That exclamatory title was the embodiment of my attitude yesterday when I found out there was going to be a meteor shower at 3 a.m. Stay up until then? No problem! I felt all spontaneous and inspired. It'd give me the perfect excuse to go out and use my new camera. I had all these wonderful little cotton candy dreams about becoming the next
Sally Gall of night time photography.
Did I mention I live in the Midwest where it is currently freezing and where about twelve inches of snow is still waiting to melt?
We live in the city, not the inner city, but close enough that it'd be difficult to catch the meteor shower because of city lights. No problem though. I called my mother and made sure it was okay that I show up in her driveway at 3 a.m. and wait to be amazed by the splendor of alien nature. She lives in a small rural/suburban town where the closest they come to street lights are the headlights from cars on the interstate.
So I packed up the truck with blankets, over-sized couch cushions, a big fluffy robe with a hood, my laptop and car charger, my camera, and I headed for my parents place at two in the morning. I get to their driveway, throw the pillows in the bed of the truck and lay down, wearing my winter coat, my fluffy bath robe with the hood, my winter Penguins hat, two pairs of socks and prepare to be amazed by the splendor of outer space.
It was seven degrees.
And I lasted about 45 minutes. I might have held out a little longer if I wasn't sure my brand new camera would have fossilized in the cold. Ready to see my super spectacular moment captured in time via digital photography?
Prepare to be amazed ...
No, don't adjust your monitor settings. Those first two pics are not the same. They're two different photos. If you look carefully enough, you'll see the faintest smidge of a gray star in the second picture. The third picture, well, I think that's a star but at that point my fingers were about to give in to frost bite so it looks a little more like a streaking meteor than it actually is.
It didn't help that a blanket of fog was rolling through the area, or that our local Fox affiliate posted contradictory "optimal viewing times" than did NASA.
And to top the story off, I had to call my sleeping-has-to-get-up-in-a-few-hours-told-me-it-was-a-bad-idea husband to talk me through switching the truck to four wheel drive because while all the streets leading to my parents were clear of snow and ice, the cul-de-sac they live on (with a slightly uphill angle when exiting) was most assuredly not de-iced. I seriously contemplated camping out in the middle of the road until dawn, when my step-dad would be leaving to work, and asking him to help me figure out how to drive uphill all so I could avoid calling my husband and admitting he was right ... but the idea of loitering in my parents' neighborhood during the predawn hours in the middle of an Arctic freeze was even less appealing than admitting there's a slim chance my husband was right and it was a waste of time, and that I'm not, in fact, the next Sally Gall.
