We got soaked today. I think we were even under a tornado warning for a while. I heard the sirens go off around 11 AM, but the weather radar showed that the most severe weather was located a few miles to the north of us and was headed in a northeasterly direction. It goes without saying that Dawn didn't get a walk this morning. Neither did I. It could have been a lot worse though. The house is dry, no trees fell, and there are no signs of a roof leak. Dawn is calm as well. She's the first Dalmatian we've had that isn't bothered by storms.
Since I was housebound for most of the day, I started trying to process a few of last week's Milky Way photos. I had calibration frames and enough images to stack. Unfortunately, the image I wanted to process has trees in the foreground. Part of the procedure is creating a mask that separates the sky from the foreground. Creating a mask with a lot of bare tree limbs poking up into the sky can be time consuming and frustrating. I took my time and did the best I could. When I was finished and stacked the calibration frames and my eight Milky Way images together I discovered that some parts of the picture were much better and other parts were worse. The boundary between the trees and the sky didn't look completely natural. Actually, this part of the photo sucked. Some of the stars weren't the right color either. On another rainy day I'll start over and process this image again. There's got to be a better way to create a foreground mask.
Around 3 PM, the weather radar showed that there was going to be a break in the storm for about an hour. This was plenty of time to walk Dawn, so we put her harness on and off we went. We didn't get far. Dawn either didn't like her paws getting wet or the smell of rain in the air. We had only gone a few hundred yards before she froze and refused to walk any further. It's such a shame that she's this way. She was really eager to go on a walk when we were in the house.
My own rain phobias are limited to roof leaks, so I had no problem continuing to walk after Dawn and Janet returned to the house. I thought that I could check the weather radar on my phone from time to time and turn around before I got wet. The bands of rain were always nearby, but kept moving to the north or south of me. I didn't walk as far as I usually do, but I managed to complete four miles and made it home completely dry. On a rainy day, that's a win. Oddly, my feet didn't hurt at all today. Go figure.
I paid some online bills this afternoon and that was enough to quell any thoughts I might have had about getting the little telescope that mysteriously became available just before I left for the observatory. There were 16 scopes available when I first noticed it was back in stock. Now there is only one. I refuse to be tempted. I'm sure this telescope or something even better will be back in stock before I have a chance to return to the observatory again. Who knows. If my processing skills don't improve, I might lose interest in this current obsession entirely.
Tomorrow we visit the rescue Dalmatians again. I'm not sure how many we have at the kennel now, but we'll find out when we get there. On Tuesday, I have my semi-annual physical. I have a whole new batch of aches and pains to report, but I'm sure my doctor will tell me that I'm still pretty healthy for my age. There is no magic wand for staying youthful. I try to stay active and eat healthy food. What more can you do?
Liberty is today's Dalmatian of the Day |
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