Stargazing...in my room.

A little known fact is that I really enjoy stargazing, especially in nice warm nighttime weather.  There is nothing more comforting, than sitting outside or lying on a hammock, staring at the stars, taking in the often-seen-rarely-appreciated scenery.

It's hard enough to find time outside of the hectic life of a college student to slow everything down, and just breathe in the night air.  On top of that, living in Saint Louis, it's tough with all the light pollution here and there.  It's hard to find a spot that is truly dark enough that you can just be one with the darkness so that the stars can shine through.

However, I received a gift from my darling that couldn't have been more appropriate for me.  It was a lighted globe with pokable holes that were aligned in the shape of the constellations.  At first, I didn't really have high expectations, since it didn't look that impressive, and the idea seemed too simplistic to work.  Of course, I appreciated the thought and not really the actual tangible thing.

After the two of us finish assembling the globe (it was actually reasonably challenging), we turned off all the lights and closed the blinds.  When we put in the batteries and turned on the light inside the globe, my mind was, simply put, blown.  My room's ceiling was turned into the night sky that I only knew so well.  Placing the globe propped up in the center of my desk, it was relaxing just staring at the constellations suddenly appear on an otherwise bland ceiling.

It's amazing.  The globe has re-ignited my desire to go out and re-establish that old rendezvous that I had with the stars at night.  It'll be good to see them all again.  It's like seeing old friends I haven't seen or talked to in a long time.

DST

Since this blog is named for this, I figured writing a post for today was near-obligatory.

Daylight Savings Time this time around (heh, interesting word choice) wasn't all too bad.  In fact, it just naturally happened for me.  Somewhere in the middle of the night, an hour is lost, only to be found again in October.  As I got  up late (or early, depending on persepctive) to make sure the clocks were changed right, I hardly noticed any real changes in the night.

It seems funny that we'd practice such a thing, since time is usually viewed as continuous and ever flowing, and yet we make two disjointed hiccups, in efforts to save daylight.  Funny, we didn't save daylight, certainly if the clocks are changing at 2 in the morning (at any local time).

But this phenomenon isn't without repercussions.  It is one less hour of sleep (actually, if you woke up like me, it was probably a bit more than that), it was one less hour to get ready in the morning, and it was a lot more than just one more person missing from morning Sunday service.

If we lost the hour 2AM to 3AM here, what transforms this hour to an extra hour of sunlight when we get it back?  Is it like compounded interest?  Is it that good things come to people that wait [half a year]?

For me, life goes on as usual; reminiscing on the late night hours that we miss out on now.