Eclipse Day Has Arrived!

Wow, that was incredible!

It's 2:20 as I write this right now, and the eclipse is still happening. It's almost over (23 minutes left), but the moon is still passing over the sun.

At 11:48 this morning is when it got started. I went outside, and sure enough, you could see a tiny blip over the sun where the moon was!

As we neared totality, the temperature dropped a few degrees as they said it would, and it was noticeably more comfortable outside. Today was hot and humid, but it was amazing that the clouds stayed away for the most part. Initially the forecast wasn't looking good, there was a good chance it would be cloudy. But pretty much the whole time it was clear, and though there were clouds in the sky, they weren't blocking the view.

So initially, as stated in a previous blog, I wasn't planning to take a photo during totality. Or any photos, really, since I would need a special filter the rest of the time. That all changed on Friday...

On Friday, my supervisor sent out an email to myself and other photogs in the company saying if we hadn't gotten filter material from him, he still had some. I didn't realize he had any! I ran by work and picked some up, in case I changed my mind.

I cut it out and got it in place yesterday, set my camera up to the specific settings I wanted it at, and was ready to test it out. I wasn't sure if I'd get any images or not, but as the moon was moving over the sun I figured I'd give it a try.

So this morning, I got it set up on a tripod, out on the deck, and started testing things out. Amazingly, it worked! Not only was I getting images to show up, they were actually GOOD. You can even see some sun spots.

As the morning progressed, and my photos were turning out far better than I expected, Jarrod pointed out that maybe I should rethink things. Ahead of totality, we could remove the filter, prep my camera, and get it all in place so once it happened, all I needed to do was press a button. So that's what we did, and it was nice having Jarrod here to help me with it, otherwise it surely would have taken longer.

In the final 5 minutes of the partial, it was noticeably dark, in the middle of the day! I had Pink Floyd playing in the background (because I'm a nerd haha) and as the final song on Dark Side of the Moon, "Eclipse," played, we were watching and watching as the moon seemed to speed up to cover the sun. Then the glasses went black, and when I took them off, it was incredible.

Almost there!

The sky was a beautiful dark blue, like at dusk. I was trying to take it all in, looking at the horizon to see the colors of the sunrise, and also keeping my eyes to the sky. I snapped my pictures, checked the viewfinder to see they were in the frame and all was good, and stared in awe. I almost cried, my eyes were tearing up I was so moved. The feeling this provokes in indescribable, and it's different for everyone. And there are some that aren't really impressed, too.

It still went by quick. I wish I could have stared at it longer, but time is fleeting, right? If nothing else, witnessing this proves just that: 2 minutes and 28 seconds flies by way faster than you think. As I tried to revel in the last moments, it became clear the moon was moving away, the diamond ring was about to appear, and it was time to put our glasses back on, and to recover the camera.

I took a few more photos as the moon continued on, but soon decided to take my camera down. I was excited to download my photos to my computer. Though they looked good on the viewfinder, sometimes it's another story once you look at them in larger scale.

But they all turned out amazing!

I am so glad I did get those photos. Taking a photo is a very technical thing. There is planning and there are so many settings you can change and tweek to get the perfect photos, essentially: it takes hard work to get it all right. It's hard to explain that to the average person when you just say "Hey I got this photo!" but that's part of the excitement and, I don't know, accomplishment behind it. These images were taken by ME, not someone else, and that is very special to me.

Today is something I will never forget. I might even try to travel for the next one in 2024, to experience it again. It will pass through southern Missouri, and that's a fairly short drive compared to most. The Missourian got a photo of some people here from France, from Spain, and my doctor had a couple staying with her from Holland to see this. I was skeptical about the crowds they kept claiming would come, but I guess it's true. And I guess you could count me in that club too, if we do travel to Cape in 7 years.

What an amazing day!

My photo!

#dogsofinstagram

Storytime!

So, Josie has her own Instagram account, if you didn't know that. She has over 600 followers from all over the world, most of them being cairn terriers like her. I know, it's mega dorky and probably lists me in the crazy-dog-mom column, but it's actually quite fun. It's hard to explain, but after a while, you kind of start to feel a connection with these other dog owners. Some dogs have actually started sending each other postcards in the mail. Back in May, I actually met a woman from California who is a sweet lady and owner of 4 cairn terriers (who follow Josie, and we follow them too.) It all came about because in one of her photos, she mentioned they were prepping for a trip to Purina Farms for a big event. I messaged her saying I lived nearby, and she wanted to meet up! It was great! 

