Sunday, January 31, 2010

Once more unto the breach

Alright, it's Monday morning yet again. This week, like all weeks here, looks to be chock full of work and hopefully some play. I had a good weekend, watching "District 9" at the big "drive-in movie" in the gymnasium on Saturday night. It's definitely a great flick, for sure. On Sunday I ate a nice omelet at brunch and finished reading "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., which really got the old yen for sailing going-the relative simplicity of being at sea going somewhere via wind power.

On Saturday I saw the best show of atmospheric optics I've ever encountered. I sadly did not have a camera. We had a very strong halo around the sun, with the usual sun dogs on each side that had strikingly prismatic spectra of the rainbow. But, there was also a halo around the whole sky that had subsequent sets of sun dogs at 90° from the sun's position in the sky. It only lasted a few minutes, but was extremely beautiful. It kind of made me think of the mortality of everything, from people to cultures to stars. Time and tide wait for nobody, to borrow the phrase.

“Life for humans can consist only of climbing endless topless mountains, or eviscerating perpetually renewed dragons; there’s no safety in ease.”
~Brendan Phibbs, Our War for the World

2 comments:

Teacher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Becky said...

It's quite a contrast being at sea under sail and living and working at the Pole. Both lives do tend to fill up with bits of work though.
Glad you got to go the movies-what did you think of District 9? I quite liked it.
And from now on carry your camera every where so we don't miss out on the nifty stuff!