Another random shooting star, this time as a fallen angel

I've seen many random shooting stars in my life.  The first one wasn't until my mid-teens.  From there, I've seen shooting stars relatively frequently.  In the past 10 years, I spotted most of these while walking my dogs.  That makes sense, since my dogs are the main reason I'd be outside at night often enough for the opportunity to see these spectacles.

A couple nights ago, I spotted yet another shooting star.  This one was unlike any others I've seen before.  At first, it appeared as a piercingly bright light just above my line of sight. I thought a street light just blew out.  However, I quickly remembered there was no street light above me, and I instantly realized it was yet another shooting star.  I looked up to see the shooting star falling down in the Northwestern sky towards the horizon.  However, instead of just a bright spot, or a bright spot with a streaking tail, or just a steak, or a quick flash, or a massive fireball; this shooting star was composed of opposed half-circle plumes on either side of a small bright spot. The plumes were bright at their tangent point and faded at their respective vertical centerlines. There was also a short streak emanating from the bright tangent point.  The color of the shooting star was unusual.  Though being generally bright-white, the shooting star appeared to have a faint tint of green on the left plume (to my perspective) and more reddish on the right plume.  These features gave the shooting star an appearance of an angel plummeting to Earth.  

As the shooting star came down to the tree line, it faded out nearly completely.  It's core remained as a dimming amber just as it reached the tree line.  Judging the final brightness, the shooting star seemed like it landed somewhere close-by (well, closer than usual).

More random photos without context

Kings Fish Seafood @ Valley Fair Mall in San Jose, CA

Pinkberry @ Valley Fair Mall in San Jose, CA

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Han Sung Korean BBQ @ Santa Clara, CA

Shabuway @ San Jose, CA

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Suburban Decay in Barstow

 

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Great food in Silicon Valley, without context

 

Pho #1 in Sunnyvale, CA

The Counter of Santana Row

(Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CS8VwEILSAB/)

Tacos of Tacos Jalapa in Sunnyvale, CA

(Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTDFQuvJhgT/)

Chicken Soup of B N Chicken in Santa Clara, CA

(Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTDtOeRFf0t/)

 

Sunflower in the sky

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Sunset in New Mexico

The sun! It sets! Or, more correctly, the Earth's revolution about its axis has moved me to a position where I am no longer able to see the sun.

...and this could very well be my last post on Instagram via 3G ever, since my carrier is shutting down its 3G network later this year.  I wonder how the 5G will replace it if coverage isn't quite to the 3G equivalent yet.  Looks like a lot more roaming.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSx0DStsKud/

So many meat choices at Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs

Buffalo, Elk, Chicken, Rattlesnake, Rabbit, Boar, Ostrich, Antelope and even Brats (and of course cow too) all on the menu.  Mine was a very tasty Southwest Buffalo with Drunk Pirate topping.

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Mount Evans Day Trip

It's been a long time coming.  The shutdown in 2020 prevented plans, and then stuff going on in 2021 delayed plans again.  However, Allie and I have finally made the drive to the highest paved road (and subsequently, the highest paved parking lot) in North America!  We decided to take Joie and Toebzilla with us as well.  Even though the drive can be a bit nerve-racking, especially near the top, the experience was great once we reached the summit.  I'm glad we were able to visit the summit together.  The weather was clear and the temperature was nearly perfect (not too hot or too cold).  It was a great way to beat the 100+°F temps in the Denver area for the day (at least until we returned home).  

A goat is going to goat. This mama goat took to the high ground to protect her kid from the tourist and their leashed dogs.   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CR4wiSrF23Q/ 

Here's Allie with our leashed critters near the 14,265' summit of Mount Evans (and not near the protective mama goat).  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CR4yniAl1sU/

Near the top of the summit, this marmot looked upset at the tourist at first, but then kept posing for us.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CR4x1xgl6b2/

Allie with our critters at Summit Lake Park on the drive back down from Mount Evans Summit.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CR47mHRlUwa/

OK, adding one more from today, of me, at Mount Evans Summit with the great distance in the background. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CR5ZXwzFmyp/

Nothing escapes the notice of these two

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Mexican Food this authentic should be illegal outside of Mexico

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Mexican Food this authentic should be illegal outside of Mexico. OMG this is awesome, and in Denver Metro Area of all places! Great margarita too!
 

It's been a minute since we've been to a Shake Shack

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Best Softshell Crab We've Had In The Region

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Glowing with the brightness of the 🌞

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Found in the wild at the mall (slice of life)

 

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Slice of Life movie: http://sliceoflifefilm.com/

Suburban bird of prey tries out a new hunting style - Hide-and-seek

This suburban predator is trying out a new hunting technique called Hide-and-seek!  However, the tasty bunnies that are hiding from him don't seem to want him seeking them.  This was recorded a couple of days ago in Colorado, of course.

