trip around the Sun, and we’re prepping to head up to Apple Valley and Hesperia for the weekend to look at houses (not feeling super excited about any of these, but you have to start somewhere), and where there was a full moon out there a couple weeks ago, tonight we have a four-day old crescent moon setting just after sunset.
Beautiful! I’m glad that Newtonian physics and orbital mechanics are keeping track of what’s going on, ’cause I’m lost!
Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets
Spectacular Sunset Launch
There was a SpaceX Falcon9 launch (with Starlink satellites) at 20:36, with sunset having occurred at 20:09. It was clear and I expected a spectacular sight – I was not disappointed.
Click on them – enjoy the full-sized files!
The rocket rose just to the right of the mountain, seen through those trees and headed toward orbit. The white exhaust plume is from the first stage, which cut off (MECO = Main Engine Cut Off) just behind that far left tree. You can see the rocket coasting and the second stage firing just above and to the left of that point.
The second stage, along with the Starlink payload, is headed to space and well above most of the atmosphere at this point, so the exhaust expands out in a cone behind it. The bright dot just behind and below it is the first stage, falling back toward the drone barge waiting for it off of Baja.
Behind it, the plume was being pushed around by high altitude winds and still brightly lit by the Sun, even though it was well after sunset here on the ground. A launch like this always leads to a ton of calls to 9-1-1.
Finally, as even the eastern-most parts of the plume fell into darkness, the western-most parts were still lit up but were starting to turn orange with the sunset.
I think I got a pretty decent view of the launch on video. It’s long, about 15 minutes, since I let it run, hoping to hear the sonic boom about 12-13 minutes after launch. (Spoiler: I didn’t hear the sonic boom, but the front yard sprinklers did turn on and I had to run for it to stay dry. You can stop watching the video after about the 8:45 mark, unless you want to see me scramble.)
Falcon9 shows up over the hill at about 3:43. MECO and stage separation happens at 4:29. At 5:35, in the plume behind the second stage, you can see three dots. That’s the 1st stage, and the two fairing halves, all falling back to be recovered and re-used on a future flight.
Another thing to look for is the reentry burn of the first stage. It can be seen starting up just to the left of the street light pole from 8:11 to 8:34, the first time I’ve ever seen it from here, over a hundred miles away. In this burn, the first stage slows down as it starts to hit the top of the atmosphere, reducing the heat and structural stress on reentry as transitions from falling to flying down onto the drone ship. Spectacular!
I’ve seen videos taken from the High Desert, Hesperia, Victorville, and Apple Valley, where folks there can still see these launches, even another hundred miles to the east. It will be interesting to watch for from that new viewpoint when we find the Forever Home.
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets, Video
Proof Of Life – June 11th
I don’t want to break my current streak of 300+ days of posting every day, but there are a couple of things going on that are just a bit all-consuming going on, and my new and exciting dental adventures on top of it!
That leaves very little time to think great thoughts, take great pictures, and cogitate on the wonders of the universe. So, you may get a lot of these “quickie” Proof Of Life posts for a couple of weeks.
I finally got into the dentist today and, as expected, there are two primary options – Bad and Worse.
Bad = tooth extraction and replacement with a fake on a post. Sounds painful, but it’s a one day thing, probably.
Worse = crown lengthening, which I had done last summer when I had three root canals, turned out to be worse than a colonoscopy, very unpleasant and painful. And even if we do that, the odds are good that we’ll need to do the extraction and replacement anyway within a year or two.
Sometimes “bad” is “better.” Fun and games next Friday.
This is why June is “Hell Month” this year.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 