And Back Up Again

I drove the camper down to the ranch Friday (I'd taken Wed- Fri off for the show but ended up working Wednesday and Thursday and kept my Friday off).  I planned a relaxing two days with my horse and that's exactly what I got.  Blu looked good (whatever he had must have been very minor) and when I turned him out he ran around like a bat out of hell!  It was pretty funny.  Mainly because I wasn't at the end of a lunge line trying to hold on!  I left my camera at the ranch though (and no, Blu didn't eat it again!) so I don't have any photos.

When I got home Saturday evening Ken and I went to Mikuni for a sushi feast.  Yum!  We tried a few new rolls but the overall winner was the Albacore Pepperfin.  Raw albacore slices in Gyoza sauce topped with Jalapeno slices.  Delicious!

Sunday, we went to Ken's baseball game - a double header at Florin High School.  But for the first time ever, Ken wasn't in full uniform.  Because of the tendinitis in his thumb he couldn't play, but he wanted to go in support of his team.  He thought it would be fun to bring a barbecue and cook up some links and dogs for the team between games.  The Giants won the first game 14-2 which meant it only went 7 innings and the food was ready at exactly the right time.  They won the second game 8-2, making for a very nice day.  After the games we went to pizza then got home about 5:45pm.  It was a comfortable 90 degrees at home so Ken suggested hanging out by the pool.  I was swimming (pool is still a bit cool at 73 degrees, but once I got over the initial "brrr" while putting a foot in, it was very nice) when Ken reminded me of the solar eclipse - an 
Annular Solar Eclipse.

Wouldn't you know my first instinct was to look at the sun to see if I could see it.  Duh - sure enough, in that super quick look (with sunglasses and through a screen - I still don't recommend it) I was able to see that part of the sun was covered.  But I remembered reading in the paper about being able to see the reflection of the eclipse if you poke a hole in paper.  Well, let me tell you that just poking a hole (like with a pencil) doesn't do it.  But using a pin DOES!  Sure enough, hold two pieces of paper with a pinhole in the top piece shining the light onto the bottom piece and voila - you can see the eclipse.

But better than that, by far was when we saw the shadows of the tree on our back fence.  A thousand reflections of the eclipse!  I'm not exaggerating....

Check this picture out - it looks abstract but in fact it shows countless reflections of the eclipse on our fence.

And in case you don't believe me - here's the same reflection about 40 minutes later when the eclipse was over (OK - I know you believe me, but I want to show you anyway).  This is a "normal" shadow in the exact same place as the first photo.

Is that not the coolest thing ever?!?  I'm still excited that we saw it.  Something I hope I won't forget for along time.

Here's the picture of the eclipse reflected on a piece of paper.  Not nearly as exciting after the fence views, huh!

Oh - and in case anyone is wondering - from my glimpse of the sun semi-directly I was seeing spots for a while, like when you're blinded by a photo flash, though they're all gone now.  Remember the days when we used to have an old floppy disk we could look through at the sun....ok - how many even know WHAT a floppy disk is?!?