Yes, that’s right. The Supermoon Lunar Eclipse! AKA the blood moon. It sounds like something straight out of a fantasy novel, doesn’t it?

I found out about it from my dad. He apparently heard about it via instagram or facebook. My dad has become rather tech savvy since he bought a smartphone, and it’s a good thing too or I would’ve probably been sitting inside watching TV instead of watching nature and space being amazing.

In case you missed the memo or don’t know why last night happened, here’s a cool video explaining the supermoon and the lunar eclipse from last night.

My dad couldn’t see the moon around 8:15, but I was curious. I headed outside along with my oldest brother. Sadly there were clouds everywhere and no hint as to where the moon was. However, there was some reddish glow. Could that be the moon? Or was it just something about the sky and clouds causing it?

I told my brother about Sky Map, an Android program which he quickly installed on his phone. (It’s on iPhone too) We used it to locate where the moon should be. Yep, right where that reddish glow was behind our large maple tree. Now if only those clouds would go away! We stood there for a while contemplating whether the clouds would disappear in time or not.

Then, being the jerk funny brother that he is, he found an image of a red moon and messaged it to my dad saying how beautiful it was. Mom and Dad came outside right as we were going in. They were bummed the moon wasn’t out, but they thought the app showing all the planets and stars was pretty cool.

My brother said we could try to find a better vantage point. That sounded like a great idea to me. Our parents were too tired though; they decided they’d come out later instead. So, my brother and I hopped in his jeep since he had the top off. No roof meant perfect sky viewing opportunities.

We started with our neighborhood, but there were too many trees.

Me: We need somewhere flat, up high with no trees

Him: The mall!

Me: The mall?

Him: Yeah, there’s no trees and it’s all parking lot. It’ll be perfect.

Me: Won’t it be too bright to see?

Him: It’s the MOON.

Me: True…

We zoomed around the city towards the mall. I used the Sky Map app to keep the moon in “sight” since we couldn’t see it just yet with the clouds.

Me: Wait! There it is I think! Maybe it’s just a light. I don’t know… It’s over there somewhere.

A red light stopped our pursuit momentarily.

Him: It’s like we’re storm chasers.

We laughed.

Him: Wait a minute! I know where we need to go!

The light changed and he sped off before taking a sharp right.

Me: Where are we going?

My brother just laughed. So there we were driving around to who knows where in our pajamas because neither of us expected to run into anyone. Honestly, we never planned on leaving the neighborhood.

As we drove down the street, I saw a Pepsi logo on a building.

Me: There’s my moon.

Him: What?

Me: The Pepsi sign. I thought it was the moon.

Apparently my eyesight is off. We went down a few more streets, and I realized where we were going. The parking structure!

Sadly the top floor was blocked off by a barricade, so we parked on the floor below. There were already others there and finally we were able to see the moon! We watched as the eclipse began. We could tell it was going to be a while still, so we headed up the stairs to see the fifth floor. No one was there, but a security guard soon showed up and told us it was closed. Granted there was no barricade preventing us from walking up there. Still, we headed down and continued to watch the moon from our perfect vantage point.

We both agreed that we made the right choice by hunting down the moon. We had a story to tell and it was more enjoyable than sitting down and watching TV. We talked about seeing it again in 2033 and wondered where we’d be by then.

It was a fun experience overall. It’s nice to hang out with my brother. We don’t do it nearly often enough, but now that I’ve moved back home, we get to do things like this more often. It was perfect. Sadly, all the photos we attempted to take just looked like a normal full moon. At least we have our memories to keep.

Your Turn

Did you see the supermoon lunar eclipse? What did you think of it?

If not, how well do you get along with your family? Have any fun stories about adventures with them?

I have no desk at the moment. During July, I was able to use the kitchen table, but with the current schedules of every one else in the house, I cannot use it anymore. Hence the lack of posting. Right now I’m actually typing this up on my phone, which is annoying but doable. I’m not one of those people who can type long entries on my phone or use my laptop on my couch because it aggravates my carpal tunnel syndrome.

