The Lyrid Meteor Shower. April 20 -23

We have the Irishman up here too. He straddles the Equator, so he can be seen from just about the whole Earth.

Irishman? Of course, with a name like O'Ryan what else would he be?

We get Orion in summer beautifully.
My favorite constellation.
Great viewing with anything from naked eye to the most powerful telescopes on the planet.

Good deal, feasting with the family. No worries, they're pretty regular, you can almost set your watch by em...meteors that is.

Orion..............he lights the night, and guards the open spaces.....

JT

This is spooky. One day I'll have to tell y'all about my killer rabbit nightmare. Woof. :heebiejeebies:

...and we definitely wanna hear that too, lookin' forward to it!

Well, I'm afraid there won't be any meteor viewing here tonight, we're under a tornado watch and are socked in with clouds.

I dealt with that storm earlier today.....Whew! Got rough for a bit here.

I love the Internet for this. You can put feelers out and get a forecast that the weathermen would be proud of. Unfortunately can't reciprocate but for rare retrograde times.

Indeed. I'm tucked into the eastern edge of the Appalchian/Blue Ridge chain so ALL of our weather comes out of the Gulf and travels from SW to NE and heads your way. Anything coming from the midwest gets beat to death crossing the spine of the mountains and doesn't reform until it's past me.

I have a friend that live across the line in NC and I can sit on my front porch and give him warnings when a bad storm that he can't see coming for the mountains is headed his way. Same with friends an hour or so NE of me that I can give a heads up to when we have storms like today or they need to now snowfall rates because I get it first.

Remember, you asked for it....

I was walking along the dam of a retention pond with a friend of mine and there was a big bank that let down to it, reminiscent of the slope staking you see on the sides of the interstates. Anyway, I look up the bank and there's a giant rabbit sitting about 3/4's of the way up the slope.

"Holy crap! lookit that damn rabibit! He's humongous!"

I looked at Shawn and Shawn doesn't seem impressed; then he says rather nonchalantly "yeah, hoo boy that's a biggun alright.....dumbass"

I turn and look and there's a little ol' damn cottontail sitting there....not the giant ass rabbit I saw by any means. I try to explain it ain't the same one to no avail. He gives me the "wtf you been bogartin" look and we walk on.

A few seconds later I hear "badump-badump-badump-badump" and look up just in time to see the giant ass rabbit charging down the hill towards us.

"HOLY SHI------ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!"

That big sumbitch has jumped on me and I am fighting his ass tooth and nail and he's kinda getting the better of me. I punch him in the mouth and grab hold of his bottom jaw trying to break it off and all the while he's biting the crap out of my fingers. Finally, I see an opening and kick him right square in the nuts and he barks like a dog and runs off up the hill and we, me with bloody ass fingers, run off down the dam and into some woods.

Now Shawn believes me about the big ass rabbit and has joined in the panic. We're moving along into a neighborhood and I look up on the porch of a house and I see Ray Williams (Ray and I were at Clemson together. He played both baseball and football there). Ray has on his shoulder pads and 45 jersey and his baseball pants. I run up into the yard and try and get Ray to help me, but his worthless ass is having no part of this....

"Man, I quit all that crap a while back, y'all need to run on along before my ol' lady gets home".....so we move on along.

I'm explaining Ray's attire to Shawn as we are leaving when I hear "badump-badump-badump-badump".......

"FUUUCC------ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!" Fighting the big ass rabbit again...

He's apparently learned my jaw breaking trick as he goes immediately to my fingers and starts gnawing on 'em again and again I get an opening and kick him right square in the chiclets. He barks like a dog and runs off howling into the houses while we run off down the road.

We're running along and bitching and cussing and doing all that panicking crap when Shawn suddenly stops, gets a blank stare and nonchalantly says "Aw hell". I turn and see a used car lot with a fence around it...."Aw hell what, mother ......!?!? There 's a giant f'n rabbit with a penchant for gnawing on my damn fingers and you're wanting to buy a damn car!!!???...Let's go!"

