Still Alive And Kicking ...

Everyone still here?  According to the dramatic news media, we might all have been killed off by the sky falling, or at the very least, blind from looking at the sun.  

I have to admit, the sun is so bright, you can't see anything if you DO look, so there's that, unless you are right in the path.  Here's my rig all set up and ready to go.

A few years back when I had enough time to think about it, I found a weird piece of black plastic specifically for taking eclipse images.  It's rather mangled now, but I was still able to rubber band it on the lens.  Initially it wasn't too bad, but the higher the sun got in the sky, the more tilted the camera had to be.  I was sure it would fall over.

Here's my neighbor's horses, all set for the viewing.  You can't be too careful!!

Even Cooper got in on the act.

Well that didn't last long, so he had to stay inside.  He was having none of it.

AND HERE IT IS ... THE ECLIPSE!!!  You have to squint your eyes a bit.

Surprisingly, the moon was right on time and began the show at 10:15 at my location.  I was a little distracted by the standoff being held on my fence.  Lots of kitty kitties hang out here, using my fence line as their personal highway.  

Only look here ... ACCIDENT!!  Looks like a rollover to me.  This baby was lounging in the sun in the middle of the highway.  We only had a 45% eclipse, so it was not that sunny and quite a bit colder.  The standoff lasted for over an hour.  No one came to clear the road, so the above kitty turned around and went back where he came from.

Two hours later, quite tired of standing and holding the tripod for the last 30 minutes for fear it would fall over ... I headed back inside for some photoshop.  I discovered I haven't done this in quite some time.  It took a few tries to get it going.  It looks like the bite of a Gila monster, yes?  Not near as dramatic as the media played it out to be (at least here), but fun to photograph none the less.

It was a nice sunny day with a very chilly wind.  Hopefully the weather guessers are right this week when we MAY get four days of 80 degree weather.  Won't that be amazing ... and then it's going to rain again.  Gosh, I sure wish Mother Nature would make up her mind.  I could use a little more grilling on the lounge chair.

AND ... it's going to be another rousing night of BINGO!!!!  Hopefully the Castle Counter can be there tonight and things go swimmingly.  Oh ... and we will see just how many people looked at the sun!