Today, one of Josie's Scottish cairn pals had a photo saying they were raising money for cystic fibrosis.

Record scratch... what!? Really? I had to reload the picture twice to make sure my eyes weren't making things up.

They had a link in the profile for their little charity type thing. I sent them a private message and got a reply from the dog's mom, who has CF. She was pretty excited I had reached out.

But wow. Like, what are the odds? How amazing, that I would 'meet' someone from Scotland with CF via my dog's Instagram account? Crazy.

Favorite short of the day

I found this video and wanted to share. It's a sweet little animated short. I won't preface it too much, other than it brings up some great questions to ponder. What does work/life balance mean? Where do creatives fall in a world that isn't built for them? How do you keep that creative spark alive while still being a responsible adult? How do we unknowingly foster, or squash, creativity in children?

Enjoy! And don't forget to stop and smell the roses, appreciate the art and beauty around you, and thank the artsy weirdos in the world who strive to keep it that way!

(If video does not show up in the email, click on the blog title to see it.)

OMG You Guys!

I just found out today that we here in our little city will be in the pathway of a TOTAL Solar Eclipse next year, the one happening on August 21, 2017.

What an awesome, once in a lifetime event! The last total solar eclipse to cross the continental United States from coast to coast like this one happened in 1918... so yeah, kind of a big deal.

If you weren't aware, I'm a bit of a space junkie. I have always loved space, it was one of my three topics I was really interested in as a kid (the other two being Native Americans and the Titanic.) My favorite planet is Jupiter, and I felt sad the day they announced Pluto got demoted from being a planet.

Pathway of the entire eclipse.

Now that I'm older, I still love space and I am constantly in awe with the news and discoveries coming from the universe, like this year when scientists announced they had proven the existence of gravitational waves, which is a theory by Einstein. They constructed this massive detector with lasers and math beyond my comprehension to measure the waves, which are ripples in space time, hoping they might find one, and just for like a nano-nano-nano-second of time they had a blip on the charts which thus proved that indeed a wave had passed over the earth from a black hole that formed 1.29 billion years ago. Like, does that not just totally blow your mind? Mind officially blown.

OK, back to eclipse stuff. I keep saying total solar eclipse because that "total" part is a big deal. Partial solar eclipses are more common, where the moon blocks out part of the sun's light, making the sun look like a glowing cookie with a bite out of it. Total eclipses are rare, and even less common during daylight when it will be noticeable, like the one coming next year. This is the kind where the entire sun will be blocked, you will only see a ring of light around the moon, and the land will be in total darkness during the middle of the day. How. friggin'. cool.

In our particular spot (this is important) the sun will be completely covered for 2 minutes and 28 seconds, quite a long time. The longest duration is 2 minutes 40 seconds, and that will happen near Makanda, Illinois. So we've got a nice long chunk of time to observe the eclipse. And if my calculations are correct, it will happen from 1:15-1:18 p.m.

You can see the path of the eclipse in the map below. The red line is the central path, the blue lines are the limits of where you'll be able to see it. As you can see, we are very near the central path; St. Clair and Leslie are nearly dead on, St. Louis proper is just out of reach.

So that's my excitement for the day. I'm marking my calendar. Maybe I'll listen to some Pink Floyd. Space nerds from all over the world will travel to the US to see this. We just need the weather to cooperate. How disappointing would it be if it was raining that day?!

OneRepublic Song "I Lived"

Yesterday the band OneRepublic released their new music video for a song called "I Lived" and they feature a boy with CF. Could this be? Could my less-known disease actually be out there, in a famous band's music video? Yep, it's the official video, not like some lesser secondary video they did just for charity. The kid featured is named Bryan, and he's 15, and he's ridden his bike around Colorado raising money for CFF. He also hopes to be the first person with CF to get into the Olympics playing hockey for the USA. Go Bryan!

It's a nice song, and it might just be my new theme song :). It made me cry so much, but it also made me smile.

Anyways, I've included it here right below this. Watch it, enjoy it, cry like I did, and thanks for reading.

Ice Buckets

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard of or seen the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos. My Facebook feed is slammed with videos right now of people of all ages doing this. The TV news has been showing videos as well, ones that celebrities and presidents do. And maybe like you, I complained about it.

Last night I was telling my husband "You know, I'm really tired of seeing these things." And tonight, I'm not even exaggerating, every. single. post. in my Facebook feed that was from a person and not a news source was an Ice Bucket Challenge.  I've seen them pop up from time to time for months, but suddenly this thing is literally EVERYWHERE! And I might be wrong, but I don't think in the very beginning that they were tied to a specific charity, because I definitely saw someone take an ice "bath" for CF.