On top of it all, my father was hospitalized recently due to health problems. Thankfully he is home again. :)

In the end, yes I’m around. Yes, I’m behind on reading, but I plan on catching up soon.

Your turn

Anyone have desk recommendations for me? I haven’t found anything that is like “Yes! I must have that!”

Where do you blog from? What does your work area look like? 

She would have been 15.

This year is the first year July 7th has come around without her. It’s been 7 months since she was put to sleep, and it was by far the hardest decision I have ever had to make. I believe it was in her best interest because the arthritis was pretty bad – to the point that she couldn’t stand up all the time when going to the bathroom. I know she didn’t want that. I know she wanted anything but to fall back in her own filth. I believe she wanted more than the pain she felt when she moved.

But sometimes she wouldn’t cry. Sometimes she was fine. Those moments always gave me hope. They always made me reconsider my decisions and made me believe that maybe she wasn’t as bad as I thought. But her medicines weren’t working, and I hated hearing her cry when she went to bed.

As you can tell, the decision still haunts me. I still constantly wonder if I made the right choice, but I did notice that life was different after she left. I hadn’t realized how much I was cleaning up after her or how quiet it was now that she wasn’t crying anymore.

I know it’s going to be hard tomorrow. I’ve gotten to the point where I can see her picture without getting too sad, but now I get a little teary thinking about her. We had 14 1/2 years together, and I loved every minute of it.

Okay, sometimes I got a little miffed when she would bark in the middle of the night and wake me up just so she could sit outside. Sometimes she annoyed me too when she would walk away when I tried to pet her. Honestly, I’ve decided that my dog was more of a cat than my cat was. Maybe it’s a husky thing, or maybe it was just her personality. Either way, she had the standoffish, pet me when I want to be petted persona of a cat.

But I love her. Even now.

We used to play hide and seek, and she would get so excited when she found me. She would bark and pounce around in those trademark play bows that dogs do before running back to our starting place to play again.

She would boss around our other dogs, even our rottweiler who we thought would be the boss of the pack. She would sing with me and sound like Chewbacca. And I would sing right back (just ask my family – I can sound just like her & have actually been mistaken for her).

I laughed every time she went on sprints around our backyard and pool at full speed. I would get mad when in the dead of winter she would refuse to come in from the bed she made in the snow. I freaked out when it snowed so much she could walk over our gate. I got scared when she got out of our yard and led the other two down the block.

She was an obedience school drop out.

The trainer tried to get her to come, and she refused. The trainer said we needed to teach her what her name was first despite the fact that she knew her name very well. We explained the stubborness of huskies, but the trainer didn’t believe us. She also didn’t believe that my dog came to us at home. We quit after that, but she was well trained.

She took treats gingerly from your fingers. She knew that when you said “Off” she better get away from whatever was on the ground or in her mouth. Even when she killed a raccoon. She dropped that thing as if it was on fire and backed away.

She wasn’t afraid to remind the other dogs who was boss either. And when she wanted to have a playmate outside, she’d keep our lab in the corner and prevent her from coming inside when we called.

My mother always said she was what kept life interesting. The other dogs would come when they were called and kept a low profile. My husky was a true princess though. You never knew what she would do, and that was what made her so much fun. Would she come? Would she not?

She was a good dog.

It’s still strange sometimes when I remember that she is no longer with me. I used to look for her all the time. I saw her empty bowls and had to stop myself on several occasions from filling her bowl with water.

One day another dog might walk into my life, but I feel bad for him or her. There are huge pawprints to fill, and I honestly doubt there will ever be another dog that could possibly fill the gaping hole she left.

I hope she understand why I did what I did. I hope she felt loved. I’m sorry her last day wasn’t full of more love; I didn’t know it would be her last. I miss her still. I’ll miss her always I think. I hope she’s still running and bossing the other dogs around at the rainbow bridge and that we will meet again someday.

