Irish Tunes at the Elks Club and a Very Long Night Train

 

Today I worked from home to avoid the storms, and sure enough this morning it stormed, so I brought my plants into the foyer before they got wet again, never mind blown around. Travalon said all three (Lazarus, Keith, and the ponytail palm) were on the ground when he got home yesterday, so he picked them back up. There was a lull at lunchtime today, so I was able to take a walk outside, but then it was storming again all afternoon, and still at 5:30 when I heard a train go by. I knew it was coming, but no way was I going out in that to see it! I had a Union meeting at six, and just as we were voting to end it, Travalon came home.

We went to the Elks Club for their monthly fiddling session, which was a week late this month because the main fiddler was in Ireland last week. The food there is always good, but today my shrimp quesadilla seemed particularly tasty. Some of our Shamrock Club peeps were there, so we sat talking to them and to the red-headed flute player. There was a hammer dulcimer in the session today, which was kind of a cool sound, almost like a harp. Although we were facing east, we got some interesting lighting from the sunset. I love how the sky is all pink and purple.

When we came home, Venus and Jupiter were bright in the western sky, so I dragged out my telescope and tried to see them. I could see them through the binoculars, but it was so hard to find them in the telescope. Eventually Travalon wandered out to see how it was going, and he had slightly more luck than I did, but he would find them and then lose them again. I heard a train horn from the north, so we hopped in the car and drove to the crossing on Highway M. At first Travalon thought it was another false alarm, but then we heard the train horn again, and soon we saw its lights approaching. We made a video, but it was a very long train so the video is over five minutes long - I'll have to put it on YouTube in order to post it here. That's a project for another night. We stood there, each making a video, and all the cars who were waiting impatiently for the train to pass probably wondered what we were doing. As Travalon said, "It was not a successful astronomy night, but it was a great train night!"

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