Night Sky Wonders

It's a good thing I take a lot of pictures because I tend to forget the details. "Oh yeah... we stayed up until midnight and watched a total lunar eclipse." Not the greatest pictures in the world, but proof nevertheless.


I guess my theme for this post is things you see at night. We went to dinner at some friends Dean met through work, who live down near Pahoa, where the coqui frogs roam. After dinner we drove to the very end of the Kalapana road and watched the glow of the new lava flow. Try to imagine the glow from a forest fire. I can see it from my front yard too, even though we must be 20 miles away from it. My camera was unable to capture any of it, I have a lot of black pictures. If you Google -lava glow pahoa- you can see some good pictures.

Dean is right this minute driving up the Mauna Loa road to the lookout, at about 6000 feet. From there you're high enough to see the lava flow. It was too late for Dash and I to go, we'll try it another time. ( He just got back and told me they could see fountains of lava--why did I stay home?)

I've been getting up at 4:30 in the morning to take our new dog out and I noticed a huge planet on the eastern horizon (must be Venus). It's not just bright, it's distinctly round and planetlike. I've never seen it like this before.

This picture reminds me that we have a new dog! A neighbor down the street (who already has 3 dogs, a gross of cats, and a feral goat) came knocking on the door to tell me about a half whippet who had been chained up in the yard its whole life, and now the owner was going into assisted living. We made a provisional agreement that the dog would have to pass Chuck's inspection. Chuck is a complete snob. The best I was hoping for was for Chuck to ignore her. Well, three days later, I caught them frisking and playing together. The poor thing has an indentation around her neck where the chain sat, she was totally neglected and half starved. She has a whippet body, but never got any exercise so her legs look atrophied. She's so skinny she looks like an insect with a thorax. We have cleaned her up, killed all the fleas, and fed her alot. Her name is Lele, short for 'ukulele' which means jumping flea. She prances around like a lipizzaner.

If it wasn't for this picture I would have already blanked out on my Rotary Club's annual Lobster fest (see lobster at left) and we got to make a huge mess eating with our hands. We shipped in 150 live Maine lobsters and boiled them to order.

I was driving around taking pictures of the area restaurant signs to re-do their ads for the community newsletter and this one is blogworthy. Rain? What rain? I don't see any rain. This is one of the only affordable places to eat. Look! I have a son and a husband! Here they are down on the coast, south of Hilo. I remember this because I stubbed my big toe on some lava and it turned black and died.

I've been way too busy the last few weeks. I joined the board of the Volcano Community Association, redesigned their newsletter, joined a committee for the Volcano Health Collaborative and I've been working on a logo for them for almost 6 weeks. School started and I agreed to be a PTO representative for Dash's class. I went to a women's retreat in Waimea with some ladies from Church (it was awesome-woke up to Mauna Kea in my window each morning), sang at Church last week, hosted a Labor Day BBQ, started planning a community Christmas party, a church Pumpkin party, went to a neighbor's birthday party and got to see everyone perform hula.... now I'm TIRED! I declined to become a school board member...maybe next year.
And finally, here's Dash frisking with Chuck in the backyard.