At least I have the memories. Tomorrow I will try not be too sad. I will remember all the fun times we had.

Here’s to my princess, the best dog I ever had the privilege of knowing. Thank you, girl, for sharing your life with me.

It was in 2008; I went to Spain for the summer as part of a foreign exchange program with my university. (I double majored in English and Spanish.) It was my first real trip away from home; everywhere I had traveled before then was with family or near family. Even going to college, though out of state, was near family. I’ve always been a family oriented person, so traveling out of the country was terrifying. I wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for the school trip, despite the fact that the only person I knew was the professor.

It turned out to be a fun experience, though there were some definite rocky moments from the moment I arrived. At some point, I told my mom that it was so much fun, I didn’t know if I wanted to come back.

You know what they say about being careful what you wish for? Well…

Our professor was leaving a day before the rest of us. My friend and I had a trip planned that last day of school to go see Grenada. We were all set to buy the tickets until our professor told us that anyone who missed the last day of class would fail the course. We were upset, especially since she was leaving early, but we weren’t about to have the experience be wasted. We needed to pass in order to graduate.

We forgot about our trip and decided to take a train together back to Madrid to leave on the morning of June 28th since my host family wasn’t going to drive us there. I was 30-60 seconds past the end of boarding time. Seriously, there was at least half an hour before the plane took off; they could’ve let me on, but they did not.

I was stuck in Spain.

I had to pay for another ticket, which required calling home frantically and asking for more money to be put on my card. I had to call my host sister and explain that I was stuck. On top of it all, the earliest flight back was July 1st. It wasn’t too terrible since I only had to wait about three days. Thankfully, my host family let me come home, though the host mother was pretty angry about the whole situation. I pretty much hid in the basement where my bedroom was and avoided her the whole time. It was not a fun situation.

I remember calling the night before to check when the last boarding time was to ensure I would get there in plenty of time. The company told me that I was supposed to be on the plane right now. I looked down at my phone. It was June 30th. No, I’m supposed to be on the plane tomorrow.

They couldn’t fix my problem over the phone; I had to go to the airport. Cue another trip on a train to the Madrid airport. I told the front desk my problem, and they said that I was booked for a trip June 30th, not July 1st. On top of that, they said that if I intended to leave, I needed to buy another ticket!

So I asked if they had anyone there who spoke English because while I was complaining in Spanish and doing all my transactions in Spanish, I did not know the words I wanted to say.

I explained the situation in English and, with persistence, finally managed to have them give me a ticket for July 4th.

I went back to my host family, explained I wasn’t going home tomorrow like I thought, and faced the wrath of my host mother again. I hid in the basement like Cousin It, and then on the night of July 3rd, I went to the airport with all my things. I decided to sleep in the airport so that I didn’t miss my early morning flight.

I slept on and off when I finally got on the plane, and I remember the sun rising. I arrived at home in late afternoon or evening I think. And my stamp on my passport was on the page with a liberty bell. It dawned on me then that it was July 4th.

When I saw my parents I declared that I had finally escaped from Spain and gained my independence once again. How fitting. We laughed about it.

The funny thing? My professor later asked about my trip to Grenada. When I told her we didn’t go because of the threat of not getting credit for class, she informed me that she had been addressing the students who had planned on ditching class to go party and drink.

Well, I guess we could call this whole thing a ginormous case of miscommunication!

I still don’t know how that second ticket got mixed up. I can only imagine that they printed my ticket and entered in another date. Whatever it was, it definitely reminded me to be careful what I wish for and that home is definitely where my heart is.

Your Turn

Has a miscommunication ever caused you trouble? Have you ever missed your flight? I’d love to hear about your experiences!

Featured image of fireworks by bayasaa from Flickr (Creative Commons). All other photos by me.