"That's my brother's old jeep". Inside the fence was one of those green CJ's with the big ass golden eagle sticker on the hood. I'm still not impressed. "Dude, seriously?......let's get the hell outta here now".

"If that thing has one of those bare foot gas pedals then I KNOW it was his". I'm exasperated at this SOB's fascination with this jeep when Shawn pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and the key fob thingiemajigger is a bare foot; black outlined in raised chrome just like the gas pedals were... "If that's it, then I have a key and we can get the hell outta here proper like".

(Did I mention Shawn was my best friend? I'm really liking him now)

We hop the fence and sure as hell that's the jeep so we crank it up, crash through the fence and leave. We're like Butch and Sundance getting the hell outta wherever the hell they got hell out of, Bolivia or some such place, when we realize this sumbitch ain't got no gas in it.

I know there's a bank not far away so we head there for me to get some money. It's right at 0900 and as I get to the door to go in there's a lady employee walking up to open it. She sees all the blood from my skinless fingers and won't let me in. I start raising hell with her telling her I gotta get some money for gas. As she starts backing away....

"Badump-badump-badump-badump".......

"Ya gotta be freakin' kiddi------dammmmmmiiiiitttttttt!!" Fighting the big ass rabbit yet again...

The bank has a big reflection pond out front and the fight spills over into it. Now, I'm doing everything I can to keep my bloody ass fingers out of this big ass rabbit's mouth and suddenly I feel his throat in my grasp. I get both hands around his neck and squeeze like there's no tomorrow. I can feel him getting weaker and I roll him over so he's under water. I'm still squeezing and pressing down trying bury his ass in the pond. Although he hasn't struggled in a while I'm leary of pulling him up to check his status since I'm pretty certain this shifty farker still has at least one more trick up his sleeve.

As I sit there trying to decide WTF to do, I look up and the bank lady is standing there looking out the blood stained door with a phone in her hand. I decide the big ass rabbit from hell HAS to be dead so I slowly raise him up to check and as he clears the water it's not a rabbit......it's a damn good looking nekkid blonde chick who's graveyard dead in my hands and I wake up screaming.

ok, much as I enjoyed reading that...that's a little spooky, I don't think I'll ever look at a plate of rabbit stew the same way again. you were lucky to get out of that dream state alive. Thanks for sharing that.


next time...Run away, Run away.

LMAO, I love that scene!

Did anyone see any? We finally have clear skies tonight. Hoping to catch a few stragglers.

I still see some to this day if I move my head real quick to the side.

I did not, but.....

I was at work and there's really no place here to go where you can escape lights. That's bad for night viewing of the sky, but awesome in a way I discovered. A while back I went out on the other side of the plant and was able to watch the ISS as it went by. This time I went out on a different side and the lights reflecting off the bats flying around made for it's own little "meteor shower" of epic proportions as they cut in and out of the rays of light. Hell, I was so enamored by the bat meteors that I kept going out to watch them and forgot to go to the other side and try and catch the Lyrid meteors, lol.

Yeah, it is beautiful right now...crisp, cool, clear and clean...next year.

novenmber I believe

I doubt that it gets too crowded. I've gone to roan mtn a couple of times and I was the only one up there for the show.

Nightmares ?

Yeah, I had one about 6 months after I got out, Honorable Discharge in hand.

It was decided I needed to come back in, some technicality failure in my discharge.

I had to paint an aircraft carrier with a toothbrush... turns out it was the Admiral's toothbrush.

He was Not Amused.

I woke up in a cold sweat, eventhough the airconditioner was broken.

What your describing sounds an awful lot like..."HYPERSPACE" lord help us.




sounds like fun, be there or be square!

Someone needs to call the regulatory body for meteor showers and have this event occur the previous week on the 10th.

Star Blazing? =O I think it would mak a really short hike.

As crowded as Roan gets once the sun starts to set almost everyone is gone.

Didn't catch this one. I've been doing some painting at a church.