I'm back, Dreamwidth! Didja miss me?
I spend the past two weeks in Jackson Hole with my girlfriend and I didn't bring a laptop. That meant that I could do whatever social media I could normally do on my phone I was able to do, but nothing else.
It was great to spend time with her where I didn't have to get up and work every day (sadly, she did have to work, but as a massage therapist she's not working eight hours a day, just two or three here or there). I got there on Friday night after the first day of the
August Art Fair. In her other business, she's a
silversmith and she was exhibiting in the fair. So the first two days that I was in Jackson, I basically hung around at the art fair and helped her by running errands and making sure she ate and was hydrated. Plus, I got to wander around the fair, which was fun.
I spend a few days when I was there building
a greenhouse for the raised bed in her driveway. She's been wanting one for a while because the growing season in Jackson is so short (being high desert and all that). The plastic sheeting to cover it hadn't come yet, so it's still not covered but the frame is good. I had to change the design a little several times along the way, but given my general lack of carpentry skills I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out!
I had some time to do a little ham radio while I was there, including some good runs at the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park. I've operated in both of those locations before, but it's always good when I can get outdoors with a radio. Even hiking up the local butte was fun, despite making only a few contacts when I was up there.
But the absolutely coolest thing of all was the total eclipse. The center line of totality was just about 8 miles north of her place. They were expecting crowds and traffic so we hadn't planned to go anywhere for the eclipse anyway. And I'd made it a point to order eclipse glasses from a reputable manufacturer months before so we'd have them. We walked out to the grass, spread out with a bottle of champagne and some cheese and crackers. The first little notch out of the sun was cool, and we looked every few moments to see the coverage getting bigger and bigger. The sun didn't noticably dim to our eyes, though, until very close to the totality, when it started getting dimmer and chillier as the light faded and the temperature dropped. And then, all of a sudden, it was deep dark twiglight with a smattering of stars in the sky. The sun was covered by the moon and we could see the corona but not the sun itself. This, by the way, is the only time it's safe to look at the eclipse *without* the glasses. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. We toasted the eclipse and cheered and clapped.
A little over two minutes later, though, the sun began to peek out from behind the moon. It was instantly too bright to look at without the glasses and over the next ninety minutes less and less of the sun was covered and the day grew hot. I only have a few pictures from my phone of the eclipse, and it hardly matters. No photo can reproduce the absolute sense of wonder in seeing that. The next one to hit the United States is in 2024 and I'm ready to start making plans.
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