Tivo and the productive day

[altivo]

Well, mostly. Thanks to the end of daylight silliness time, the day started an hour earlier by the clock than it would have otherwise. I wasn't sleepy any more and got up. Got lots of regular and not so regular things done, including planning dinner ahead using the crock pot, cleaning stalls, and picking up my show entries from the gallery as today was the last day of the show in Woodstock. What I didn't get started on until quite late was writing, though I spent some time pondering character names and where to start. Nonetheless, I have over a thousand words down now and probably will add more before giving up for the night.

The nearly full moon that was hidden by clouds last night has been visible tonight in the gaps between clouds, extremely bright and large. As we were putting horses to bed for the night, a flock of geese passed overhead making quite a lot of noise. It was already quite dark, and I couldn't resist bursting into song: "Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, These are a few of my favorite things..." All it got me though, was a dirty look from Gary. "Not my favorite," he said. "It means snow is coming soon." I kept quiet rather than pointing out that I like snow too, at least at the beginning of the season. Right now it's too warm for snow in any case.

Argos has the loom about halfway threaded now, and I expect he'll start weaving within a day or so. Yet another potential distraction from the writing job at hand. Funny how my opening volley depicts the protagonist of the story sitting at his desk and trying to focus on a writing assignment while his attention wanders all over the place. Or maybe not so funny.

Anyway, it's November. The Beaver Moon (time to set traps) is coming in just three days. Meanwhile, I need to get busy writing.

Comments

[hrrunka]

Yes, we got our extra hour a week earlier. Sunday started early. Stuff got done. Then the realisation that evenings are going to be dark for a few months started to sink in...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think its' dark here, but you get it even worse than we do, eh?

[hrrunka]

Aye. It's just after 5pm now, and dark outside. There'd be a bit of twilight left in the sky if it wasn't 8/8 cloud. This time of year sunrise is getting later, and sunset earlier, by a minute or two each day. Tomorrow's sunrise is at 06:53 and sunset at 16:32.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sunrise 0623 and sunset 1644 for Chicago today. The big difference appears to be the rising time rather than the setting time, which isn't what I'd expected.

[hrrunka]

The relative skew will be something to do with your east-west placement within your time zone, I guess. I'm about three miles east of the Greenwich Meridian.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I guess. My spherical trigonometry and astrometry class was, lessee, fall term of 1968. Twisting my head around that geometry is not so easy.

True and obvious that east or west variation from the meridian of a given time zone moves the time of sunset forward or back. I'm about 50 miles west of Chicago here, and maybe 15 miles north. Chicago is already west of 85 degrees, the meridian for Central Time here.

Or, to be more precise, my home is at about 42N15 latitude and 88W37 longitude, give or take a mile or two. So I'm 3.5 degrees west of the time zone meridian.

What seemed odd to me was that we have a full 30 minute difference in time of sunrise, but only 10 minutes or so in sunset.

[hrrunka]

Hmmm... 15 degrees is an hour, so your local time is a bit under 15 minutes behind Central Time, while mine is a few seconds ahead of Greenwich. The skew's not as much as it first seems, but it's still present.