It’s funny how things work out.

It is Saturday night and I feel really good about the world.

I spent about two hours up at the observatory. I’ve had a star-crush on Orion lately, so I decided to point the ‘scope at Betelgeuse (it’s way orange!) and Rigel (it’s way blue!). I played around with different eyepieces — discovering quickly that the telescope’s not-so-great optics (as well as random things like turbulent air inside the telescope’s tube) make most of the shorter-focus eyepieces pretty much useless. A couple of cool guys came up about half an hour into my solo observing session, and we looked at different stuff in the sky. I think I found the Orion nebula, which was really exciting! I’d never seen it before (or at least seen it and remembered what it was). We then checked out the moon (I whipped out a moon-filter and it helped a lot), and then I realized that the Pleiades were almost directly overhead and absolutely beautiful! (My impression is that light pollution is way low near the zenith.) We pointed the big telescope at it, but we had to wait a little bit for the dome to get out of the way (remember how I said it was directly overhead?). It’s a real nice sight, and I am extremely anxious to go somewhere dark and use my newfound knowledge of constellations to really take in the sky.

And, you know, something about this whole celestial endeavor must be doing something good to me. I feel so much better than I did last night. The optimistic Tom has returned, I hope. I do apologize for yesterday’s post. I figure I’ll feel that way again every now and then, but I suspect I’ve found at least one way to help me feel better about things. And in the end, it’s really just attitude that matters, I think.