"Flying"
Today is Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. I decided to stay near home because the traffic had been very heavy lately with Spring Break and the Artemis Moon Launch. I did go have a few beer at Lou's Blues on Friday, and that driving convinced me to stay off the roads for a bit.
Elbow Creek from my back yard.
I decided that I would do some grocery shopping because no one will be at Publix on Easter Sunday morning. There was no one there, but because they were closed. They only close on three days a year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. So back home to mow the rest of the back yard.
First, I wanted to share the videos I took of the Artemis II Flying on April 1. They are not that good because it was windy which messed up the sound. The rocket roar was a lot louder than it sounds in the video. There are two because I stopped the video to take some still shots.
I did want to share a few more photos of the full moon. The first was with default settings and the camera decides shutter speed and ISO. It choose 1/250 sec and ISO 2500,
I then set the shutter to 1/100 sec and set the ISO to 200...
Finally I set the ISO to 100.
I am just reminding myself that when I am taking full moon photos, I need to play with the settings. But the problem with doing that is that I usually forget to set them back to the defaults.
Okay, so Friday, April 3, I took this shot of a Blue Jay nabbing a peanut. I has bought some unsalted peanuts for a treat for both the squirrels and some birds. The Jays are funny because when one sees that I have put out the nuts, it starts singing loudly and other Jays appear.
On Saturday, April 4, is when I started to mow the back yard. This year I let it grow all winter. It's long and is taking some effort, but I need the exercise. As I was mowing I saw some activity in Elbow Creek. It was manatees. It is either mating season or they have a wrestling club.
As I was watching the manatees, this butterfly fluttered by and landed next to me. Beautiful!
The other thing that happened Saturday morning was a big power outage. You could hear the loud bang like a transformer blowing. At the same time I noticed the cable line in front had dipped almost to the ground. And my cable and internet were both out. I got a text saying our area was out of service. Another reason to continue the yard work.
As I was out back, the first thing I see is the FPL truck, our Power Company. I told him about the sagging line and he said he had found the cause of the outage, a squirrel had got on the transformer. I did not ask him if he had a peanut. He said it was fried and it was the third one since 7 AM.
I decided to try chatting with Spectrum to let them know about the sagging line. It starts with an AI chat that was useless, then I got a real person who kept telling me they know I have no service and the techs are out fixing it. I texted three times the location of the line but to no avail. I gave up and went back to yard work.
Surprisingly, there was a Spectrum truck and he was checking a box near Elbow Creek. I walked over and told him I tried to let them know about the sagging line. He said, where is it and he immediately went there. I took this shot of him working on the line. He was nice enough to tell me my service should be on. It was. He said the outage must have shook the line and a rusted clamp had brook, releasing and disconnecting the service. He said he made a patch and someone later would need to fix the clamp.
So being Easter Sunday, and Publix being closed, I decided to see if the manatees were still frolicking. They were but I did not get any great photos. They kind of stay underwater.
This is my Confederate Jasmine which seems to have survived the freeze. It smells real good.
My neighbor Rachel has this small flower (thumbnail) that has a beautiful bloom when in the shade...
But as soon as the sun hits it, the blooms close up.
The Artemis II is suppose to go around the moon tomorrow. I have no big plans this week, but probably will go to the Zoo one day.
Happy Easter everyone.
Another nice set of photos and video
ReplyDelete