Scattered Thoughts . . .

As I was passing by the living room window heading to the bedroom tonight, I noticed that the sky was clear...  two nights in a row is a shocking surprise...  and the full Snow Moon was again shining brightly so I grabbed my camera and shot a couple of quick photos out the living room window.  This supermoon is still appearing a bit larger than normal even though it was higher in the sky tonight than it was the previous night when I noticed it shining in our living room window.   As much as I'm dying to get out there with a telescope or two, it is still far too frigid out there for me.  I'll wait for the temperatures to get into the 40s!  Right now, we're closer to -40 than we are 40 degrees.  To set up the telescope and mount, I need about 15 minutes.  Then I need another 15 minutes or so to properly level and align the telescope with the celestial north pole.  By the time I'm done doing that, I'd be freezing and dying to get back indoors so it doesn't make a

Kenzie visited us again recently while Lukey was playing hockey.  She was cold and tired of watching hockey so Pop drove her from the hockey tournament to our house so she could spend time with Gee and Papa rather than sit at a cold ice rink all day long.   As always, we had a good time with her!   While she was here, she left us a little reminder on the home page of our Echo Show...  as though we would forget about her otherwise... Thanks, Mackenzie!  I'd rather do a longer photo shoot with you though!

Although, at the moment, the sun is shining brightly in an exceedingly rare mostly cloudless sky, we continue to get snow every day.  The house is barely visible behind towering banks of snow where we have piled up snow from the driveway and walkways to the house.  I like winter but, at this point, my health and my spinal injuries have had enough of this nonsense.  It is causing far too much pain.  There are some projects I'd like to tackle too but the frigid snowy weather is keeping me indoors.  I have a few little woodworking projects I'd like to complete but I need to set up my power tools outdoors where I have room and where the sawdust won't cake everything inside the house.   In the meantime, the falling snow provides a nice peaceful landscape out our windows.  Enough is enough though... my old, beat-up body needs a break!

Our moon is currently making its way around us on the closest path to Earth for 2019...  at around 221,700 miles from Earth.  At its farthest point from us, it is 253,000 miles.  So, because it is closer to us, our February "Snow Moon" also appears slightly larger than usual...  especially as it just comes up over the horizon.   We haven't seen much sky in recent months so it was a surprise to see the big, bright moon as it rose last night and bathed our snowy landscape with soft white light.  This light was so bright it was casting shadows in our living room.  My first thought was to bring a telescope outside to get a closer look at the moon.  After quickly glancing at the thermometer, I instead opted for grabbing a camera and shooting a few shots through our living room window.  It was far too cold out there for me!   The moon had just risen above the ridge of the Worcester Range opposite our living room window but was still behind the leafless trees.  I though