The Northern Lights

 Ooh-weeee Mother Nature turned on the heater.  I'm lucky my house is so well insulated, plus I do my best to bring in cool air in the morning.  It's quite comfortable until I step outside.  We are heading on up to the 90's in the next day or two, so I'm digging out all my shorts and tee-shirts.

I know you have been waiting on pins and needles for my fabulous shot of the Northern Lights.  Here it is!!!  AMAZING, YES??  Yeah well sorry, I had only the tiniest inclination to get up at 1:00 am and apparently did not set my alarm correctly.  

I am way too far south to catch much of anything anyway.  

Here's the thing about lights in the sky.  Basically you cannot really see anything with your naked eye unless you are right under it.  You have to have a camera of some kind or other that can take long exposures.  The camera can pick up the lights like no other.  

Much farther Northeast, like on the East Coast, you probably saw quite the spectacle.  But still NOT the bright colors you see on the internet.  Those are mostly photoshop city.  This image was taken a few miles North of me with a very long exposure.  The photographer said she saw no color at all in the sky, but her camera picked it up.  So if this happens again ... set your camera for a LONG exposure and you will get fabulous pictures.

Surprisingly, I wasn't a complete mess Monday morning.  No sore muscles, no burned arms to attend to and not really all that tired.  On the other hand, I wasn't motivated to do ANYTHING!!  I did notice I forgot to run a drip line to one of the three flower pots I planted, and it was rather sad about that.  I drowned it and a couple of hours later it was a happy camper.  Gosh these gazanias are gorgeous.

After spending ONE HOUR AND 12 MINUTES on the phone trying to contact the garbage folks, while typing on their website what TERRIBLE service they have ... I found out three months ago they raised the prices without telling anyone.  I pay in advance and this time my bill had extra charges for PI.  What the heck is THAT?

Come to find out they back charged everyone from the first of March.  I'm now paying $50.00 a month to haul off four cans of garbage.  I'm thinking it's time for a burn barrel.  Everyone else in the neighborhood does it, I might as well join in the pollution.

Dinner was about as simple as it gets.  In a weak moment at Costco, I purchased two bottles of this creamy tomato sauce.  It's actually quite tasty!!  I boiled some tortellini and dumped on the sauce, adding a few more tomatoes.

Super fast ... super easy.  Too bad the tomato sauce completely overpowered the BACON.  It was food, so there's that, but next time I'll try a white sauce.  I rarely eat pasta, but these were on sale for $2.99 a package and could feed FOUR.  A bargain in todays market.

This is my kind of Northern Lights ... happening at around 8:00 pm, so no alarms were involved.  Also no tripods or heavy cameras.  Sadly there's a house in the picture now, so no more pristine views in my back yard.  I'll report on that later.

BECAUSE ..... it's BINGO NIGHT!!  That means an early arrival at the lodge to take care of business first.  Then on to the Magic Kingdom of Bingo!