Five Years

Its hard to believe but just 5 years ago, I jumped ship and left a place where I may have been an expert and important and worked only 20 hours a week but I was also crazy stressed and dying inside. Finding a new job was the culmination of a 2 year search (and that was when the economy was good) and it couldn't have come any sooner. And after leaving all that drama behind, it did take a while to feel comfortable working with reasonable expectations.

I've worked for 4 major companies in my career and have made it to 5 years at 3 of them. This time, when it came time to pick out my 5 year gift, I actually thought of the fam. Keith also celebrated his 5 year anniversary this year and picked out a nice sleeping bag. For me, it was a hard choice. Do I pick the cute little silver ring for me? the personal travel DVD player for the kiddos?

In the end, I didn't pick either of those. Instead I picked out the Bushnell telescope that will be fun to take camping. And with that new sleeping bag (and another new, big purchase that I've already uploaded pics of to the laptop and can't wait to share with you), I think it was a good choice.

Well, it arrived on Saturday. Justin helped me put it together. And I only dropped the little side-scope thingy on the side like 5 times (just kidding Keith - it was only once, it hardly bounced at all and you can hardly see that crack in the glass).

All kidding aside, once it was put together, Justin and I got down to the really important stuff - spying on our neighbors. Or their trees.

The first thing we tried to find was a truck parked behind the house but then the owner of the truck left. So, we tried to find something else but those pesky palm trees kept getting in the way, so we claimed to be looking for palm trees and were successful.

And, of course you know this and we did too but someone you know may not be aware that telescopes turn everything upside down. That did make it hard to find those palm trees. But, of course, we kept looking (down) and found them.

Left and right are also mixed up too, but let's just not speak about that.

Havin' fun with my camera.

This pic was taken through the scope on the side. Taking one throught the telescope just didn't work at all. I thought it was kind of cool that the camera could actually focus on something but maybe someday I'll have a camera/telescope that will work together (but, yikes, that sounds costly).

Saturday night, Keith and I took the telescope out to look at the moon. It was amazing to see the craters on the moon, not just the big ones but small ones too. I have to say that Keith is way better at finding something in the sky and focusing on it than I am.

We also were able to look at one of the planets. It was fairly bright to the naked eye but when Keith found it with the scope, you could see three moons (how cool is that), two on one side and one on the other. As we tried out the different eye pieces, you could see that the planet had two horizontal stripes (Jupiter?).

Now, where were all of the kiddos during all of this? Yep - inside on the computer and watching tv. Perhaps that DVD player would have been a better choice after all?

Nah.

When it is darkest, men see the stars.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson