During orientation, they told us about the Venus transit and that we should be sure to watch it, to which my response was Are you people fucking kidding? We should stare into the sun? After being subjected to four hours of orientation, I figured that these people are capable of just about anything and obviously they hate us all. But they passed out these nifty sun-viewing glasses so that we actually could stare at the sun without going blind.
These are cardboard glasses, reminiscent of 3-D movie glasses, except that you can't see through them. Whoa! I always wanted danger-sensitive sunglasses! So I've been staring at the sun. It's like having superpowers.
On Tuesday morning, the morning of the Venus transit, I had to get up at 5:00 for my eighty-mile commute down to the research center and I planned to stop at the rest area and exercise my superpowers. Sunrise at 5:45, they said, except for the fog and clouds. Visibility was so terrible that I had to obey the speed limit on the interstate. However, luck was with me (I found a four-leaf clover on Monday): the fog lifted slightly when I reached the rest area at 6:15 and the clouds thinned. When I stopped, I pulled my danger-sensitive sunglasses out of my purse and viewed the sun, which was blurred by the excess moisture in the sky but not quite enough to obscure the little dark smudge (Venus!) at the bottom. After doing the happy dweeb dance, I got back in the car and headed on out. The fog rolled back in and the clouds slammed back into place for the rest of the morning.
Next Venus Transit in eight years.
286 words | June 9, 2004 08:29 PM | Rocket science