a possible aurora?

 So there was a huge solar storm/coronal mass ejection, and they were saying "much of North America will see an aurora borealis" here (and of course the rest of the world above a certain latitude or below a certain latitude).

I didn't think I would - I am roughly at the same latitude of Morocco, close to 30 degrees North.

But a mutual on Bluesky, who is on the Carolina coast, exhorted me to try.

Well, okay. I was in my pajamas but I put on shoes and stepped out on the porch. I had to turn off my porch light and at the streetlight on the corner.

Also,, you have to take a longer exposure picture; it's harder, I guess, for your eyes to pick it up. Which makes it hard because you have to keep the camera steady.

I got an initial, not very good picture. The dark blobs are my holly bush:

Well, maybe there's a LITTLE pink there, hard to tell. 

So I decided to try the backyard, which is away from the street lamp (even if the light on my garage was at my back, I didn't feel like going back in to turn it off. I would have if what I saw was more impressive). 

I had to use my cell phone flashlight - I don't like walking in the dark on my dodgy knee, and it's easy to roll an ankle on all the pecans that have come down on the drive. And the last thing I wanted to do was re-injure myself.

Yeah, MAYBE

All there is is some pink - no green or lavender like people further north were getting in their photos. But I guess I can see that I saw it. (I saw an aurora once before, almost 30 years ago, when I was up visiting my uncle's family at their beach house in Cathead Bay north of Traverse City).

Still,, it's something?

I was thinking this week what I lack, the thing that's been getting me down - back during the worst of the pandemic I referred to it as rat-cage enrichment: getting out to do something new and different. Like, going to a museum I've not been to, or going somewhere I've never been. Yes, there are the places to shop in Sherman, but that's kind of the same as it always was - what I want is something new, and an EXPERIENCE rather than the chance to buy more stuff. 

The complicating factor is that most things are far away (or are, for example, Dallas, a place I won't drive) and when you work a solid five (and sometimes part of a sixth) day a week, getting out to do things is hard.

I'll have to think of things. Part of the problem is there's a lot of emptiness (pasture land and Corps of Engineers land) around me, and not a lot of things, and I am programmed to not just drive without a clear goal. 

I mean, I suppose I could go to the farm store tomorrow if I get out of my meeting soon enough and see if they have any different vegetables I could eat, or go to the Amish store on Saturday morning. 

But one thing I do miss about living in a bigger area with more cultural stuff are the funny little museums (or the nice big museums with fun gift shops and rotating displays so you can keep going back and have new stuff to see).

I suppose lots of people live without that, but then a lot of those people have families to serve as distractions from the horrors of the world these days.

***

My yarn from North Carolina came. This is a shop in Ashville - Purl's Yarn Emporium - that I wrote about the other day

 

Two different sides because it is different. I *think* it will stripe but I'm not sure. I'll have to think about the best pattern for it - maybe just something with a cable down the front. Or maybe I make mitts out of it.