T Stands for Summer Solstice at Stonehenge - Part 2 Sunrise

A week or so ago, I learned that The English Heritage (they take care of historic sites in England) would host a live streaming of sunset and sunrise on the Summer solstice at Stonehenge via their Facebook page. Stonehenge is a neolithic monument and has been closed to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Visiting Stonehenge is on my bucket list, and this is probably the closest I'll come to a visit. Sunrise was at 4:50 AM  local time making it 11:50 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time, my time zone.

The feed went live around 11 PM my time. 2. June 2020

There was anticipation

As I had my late evening cup of tea around 8:30 PM, I wasn't particularly thirsty. I had a cup of ice water, just in case.

The English Heritage counted approximately 100,000 views of the live feed for the Solstice Sunset and less than half that number for the Solstice Sunrise. I guess people didn't like getting up so early or stay up so late.

It was so quiet and

the realization

that it was so foggy and

it was raining. 🤬

Color

me

disappointed.

The sun rose unseen from Stonehenge

and another day began. Better luck next year. I wonder how many sunrises have the stones witnessed?

This is the Summer Solstice Sunrise from 21. June 2019. Much more awe inspiring and impressive.

I made a garden kite to mark the occasion.

To learn more about Stonehenge and to take a virtual tour, you can visit The English Heritage Stonehenge site.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.

Who Do You Write Like?

Sandra from Sandra's Blog had this fun game the other day. Submit a sample of your writing, and the site will analyze your writing and match you to a famous author. I tried twice with 2 different writing samples and both times came up with Raymond Chandler. 

Go here if you want to play, and I know you do.

So, who do you write like?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Morning glories getting tall

Milkweed flowers

A bee enjoying the milkweed

Field of clover

Pole dancing

Peek-a-boo

I see you Little Bunny

The squirrel is king of the hill

Tomato vine

Pre-tomatoes

Huge squash leaves

which are crowding out the beans

Morning glories halfway up the trellis

Blossoms on the hydrangea. Count with me. One...

two...

three...

four, five..

six..

seven...

eight. Eight blossoms on the hydrangea. Twice as many blossoms as last year!

How does your garden grow?

Saturday Afternoon at the Movies

This idea came from a Facebook meme:

Over 10 days, post your 10 all time favorite films. What movie has really made an impact on you or what films can you watch over and over and never tire of? Post either the movie poster, DVD cover or even a screenshot on your timeline. No need to explain.

Only I had a hard time picking out just 10 movies so my favorites over the next few hundred Saturdays 😸 in semi-alphabetical order:me favorite films. What movie has really made an impact on you or what films can you watch over and over and never tire of? Post either the movie poster, DVD cover or even a screenshot on your timeline. No need to explain.

Only I had a hard time picking out just 10 movies so my favorites over the next few hundred Saturdays 😸 in semi-alphabetical order:

The Song of Bernadette (1943) Jennifer Jones, Vincent Price

If you haven't seen this movie, you might be able to find it on TCM and it may be available on YouTube

The Friday Five Good Things

Five good things that happened this week

1. A technician came to the house to service the printer.

2. Got a new oilcloth tablecloth for the computer table

3. Watched the live feed of sunrise and sunset from Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice

4. The weather station season changed from a pink tree to a green tree

5. The Young One and I played hairdresser and cut each other's hair. We didn't do a bad job.

How was your week?

Throwback Thursday - The Go Faster

The other day while booting up the computer, I got the notice that the an update was in progress. Seeing the blue progress bar made me laugh.

When I was a computer programmer, I worked for a small, software house. We wrote back office accounting programs (General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, etc.) for the banking industry.

At month end and year end certain reports had to be run. The computer had to crunch a lot of numbers and do lots of calculations to print these reports. Clients were usually told to leave the program running overnight and when they arrived in the morning, the reports would be printed.

One of the Bob's clients either was working late or had started the program and wasn't happy about seeing a blank screen. He asked Bob if  the program could "go faster." Bob told him he would work on the problem and have things ready for the next month end.

Bob had the client call him when the client was ready to run the end of month programs. The program started and the client was delighted to see flashing on his screen "Number of records processed" and a number that kept increasing. Bob told the client the program needed to run overnight and to go home. When he came in the next morning, the reports would be waiting.

Many of us had heard about Bob's Go Faster problem so we all asked what he had done. How could he make the computer crunch all the data and make the program run faster? The answer? He couldn't. But the client didn't want to hear that. So Bob added a patch in the program that would flash a number on the screen every time the program began a calculation and this number would increase until all the calculations had been performed.

"But Bob, that's not going to make the program run faster. That's going to slow the program down a little because it has to keep track of the number of files processed."

"I know that. You know that. The client is just happy to see the dancing baloney on the screen."

Wordy Wednesday

T Stands for Summer Solstice at Stonehenge - Part 1, Sunset

A week or so ago, I learned that The English Heritage (they take care of historic sites in England) would host a live streaming of sunset and sunrise on the Summer solstice at Stonehenge via their Facebook page. Stonehenge is a neolithic monument and has been closed to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Visiting Stonehenge is on my bucket list, and this is probably the closest I'll come to a visit. Sunset was at 9:26 PM local time making it 5:26 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time, my time zone.

The feed went live around 4 PM my time. 20. June 2020

Clouds began moving in. In the center, you can see one of the upright sarsen stones and on top a small projection, a tenon. The tenon along with a mortise (hole or groove) holds the lintel stones (horizontal stones) on the uprights.

While not much was going on, I went and got myself a cup of tea. On the right of my computer monitor, you can see the Comment area. People from all over the world were viewing the event. Some left comments mostly about where they were from, others thanking English Heritage for streaming the event, lots of  Blessed Be, ( Wiccan greeting offering good and positive things). Near the end of the event there were approximately 100,00 viewers.

There was no music. The only sounds were of the wind. At times it was eerily quiet and very meditative.

Besides leaving comments, people could also post emoticons. Here a stream of hearts.

 I was fascinated by the birds that flew in and made themselves home on the stones. Some of them were cawing so they were either crows or rooks, or both.

There are a lot of theories as to what Stonehenge is and what it was used for. A stone calendar, a worship site for Druids, a burial site, an ancestral site.

With all the clouds it was apparent that sunset would happen, but we wouldn't be able to see the sun set near the heel stone, a large sarsen stone aligned with sunset/sunrise on the Solstices.

I just loved the bird watching the sunset with the rest of us.

A depression filled with water in one of the smaller, fallen blue stones.

Day is done. Blessed be.

If it wasn't cloudy, this would have been a little what it would look like.

To learn more about Stonehenge and to take a virtual tour, you can visit The English Heritage Stonehenge site.

Next week: Summer Solstice at Stonehenge - Part 2, Sunrise.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.