I had a small bone to pick with the whole thing in part because it completely plays off of the vanity of Facebook. Like, do we really have to dump buckets of ice water on our heads to donate to charity? Why can't we just donate to charity? In private? Without telling people?

On another note, while we're talking charities and causes, there are millions of people in the world who are without clean water, and here we all are dumping it on our heads wasting it. Depending how you feel about that, you could easily be upset over that aspect.

Then last night, our local Orange Leaf store issued the challenge to my workplace. This morning we had a quick meeting about when and where we should do this, how we could try and get other employees to join in. And then I found myself researching what ALS is and watching a very emotional video of a 26-year-old man who was diagnosed with ALS. And he was talking about it and how much it scares him because it runs in his family, and then you see him taking care of his mother who is in, what I would guess to be, the late stages of the disease. It was heartbreaking.

I get it now. If I (via my workplace) had not been issued this challenge, I would never have done my research to find out what ALS is. And I never would have donated either. Yeah, I've heard of "Lou Gehrig's Disease" but I didn't actually know what it was. These videos are talking points, they're "fun", and the exact thing that I did is the entire point: to get people talking and educating themselves about it, and in turn hopefully donating towards it.

The skeptic in me still wonders if everyone who does this is really making a donation, or if they are just making the silly video and moving on. Or maybe they intend to, but the next day they forget about it and never do? But clearly it's effective, as donations keep climbing to numbers the ALSA has never seen before.

And you know, if the CF Foundation ever comes out with a campaign that goes viral and raises a ton of money, I will rejoice at that. CF affects nearly 30,000 people in the USA, and it is estimated there are 30,000 people in the USA with ALS. So we're kind of on the same level as far as how common the diseases are and, I would imagine, how much funding and attention they receive. But for now, I'm happy for the ALS community that their cause is getting the attention they hoped for. I donate to yours, you donate to mine, eh? :)

Meeting People from All Over the World

Today I worked the time station with my dad for the Race Across America (RAAM). I didn't know what to expect or what I'd be doing, really. What it turned out to be was a bit of standing/sitting around, talking to the other people there while waiting for crews and riders to arrive. Then when we got to do our 'job', our 'job' consisted of basically being a CSR: get them water, Gatorade, soda, snacks, direct them where they need to go, etc. It was fun, and I'm sure I'll try to do it again next year because the people you encounter are what make it interesting. I've always admired and been fascinated with people who just up and take a cross country tour, or backpack across Europe, always thought it would be so cool to see the normality and beauty of a place like that. Recently, we had a monk walk through town on his Peace Walk. He started on the west coast, I believe, and is making his way across the country. Just walking, all day, hoping to show the world that it's really not that bad. I think that's awesome and I applaud the beautiful people who have the ability and guts to do these kinds of things.

Today I talked to and met people from Germany, Italy, Croatia, Australia, and Great Britain. How cool is that? And we weren't that busy, most of the people doing RAAM will be coming through on Wednesday and Thursday. Surprisingly, the people from Britain were the hardest to understand. I think it's because they talk so quickly, and even though it's English, it's heavy with an accent, and therefore hard to catch everything they say. The other Europeans spoke slower, trying to form their thoughts in English so they could communicate what they needed to. Basically, I found myself saying "ya" (or "ja") a lot.

So a quick rundown of how this works so my further stories will make sense: There is the cyclist, riding the race, and his crew. All of these people are in need of food, water, a shower, a break, sleep, or just to stand up for a while. Most of what we dealt with today were crew members.

There were two Germans there for a long time, and they were part of a guy's own media crew. One of them was walking around with his camera for a while, snapping photos here and there, and I asked him if he wanted to take my photo. He did, and I was able to use a tiny bit of my German from high school (even if it was only "Ich bin Jamie") but still, it made him chuckle and smile. He said "You speak Deutsch?" I said "A little, two years of classes in high school."

The Croatia team made me laugh the most; the crew pulled in, we greeted them, asking what they need. He said "No... no water, we haf food... we need... uh... ice cream!" Paradise is just within walking distance, so we pointed it out. "No, no... rider he is... very... delicate tastes... we need... this." And at "this" he pulled out a wrapper from a Blue Bunny Double Chocolate ice cream bar. Ha! So we pointed him to Schnucks, the grocery store, where he would surely find those.

