Bourbon and Gymnastics
Well, first off, a correction: the delightful and sky-savvy Scarlett tells me Hanny (of voorwerp fame, see my last post) is a woman, not a man. Actually, Scarlett put the whole thing much more succinctly (and correctly) in her comments than I did in the post, so I'll just quote her comments directly: "Hanny van Arkel is a...25 year old dutch school teacher who knows zip about astronomy but wanted to help search through all the gazillions of photos at galaxy zoo, saw this unusual image and pointed it out to the guys in charge. Yes, she gets to name it."
Thanks Scarlett. Clear skies!
I've been battling a deeply annoying, noxious post-Rockygrass miasma of an allergic reaction the last few weeks, in the form of a large, rapacious and insanely itchy skin rash. Think The English Patient. Think Morgellon's Disease. Think Bug. I can't sleep because of the itching. Luckily, I got a new bottle of Maker's Mark for my birthday, and the Olympics are on, so every time the itching set in I'd pour myself a tumbler of bourbon and fire up the Tivo and watch gymnastics and volleyball and swimming all night. I've never been a big Olympics watcher, primarily because for every 10 minutes of sports they show there's 50 minutes of force-fed inspirational life story bullsh1t to sit through. I don't trust people who are trying to inspire me. I'd rather have angry bees shoved up my nose than listen to the pre-fab morality plays NBC insists on shoving down my throat.
However.
With Tivo (actually it's a generic Tivo-ish DVR that came free with the satellite dish) I can fast-forward through all the bullsh1t and watch actual athletes performing actual sports.
So it hasn't been all bad.
And the girls have been watching the Tivo-compressed Olympics every day after daycare, so they are now obsessed with gymnastics. Yay! They run into the living room and tumble around til dinner. KK calls it "gymnastic-ing." As in "Look, Daddy, I'm gymnastic-ing!"
I finally got to see a dermatologist yesterday, so steroids are flowing through my bloodstream like army ants, and the rash is on the wane. Life is good. Or better, anyway.
Last camping trip of the summer this weekend. We're going up to the Sangre De Cristo range (click the pic above to see it up close), which typically host the clearest skies I've ever seen, and taking the telescope with us for the first time ever. If it doesn't break or dent on the trip up, it should be fun. Jupiter and the moon have been doing a nice little dance in the sky these last few days. Let's hope the weather cooperates (see how I effortlessly threw in the word of the week there at the very end, Mona?).