One of the things I love about my father is that he is ingenious when it comes to fixing things. I used to think he could do literally everything in the world because he did everything for his business. He was an electrician, an HVAC man, a carpenter, and so much more. Plus, he owned the business and started it up from nothing. He is retired now, but he still get calls from people who were referred to him from previous customers. Yeah, he was that good.

When I was a kid, he helped teach me how to fix some things, mainly because I think he got tired of doing it all the time for me. A classic example would be how to install batteries in all of my toys and the importance of removing them before storing anything. No one wants a corroded battery!

My dad still fixes things for me, and he’s great at problem solving too. I love how he comes up with these amazing ideas to solve problems, whether it be how to hang a wind chime from the ceiling or creating a cat walk up to the window so my kitty could see outside. He just always seems to come up with a solution, and it’s usually more simple than my own idea.

I was reminded of this when I tried to take my bicycle out for a ride with my nieces. We bought it a garage sale a couple of summers ago. Though I have been riding it since then, I’ve had a hard time with turns because my knees tend to hit the handlebars, and I’ve almost fallen a couple of times because of it. To compensate, I started just extending my leg out instead of having them on the pedals when I turn. Of course, my foot sometimes scratches the ground, and I’m pretty sure that’s not how you’re supposed to turn.

The seat is also extremely uncomfortable. I usually end up standing the whole time, and something about how I was doing that was making my knees not so happy.

As I went to ride my bike today, he asked me if I wanted a comfier seat off one of the bikes he bought for my mom and him to ride. I figured why not since they don’t ride very often anyway and the one has a broken tire right now.

I’m pretty sure he thought it would all be a quick, simple solution to a problem. But with that one little tinker, we opened up Pandora’s box that set off a domino effect of more troubles. My knees started hitting the handlebars even more because the seat was higher up thanks to all that cushioning, so I asked him if we could buy new handlebars or if my brother could weld a new pole to make them go higher. We had already raised the handlebars to their full height back when I bought the bike.

He looked at my handlebars, and I knew the gears in his brain were turning. He grabbed a screwdriver and a few seconds later was rotating the handlebars. I thought he was nuts.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“I’m going to ride a bike with the brakes upside down?” I replied. It hadn’t dawned on me that you could move them too. It wasn’t one of my brighter moments.

I tested them as he rotated them until I finally found a position that had them up and away from my knees. He rotated the gears and the brakes to a spot that felt comfortable, and I took it for the first real test drive. It felt like it was a whole new bike. Best of all, I was able to turn like a normal person!

There was only one (OK two) more things to do: put more air in the tire and spray some WD-40 to help my gears shift better. However, the back tire of this bike has always had a crooked rubber pipe where you put the air in. It makes it hard to open it and use. Well, Dad decided enough was enough. He planned on fixing this bike up once and for good. He let out all the air in the tire and started working with the tube, only to discover it was all bunched up inside. That’s probably why my tire goes flat so often.

It took a while, but he finally managed to get it all done, though we had to remove the breaks because the wheel and tube kept getting stuck. I sprayed up the gears and chain, and I took my bike out onto the road with my nieces where we continued to ride until the rain sent us inside.

I would have never thought of rotating the handlebars like that. I thought I had to get a new set or a new bike or just come to terms with the fact that my bike would never be comfortable. Instead, the fix was right there in front of us; it just took the right set of eyes to notice it.

So how does this relate to life? Every problem has a solution, and sometimes there are several possible solutions to choose from. We don’t always see every possibility though. It just goes to show that a little tinkering and a fresh pair of eyes can improve any situation. And, well, you know the old saying: two heads are better than one. I’m glad my dad sat down and helped me figure that out. It really does feel like I have a new bike, and I didn’t have to invest any more money into it either. Saving money is always a bonus!

Have you ever figured out a simple way of fixing a problem by just making some adjustments, or a time when someone helped you find a solution to a problem you had? Or even a moment where something simple ended up becoming far more complicated? I’d love to hear about it!

I hope you all have a lovely Father’s Day weekend!