NAY-cha

Ya like NAY-cha? I do, I think, although I look at it a lot more than I am actually in it. We really liked it Wednesday night when we watched the lunar eclipse.

This is our friend Jay's photo. He's an amateur astronomer (maybe more than any other science, lots of important recent astronomy discoveries come from amateurs) and it's really fun to look at the skies through his telescope.

This thing started around 8:30 at night and by 10 it was fully eclipsed and a kind of deep red color, reflecting the sun on the other side of the planet. Neat! I was sorry we didn't have a dog or a cat to watch go crazy, although a friend with two dogs said they didn't react at all. She was bummed. When we talked about the eclipse she said, You can understand why they might have gone nuts centuries ago, before they knew what was happening scientifically. To see the moon suddenly darken, and go red! Holy kaboly!

Yesterday we had lotsa snow all day, so I went to work, natch. Dave drove me and I hitched a ride home and it was sloooooow going. We had company -- Dave's cousin Ian and his wonderful wife and son, what a cutie! Thanks for coming, guys, great to have you -- and Dave cooked a wonderful meal of Puerto Rican pork chops, plantanos, and rice and beans, a la Daisy. (Her cookbook is one of the reasons I felt secure moving away from Brooklyn; we really loved eating Puerto Rican and Dominican food in the city and now I can cook it, more or less). Yum!

And I made a crisp with the peaches, blueberries, and raspberries, which we had with vanilla ice cream. I'm in that, we-have-to-eat-up-our-frozen-fruit-before-it's-time-to-pick-more mode.

Anyway, it snowed late into the night, a wonderful soft powder, and we woke with a winter wonderland outside our window. After our guests left we went cross-country skiing. So here's the City Slicker part: We or at least I didn't realize that the weather warming up considerably would mean the snow would be really wet and sticky and skiing would be more like walking on boards than sliding and gliding. Plus, we were skiing on the bike path by the bridge and after we crossed the river, lovely, lots of pigeons, ice floes, pretty sky, we found ourselves skiing alongside route 9 and all the rushing cars. Idyllic -- not.

So, note to self: Go skiing earlier in the day (although we were proud we got out before noon), and do not go to the river part of the path! Go into the woods. Go to a golf course. It's fine to ride your bike alongside route 9 for a mile or two; it goes by quick and soon you are in the woods. But skiing's a lot slower and there I was, trying to motivate Lily the Drama Queen ("I can't go another step! I've fallen and I can't get up! I'm hungry, starving! I have to pee, badly!" and the Oscar goes to...), with the charming highway 20 yards to my right.

Afterwards we went to that fish diner, Webster's? and had lunch. I had a nice piece of fresh haddock and Dave had fish and chips. Not that pricey, either. We don't do that too often. Then we came home and I helped Lily with her report on Abigail Adams.

So, oh well. The more I get outside and into this thing called NAY-cha, the more I am not so intimidated by it. I went snowshoeing a couple of weeks ago and while it was great to be alone in the woods, the strap kept falling off the back and the shoe slipping. I mean, what are you gonna do? I'm a city girl and I want to be outside more, enjoy it, be of it. I don't really know how to do that, isn't that ridiculous, but I like it when I do.

And you know, it really wasn't a big deal to go outside at 10 pm in the dead of February in my jammies and Crocs with just a sweatshirt to look at a glowing red full moon. It was fun, even, something to write home about. Or blog.