Feather Cloud

I saw this while riding to my parents' house in Westford yesterday around 12:45pm.  I think it is perhaps a fallstreak cloud without the fallstreak hole.  Some people are saying its a "chemtrail" and others are saying it is an angel feather.  While I prefer the scientific explanation for clouds, I did hear that a young boy passed away around noon yesterday and many are taking comfort in this cloud.

Morning Mood

I have not written in this blog in a while because honestly only a couple of things have caught my eye lately that I was excited about and i already publicized them to death on Facebook. 

However, this morning there was something SUPER exciting out there!  

Now, I have been saying for weeks (months?) that I am going to get up early, and I mean really early like 5:00am, and take a walk.  I've been slacking on the walking because of construction blocking my ways and sheer laziness.  Somehow I am not ballooning up from sitting on my butt and eating bon bons all day but my back is starting to hurt again (weak thighs) and I am getting depressed.  

ANYWHOOOO  I actually DID get up at 5:15am today!  I had laid out my walking gear on the end of my bed *this is the key to success!* and when my iPod started alarming I contemplated going back to sleep but told myself "If you keep putting this off you are never going to do it!  Now get your lazy pudding butt out of bed and GO!"

So I did.  And it was so nice.  I forgot how I love walking early in the morning (haven't done it regularly since 2008), KMFDM in my headphones, especially this time of year when the sun is coming up early and everything has dew on it.  The birds are singing, and most people are not driving around yet.  It was slightly drizzly and only 57 degrees but no wind so it was delightful.  I took my husband's Pentax point and shoot with me just in case I saw something cool.  I didn't really see much and that camera just doesn't do it for me after almost 3 yrs with the Canon Rebel. 

Yeah, I just don't dig how these look.  But its better than nothing in a pinch I guess!

 

When I got home I decided to shower!  A morning shower!  That hardly ever happens.  I'm usually able to take one around 1:30pm when the kids are having their "rest" time.  I looked out the window before I jumped in and saw that the sunrise was looking very cool but I said "No, you need to shower and put yourself first not the camera".  That is hard for me to do.  When I was done I got out and started to get dressed.  I happened to glance out my West facing window in my bedroom and saw that the sky was really dark because the sun was breaking through to the east.  Then I caught a slice of heaven out of the corner of the window and threw on a shirt and raced downstairs.  I grabbed my camera, threw a battery in it, and ran outside barefoot.  

This may not sound earth shattering, but remember I have construction going on DIRECTLY in front of my house, which is very close to the road.  And I may have not had time to throw on certain undergarments.  Let's just say that construction stopped for just a moment there.  

Here is what I saw:

See the supernumerary bands beneath the regular ones?  This was one very vibrant rainbow. 

 

A panorama composed of 5 photos using Autostitch.net

What makes this cool is that if I had not gotten out of the shower at just that moment I would have completely missed this.  It disappeared less than 1 minute after I took these.  

First Snow Squall Of The Season

I spent a lot of time in downtown Burlington, VT last week but was so busy I didn't get a lot of time to go to my beloved waterfront and see the sunset.  So on Friday at around 3:45 I took a walk before I headed home.  Despite 30mph wind gusts and no gloves I stayed long enough to take these pics of a snow squall coming eastward over the Adirondacks of NY state:

It was so beautiful with the snow dropping down and then spreading out as it hit the mountain tops.  Very eerie and surreal.

Over to the south a bit was the sun breaking through.  We had a lot of gray skies last week and have had very little snow this winter.  It will snow a bit, then warm up to 40 degrees and melt, then be frigid and no snow, and then start all over. 

This was as clear of a closeup shot that I could get with my zoom lens and frozen fingers!