Several great places around town this week

Awesome desserts at Mango Mango Dessert in Glendale, CO

Delicious street tacos and Mexican Coke at Bartaco in Boulder, CO

Authentic Banh Mi and Boba at Paris Banh Mi Cafe in Broomfield, CO

Trail 3 - Hike, Hiking and then something else

I recently purchased a book called 60 Hikes within 60 Miles for Denver and Boulder.  The book includes 60 parks and paths for hiking, including various skill levels from Easy to Moderately Hard.  It's not a comprehensive book of every hiking or walking trail in the Denver region.  What I like about the book, though, is that many of the trails are full loops, with little to no backtracking.  I prefer loops.

Sixty is an achievable number.  I could conceivably hike every trail in the book with a reasonable effort.  I'm not going to try to hike 60 trails in 60 days.  Instead, the attempt will be to hike all 60 trails over the next few years.  I've already hiked some of the trails before.  For those, I'll only count them if I hike them again.  All hikes will be journalled here, on my blog (at least the first attempt for each), with the assigned label of 6060Denver.

Today was the first day of this journey.  Allie and I hiked the trail at Bluff Lake Nature Center.  It's a very easy trail, listed as trail #3 (not a ranking), within the Denver (Including Foothills and Plains) section.  Though we are in Spring, the area is still a bit bare.  There are no leaves on the trees; and the grass and shrubbery are still brown.  The day was partly cloudy, with plenty of sun.

We did see a few prairie dogs, including one critter that vocalized very clearly that we should leave him alone.  We obliged, though we did take a couple of photos from a distance.  

There were also some geese, including this watchman on the side of the trail.

Afterwards, we explored Stanley Marketplace, about a mile West in Aurora, CO.  For lunch, we tried the restaurant Annette for brunch.   Though the food was good, there were some distracting quirks, such as very small portions for beverages (like, smaller than what one might expect for "child size"), and no refills for iced tea.  Main course prices were about right for the quantity and quality of each dish.

Things that aren't happening right now

There's a lot of things not happening right now due to covid-time. For me, I've not seen family in a year.  However, it seems there's many who are actually planning gatherings for Thanksgiving.  I hope many reconsider, especially in light of the recent surge in both COVID-SARS-2 cases and related hospitalizations.

Allie and I were lucky to be able to visit Sydney, Australia late last year.  Even still, the Australian fires, which kicked off this crappy year in late 2019 and early 2020, were already starting to consume large regions.  The fires got much worse after we returned home from our vacation.

Allie did get a chance to visit family in Asia in February.  She was very lucky to get back home before things got covid-crazy.  Since then, we've been keeping mostly to ourselves.  Multiple plans to spend time with friends and family were cancelled.  We have no plan to meet other people until covid-time is over.  

That's not to say we've been hiding indoors as shut-ins.  Face masks and copious amounts of the appropriate hand sanitizer are always ready for our visits to the store and other necessary locations.  I've also been working from home almost 100% of the time, only going into the office (after site approval) a couple of times to access specific stuff on my work desktop computer or paperwork at my desk.

I am weary of the need to keep vigilant against the nasty virus.  However, out of love for my neighbor (and of course, family members), my resolve is not weakened.  

Month	Event
January	Australia fires
February	Africa locust plague begins
March	COVID-SARS-2 explodes
April	Relatively minor events
May	George Floyd's horrific murder
June	Worldwide protests about George Floyd's murder
July	Multiple natural disasters in Asia
August	Beirut explosion
September	Western US fires
October	Terror attacks in France
November	Massive COVID-SARS-2 resurgence
December	Arecibo Observatory collapse
January 2021	Riot on Capitol Hill

Journalization of life

When I started this blog 18.5 years ago, it was used as a true log or journal of my life.  I slowly transitioned away from this for various reasons.  The biggest reason is that a publically available record of your life can reveal things which may be useful to use against you in one way or another, by both people you know and people you don't know.  Beyond that, the world is different today than it was in the early aughties.  Another reason is that Facebook took over many of the duties of life-record without all the work of building my own content from scratch every time I wanted to post something.  Facebook is still not good for long-form or detailed accounts of events.  For that, blog remains the superior platform for recording my view of events in writing.

Even still, there is value in providing an online journal of one's life.  For me, and most humans, memories fade.  Specific memories are still noodling around in our heads, but they are buried underneath millions of other noodles. I didn't realize the importance of this until recently, when I was going over my blog's history.

Reading the past posts reminded me of events, and even just average days from my past.  In fact, I ran across a couple of posts that describe things that I don't remember at all now, similar to how no-one remembers most of the first two years their life but there's those embarrassing baby photos that your parents pull out from time to time.  

Posting about my life doesn't generate traffic like my posts about life in our Universe or beeper codes, but that's not the real point of this blog anyway. I'll still post about things I find interesting in the same manner as before.  However, I'll try to post a bit more about my daily life too (more than just Instagram photos).  I've actually started doing this since September this year.  I hope to do it even more often.

Toebzilla and Joie on a walk downtown. Nothing is going to escape their attention.

 

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