Autumnal Equinox & full Harvest Moon

Today, officially, autumn begins at 11:09 PM EDT (23:09). Not that I'll be able to tell from where I am living at the moment.

According to the online version of the Old Farmers' Almanac, "the autumnal equinox is defined as the point at which the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator from north to south. The celestial equator is the circle in the celestial sphere halfway between the celestial poles. It can be thought of as the plane of Earth's equator projected out onto the sphere. Another definition of fall is nights of below-freezing temperatures combined with days of temperatures below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The word equinox means "equal night"; night and day are the same length of time. The spring equinox is in late March. In addition to the equal hours of daylight and darkness, the equinoxes are times when the Sun's apparent motion undergoes the most rapid change. Around the time of the equinoxes, variations in the position on the horizon where the Sun rises and sets can be noticed from one day to the next by alert observers."

Tomorrow is the full moon known as the Harvest Moon. Hopefully I'll be able to see it without any cloud cover.

Autumn begins today

Summer is now officially over as of the time of this post. Yup, 17:19 EDT marks the Autumnal Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere ~ according to the Farmers Almanac, 2009 edition. It is depressing when my favorite season ends. But not nearly as depressing as the first day of winter.

such is life.

The best thing about autumn is that football season is in full swing on all levels. And that is good. Real good.

Spring is Here!!

Spring officially begins here in the Eastern United States at 01:48 EDT and I have to say that it's about time!!

Bye bye, winter!!

I love Spring.

Summer is better, but Spring is definitely a step in the right direction.

(Of course you realize that this post was post-dated ahead of the actual time of 1:48 AM, right? I'll happily be in z-z-z-z land by then. Check back once in a while today because I'll be adding more stuff as the day wears on with each entry in a different color and font.)

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Two book stories for you:

1) If you've read here long enough you'll know that I love going to bookstores but that I hate paying too much for the books I want to buy. Yesterday was no exception. I went in to Barnes & Noble to use up a gift card I had left over from Christmas, which had like $4.51 on it. I ended up spending over $50, but here's the kicker: One of the books I bought had a list price of $30. Subtract the discount from my Membership card and my price for the book dropped to $24. Not bad, I thought, until I got home and saw the exact same book here for $19.80!! So I ordered it and will be returning the copy I bought yesterday.

2) Most Saturday mornings, V, M and I go to Borders for the kids' story time. When I'm there I usually find a book to glance through while I'm waiting. About a month ago I was reading one of these books that I thought would be nice to own eventually, so I put it on my wish list at another store's web site (not Borders though because they are consistently on the high end with their prices). Two weeks ago I was looking over online what I wanted to get at the Warehouse Sale and happened to notice that the price for the exact same book at Amazon was around $9 lower. I emailed CBD to let them know of the wicked price discrepancy and included Amazon's link for reference. They sent me an email back thanking me for letting them know about the pricing issue. A few days later they sent me another email again thanking me for letting them know about the price problem and that they were going to send me a free copy of the book! Last Saturday my free book arrived in the mail(woo-hoo)! I love it when I get free stuff! It's not a big book, but hey... if you want to send me a free copy of a book I'm going to buy anyway and save me some money, who am I to argue? Seriously.

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In case you missed anything on BB9 this week, here are the recaps of episode 15, episode 16 and episode 17.

I've decided that I'm not going to read the spoiler blogs and such before the actual CBS shows, which I had been doing over the last week and a half or so. I like BB9 but am not addicted to it. I don't need to watch BBAD or subscribe to the 24/7 feeds to enjoy the show. I am surprised at the events that happened this week, with Sheila being taken off the block and being replaced by Matt and then with his eviction last night following James casting the deciding tie-breaker vote. Natalie is right to be angry at James the hypocrite for nominating and then evicting Matt after he promised Natalie he would not (as a condition of him winning the HoH instead of Natalie) and saying that your word is all you have in this game, then going back on it. I hope he gets voted out this week.

It will be interesting to see who new HoH Adam decides to nominate this week. I'm pretty confident it will not be Sheila, Ryan or Natalie. My guess is it will be either James or Chelsia and Josh or Sharon. I personally would like to see him nominate James and Chelsia. Neither one is my favorite but I'd love to see James get his comeuppance. Right now my favorite players are Sharon and Ryan. Sheila, Josh and James are my least favorite houseguests.

I wonder what Evel Dick from BB8 will do on the show next Tuesday?

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This speech is a great example of why I'll cast my vote in November for Barack Obama, assuming he'll win the Democratic nomination for President.

Marking the seasons

Today is the first day of autumn here in the United States. THe Autumnal Equinox officially began at 05:51 EDT this morning.

It's sad but my favorite season, summer, is over for another year. I do like fall, because of football season but on the same hand I don't like fall because the weather gets progressively colder. And we all know how much I looooove cold weather....

I'm also not a big fan of dead colored leaves once they've fallen off of the trees. Some foliage views are fantastic, but once you've seen one orange, yellow or red leaf, you've seen them all. And you definitely don't want to see the leaves once they turn a dead brown.