On a clear day, you can see pretty far out here.  Those mountains are in Canada, and they’re about 50 miles out.  You can only really see them when they’re not obscured by clouds, an event that occurs about one day out of 300.  Usually you look out to sea and just see this foggy haze over the water and it looks like it just goes on forever.

Well, not like laser-beams-coming-out-your-eyeballs fun, but it’s pretty fun nonetheless.

I could sink a lot of money into astrophotography.  The tripod I want costs as much as a slightly used volkswagen.  And there’s a telescope I’ve seen that sells more for a house.  Seriously.  They make some neat stuff nowadays.  If I win the lottery, that’s where all my money is going.

I snapped these lunar pics while there was still daylight left.  The focus wasn’t as crisp as I’d like but for a little amateur telescope I’ll take it.  We don’t get many clear nights out here but when we do, I’ll get a few nice pics out of it.

The locals keep telling us it’s going to snow, and it excites them like some combination of impending doom and fantastical magic.  Then, in the sky, one snowflake out of a thousand raindrops materializes and falls to the ground.  “Look, it’s snowing!”  Sorry guys, that’s not what snow is.  Most of these snowflakes [sic] melt before they hit Earth.  The remainder melt on contact.  I know it’s early in the season, but that’s not snow and we have yet to see anything even remotely resembling snow.

For one, our house is too close to sea level, and we don’t have the cold air that comes with altitude.  In fact, we get a whole different weather pattern on our side of the island.  Sometimes it’s cold out here and you go to town and it’s nice and warm out.  Or it’s pleasant here and there’s a storm in town.

Last month we had some pretty high winds.  Amazingly enough, our house doesn’t blow out to sea, but it feels like it should.  The winds howl all night, shaking the trees and pouring a billion pine needles into our gutters.  The seas got pretty choppy one day and I snapped the pics above.  Not a lot of boats out in that water.

I’m dreaming of a dark Christmas
Just like the ones on Orcas Isle
Of snow, not a hint
and everyone must squint
to try to see the ferry once in a while

I’m dreaming of a pitch black Christmas
Like a cave, it’s unlit and pristine
Our nights are aphotic
The sun, we’ve forgot-ic
When it sets every night at 4:15

I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas
As rain patters on my window
May your days be soaked
And your nights be cloaked
With rain and winds that blow

Screw Russia.

I finally got a remote clicker for my camera.  That means I can take long exposure shots without having to touch the camera.  Which means the camera doesn’t wobble when I take a picture.  You see, when I would usually take a pic of the night sky, I would have to touch the camera which makes it wobble a bit and the image would come out fuzzy.

Well, now, the image still comes out fuzzy because every time the wind blows the camera moves just a little bit.  Oh well. But the images are a little crisper. 

It’s really amazing out here how much of the night sky you can see.  It’s pitch black outside, and on those rare clear nights you can see thousands of stars.  It’s pretty neat.

The camera didn’t capture it very well, but I could very clearly see Jupiter and three of its moons up there.  Jupiter is the third brightest object in the night sky, second only to the sun and the moon.  If you look up and see a really bright yellow dot among a bunch of dim dots, chances are that’s it.

There’s this little marina just out of Anacortes that has an old boat with trees growing out of it.  There’s really no place to pull over for a good picture so I snapped these on the drive by.  It’s like a big planter box.

Nature takes things back faster than you think.  If we stopped taking care of this house, pretty soon it would have trees growing out of it too.