READING & SKY WATCHING

READING

I mentioned in a previous post that I was joining the 2017 Reading Challenge on the Goodreads website (Goodreads). I didn't join it in 2016 and I wish I had because I would like to know exactly how many books I read last year. It's too late for last year, but for this year I have put down on my challenge that I will read 30 books in 2017. I am already 10% along toward my goal because I have read the first three books in "The Breakers" series by Edward W. Robertson. Right now I am reading the 12th book in the "Chief Inspector Armand Gamache" mystery series, A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny. I read all the other books in this series last year except for the one previous to this one, and the only reason I haven't read that one yet is because our local library does not currently have the e-book available, and I didn't want to wait.

I like to read books on my iPad because this works out very well for me. If I want to stay up late reading, I don't need to have a light on and I can just put my iPad on the table and roll over when I want to go to sleep. Plus, I like the way an e-book works, showing the number of pages I have read versus the total pages in the book, as I like to see how I'm progressing. Also, I can adjust the brightness of the screen or make the font bigger if I want. Once I have finished reading a book, I enter it into my Goodreads account and I can even leave a review and rate the book for the benefit of other readers. It is a handy way to keep track of what you are reading, and I find that doing the challenge actually makes me read more than I probably would otherwise. So, if you are a avid reader I suggest you check out Goodreads. If you have an iPad or another type of e-reader (or even a smart phone), you should visit your local library's website to see if you can get set up to check out free e-books from the library. Believe me, it is the easiest thing in the world to do and you will have countless books available to you for free. If there is a book that I want to read but the library does not have it, I can recommend they purchase it. I have done this several times and our library has purchased almost all of the books I have recommended. Sometimes I have to wait for a book if someone else has it checked out, but I can get on the waiting list and the library will notify me when it becomes available. Our local library even has movies and audio books that I can check out. I am not sure if this is how all libraries work, but if you are interested it would be worth looking into.

Another thing you can check out if you like to read is the Little Free Library website. This is a very smart concept to encourage reading. A Little Free Library consists of a box set out at the curb in front of a house, into which the homeowner has put some books to give away. If your city has any Little Free Libraries, you just go to where they are located and see if they have any books you want, and if they do, you can take them. If you have any books you do not want, you can leave them there for others to take. The website will explain all about how it works and also has a map to locate the sites in your city. Be forewarned, though, that not all Little Free Libraries will show up on this map because for some reason it isn't very current. We have found some in Yakima that are not on the map, ans also some show up on the map but are no longer in the location indicated. But once you know what to look for, you can usually spot them around town. Also, word of mouth is a good way to find out about them, so using social media to ask your friends would probably help.

SKY WATCHING

One of our favorite things to do at night around here is to go out and watch the International Space Station (also known as the ISS) go over. Now I admit, this may not be very exciting to some, but we just love spotting it. There is a website, Spot The Station, that you can go to and enter your city to see when it will go over. You can also sign up to get an email alert on any day when the station is going over your location. Tuesday night (January 30th) we went out to watch it go over around 6:45pm. There was also a planetary conjunction that night between Venus, Mars and the Moon. It was a bit cloudy in Yakima, but the sliver of the moon was visible between the clouds, with Venus out in the clear beside it. We were not sure if we could see Mars or not, so we can't officially count that one. But as we stood on our driveway looking up at the sky, the Space Station suddenly popped into view right between the Moon and Venus! It was really quite something to see, and we kept watching as the Space Station moved across the sky. If you have never seen the ISS, I strongly urge you to check it out because you will not believe how fast it moves. Considering that it goes around the earth approximately every 90 minutes, you know it has to be moving out!

Also, we got a bit of sky watching in on Tuesday morning as well. Here was the view from our front porch.

The reason most of our videos show almost the same view right now is because it is very hard to walk on top of about a foot of snow and ice accumulation. So we tend to take videos from the safety of the front porch. The snow started sometime Monday night and went until about 10:00 on Tuesday morning. I would say we got another 2-3 inches on top of all the other snow we've had since before Christmas, so it is really piling up now. I believe this is the most snow we have seen since we moved out here in 2007.

That closes the book on January 2017. Here's hoping that February is a little less snowy. I hope to see you all back here next Wednesday, so until then, keep reading and sky watching!