Even though only two actual riders stopped by while I was there, it was neat. The first rider was from Great Britain, and he had a green mohawk. He had multiple tattoos full of maps and writing of his various races he's done before. This is him in the photo from the Facebook page. 

The other guy was Croatian and he seemed so happy to be there. Most time stations are a whole bunch of nothing, a gas station on the side of the road maybe. So coming by the one we have here, full of people, food, drinks, and a pool, is a welcome relief. Go world!

Duck on the dashboard of the crew van.
Love it.

Alma Mater

This evening I drove down to Maryville. I went for the Senior Show, which is a design showcase of the senior graphic design students' work. I like to go if I can, the work is always fresh and inspiring. I also go to see my former professors; it's kind of like seeing an old friend every year or two.

As I was nearing the school on Hwy. 141, seeing the lit buildings behind the trees, I was reminded of the anxiousness I'd feel when I was returning as a student: driving back on a Sunday evening after a weekend at home, just ready to get back, finish homework, and get settled in my room again. 

As I pulled onto campus I was greeted by construction and reminded Oh yeah, they tore my old dorm down. They demolished Duchesne Hall, which is where I spent the first 1.5 years of my college career. I say 1.6 because for 0.4 of my sophomore year, I lived in an apartment with three other girls. Things fell apart and two of us moved out by Christmas. We lived at the bottom of a hill and I left partly because of the drama and mostly because when I wasn't feeling good, it was very difficult for me to walk up that hill to class, to lunch, to anything. 

As I took a right, I then passed Gander and remembered the first time I toured the place. It was a Friday and hardly anyone was around because, lo and behold, most of the students don't have class on Fridays. But it was a nice day and I liked the small size of the school instantly. It seemed like it was going to be a good fit, and ended up being the only school I visited.

I drove past Cedar, my old apartment, where I lived with two different girls two different years. Ami turned out to be the best roommate I could have asked for, and then Ashley turned out to be completely absent all the time and went home to Gerald every weekend. I wonder what they're both up to these days.

As I continued on, I remembered going to the chapel late at night to play on their wonderful baby grand piano. By senior year, turned out I wasn't the only one who did this as I had a couple times where I ran into people. I wonder if people still do that... I wonder if the chapel is still unlocked all the time...

And then I finally reached the Art & Design Building, the ADB as I called it back then (I was a pioneer in shortening phrases into series of letters, lol). That is one building on campus that hasn't changed, and I doubt it will very much, there's not much room to add on. I was able to talk with all four of my design professors that I had for most of my design education and they were all happy to see an alum. The first thing one of them said to me was "I love your hair!" I spoke with another for a while as to how I'm doing and what I'm up to; we need to do lunch together sometime.

The work was good and colorful as always. I saw a few other alums hanging about too. There were three students that really stood out to me. Lots of hexagons this year too, haha. But I was really caught up in one student's capstone project. He called in BeFriend, and it was a hypothetical program that would work with the ASPCA to place pets with people who need them, as in the lonely, the elderly, anyone who could really benefit from having a pet. It's funny, because just two days ago I was thinking of this exact thing and wondering if there was a program out there like that... and here it was! It had everything. Beautifully designed, too. I can attest to how much joy my dog has brought to my life, and therefore I am a big supporter of people getting pets for therapeutic reasons.

I talked with the designer and told him all of this and that I loved his project. I stopped short of pulling out my phone and showing him a picture of my dog (I didn't want to seem too crazy.) I remember how much it meant to discuss your work with other people when I was in his shoes five years ago (five years? Holy cow) and I don't think he was just being polite while he was talking to me. He was passionate about it and I gave him a heart-felt good luck and told him she should really pursue it, even if it's just locally. He thanked me for the kind words, and I really hope he can do something with it.

Speaking of my pet, I should probably stop writing this blog and go play with her. I know she's dying to play ball. Tootaloo blog fans!

The Best Thing I've Read This Week

I am starting a new recurring Friday/Saturday post that will feature an article that I've found this week that, well, I just really wanted to pass along to everyone! Topics range, but sometimes there are some great things that I want to share.

Today's first selection is from a fellow CF girl. She writes about flu shots and instead of writing a nearly-identical post, I thought I'd just point you to her great words about why you should get a flu shot.

Not your old cookies

Thanks to Print Magazine on Twitter, I was introduced to: Helvetica cookie cutters.

Being a design/type nerd, I think these are pretty cute. If I ever brought them to a party, I doubt anyone would really get the significance, but if it was a party with designers I assume the effect would be a little different. Move over old letter cookies, we have TYPEFACES for our letters! Haha!

You can see what I'm talking about here.