Tonight was lunar eclipse night. Drove home from Ellenburg's wonderful Tourville Diner and ducked my head to peek under the rear view at the moon, off to the right and whole. I arrived and the orb was still there full. Five minutes after arrival I read that the eclipse was to start at 10:03 and it was 10:06... surely enough the Shadow had begun to creep. Excitedly posted it out on to the NT newsboards. A few responses came back like "too cloudy in Atlanta" or "can't see anything from NY" ... I suppose a lunar eclipse is almost too quaint to draw much pull from the Design World.

Suppose I'm pretty lucky to be on the East Coast of USA right now, where the eclipse took place. Were I in India/Tibet as scheduled... Were I in any of these future Watson locations, the behemoth above might shine much the same as always. I thought, look at the stars, they look just the same as ever, but for only these few minutes, nowhere else on the planet except this side of the continent do they shine without competition from Luna.

I wonder, wouldn't it be cool if holidays weren't based on annual dates but on eclipses? Christmases on lunar eclipses and Thanksgivings on solar eclipses. <--- Heck, look at what proper english capitalization thinks of that idea. Lowercase natural phenomena, uppercase constructed holidays.

Well I suppose I was in a quaint mood, and it was mild outside. Took a few stones and marked the tip of the where the young blue spruce in the front yard left its moonshadow. Came back a few minutes later and it had shifted. So I made a new stone pile. Of course, the results were obvious, but even proving the obvious is fun sometimes, when it only demands bent knees and a little knuckle compression. Later of course, I realized I had wrecked my laboratory while shuffling my feet and kicking the stones as I looked up. Can't blame me really, it was getting dark.

At several intervals my anthropomorphism of the moon ranged from: moustache, man with white hat, ring (thoughts of how appropriate a white wedding ring stone is), ... the rest were less interesting... I did however noticed in the dark of the eclipse that the trunk of my car does not fully close. Or at least it latches but it doesn't turn the trunk light off. Seems there's a few electric quirks going on there.

Anyway, enough or maybe too much said. It was a good night of contemplation.