Eclipse day

Shot of the total solar eclipse sent by my sister from the Niagara region; this was taken at their home.  At 3pm the sky looked like night, and the street lights came on.  Isn’t that awesome?  In Ottawa, the sky got crepuscular (isn’t that a really cool word?  Means “like twilight” but sounds so much eerier!) and it looked like dusk, nowhere near as dark as in Niagara.  The sun was on the wrong side of my building, so I was in no danger of looking directly at it.  We watched the live coverage to see the corona and all the other super cool effects without the risk of eye damage.  Jerry spent the day moving from one lap to another, seeking cuddles and peering.  He was in that kind of mood all day, then he had an attack of the zoomies once the eclipse had passed over and the light returned to normal.  Don is currently clanging around in the kitchen, doing I don’t know what, but I’m hoping it has something to do with making dinner… He’d turned on the TV coverage early to not miss any of it.  He pretends to be all unconcerned, but he was really quite excited by it.

I think that the after effects of treatment take a couple of days.  Thankfully nothing major, just extra sleepiness.  I experimented today and had some korma chicken for lunch.  I haven’t had anything spicy in a very long time, and while korma is quite mild (and somewhat sweet with the raisins) it’s also more spiced than what I’ve been eating for a while.  I started to feel full pretty quickly, even though I had a smallish portion, so now we’ll see how my system reacts.  

I had a conversation with someone today on the subject of needing a level of certainty and coping with fear.  There’s a part that relates to me and my situation, which we’ll discuss another time, but the rest relates to unusual events and whether or not they affect humanity.  In the period leading up to today’s eclipse there was a lot of buzz, both in the legitimate media and in the bizarre world of conspiracy theorists in which everything is out to get you.  Someone sent me a posting claiming that this eclipse was a “sign of the end of times” and the “beginning of the apocalypse” because of some numerological, mystical stretches of the imagination in which celestial events write in Hebrew across the land.  I don’t understand, personally, how it is that all the “prophetic” interpretations of the book of Revelations are all centred over the continental USA, or how modern USA is the equivalent of ancient Israel, but those are things for people with other interests to pretend to explain.  There were people who thought that this eclipse would unleash worldwide cataclysms… in spite of the obvious evidence that eclipses happen every 18 months or so somewhere on Earth, and they don’t cause fires, floods, famines or the plagues of Egypt.  So the crazy pops up and the hysteria starts up (accompanied by out of context Bible verses) claiming that God is about to destroy the world because of men having babies out of wedlock or something.  There seems to be a need to blame out of the ordinary happenings for a lack of control in their own lives.  I have never supported the “blame God” crowd, who use religion as a crutch for being cruel, and when they metamorphose into the “God is coming for  you” crowd, I turn off completely.  

Well, the eclipse is over, the world hasn’t ended in fire and cloud, and the uprising of the morlocks/zombies/robots/molemen remains suppressed, so I think I’ll go see what there is for dinner (I’m still pretty full from lunch) and start thinking about having to adjust to a new support worker, as my regular one is again ill, and nobody has arrived yet.  I don’t want to lose her, but I’ll have to see if she’s fit to work!  Good night!