On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

The other day I blogged that there were still branches in my neighborhood that were making it hazardous for me to get to my bus stop. That was Saturday... imagine my surprise when, on Thursday, I found that some of the branches had been removed! (Unfortunately, not all of them had been taken off, but it was a little safer getting to my bus.)

The only reason I had the camera with me that day was because a few days before that, I took a bunch of pictures from my office window of a "snowstorm" blowing in. I thought it would be interesting to take some similar pictures on a clear day so you can see how far the visibility really is from that window. Here are a couple of examples:


Snowy Day


Clear Day

I should have waited for the next day... it was much more clear... the pictures in the set were taken when it was kind of overcast, but you can still see a lot of stuff. I also took some pictures of my desk... anyone who has been to see me in my office will attest that it has (ahem) "character". (Really... it has cartoon characters.) I also took a few kind of pretty sunset pictures. Click over to see the whole set!

Red Sky In The Morning...

This morning as I was waiting for the bus I looked to the East-Southeast and saw a striking sunrise happening. There was a stretch of clouds, like choppy water frozen in place, that went on for probably several miles, and the clouds at the end were exactly where the sun was coming up. It was almost blood-red at that point, with a lighter-colored shaft coming straight up from where the sun was below the horizon. I'm not sure why that one shaft going straight up was lighter than the rest of the cloud, and not radiating out in all directions like your garden-variety first grade drawing of the Sun would indicate, but anyway... it was beautiful.

I got a seat in the sideways seats in the back of the bus so I could watch the sunrise all the way down 21st Street (my bus to downtown heads directly West so I could look out the side windows and see it). The sunrise turned orange, then lighter and lighter, and by the time I got to an area where my view was mostly blocked, the show was mostly over anyway.

Or so I thought!

When we got into the downtown area there were a couple of places where I could see that part of the sky again, and the sun was directly behind a dark cloud. The edges of the cloud were almost blindingly bright (OK, maybe literally blinding... I realize it's the sun we're talking about here!) and it was just beautiful. Now I know where that old saying about the cloud with the silver lining came from!

Welcome to my new blog, by the way. You'll notice on the edge of the blog page that I've already been blogging on Last.fm and Christdot, so feel free to visit those sites and read some other thoughts while I'm cogitating on what else to post here! And I apologizing for not having any pictures of the beautiful sunrise to post... I tried to be as vivid in my description as possible so maybe you can see it in your mind's eye. Maybe someone will buy me a digital camera for Christmas!