Friday 13 August 2010

Seeing stars

A Lions dinner meeting last night and it was at a Chinese restaurant some way out of town - pretty well in the middle of nowhere, in fact, so there were no street lights and almost nil light pollution when we left. The sky was clear and we were able to see plenty of stars. I'm not much of a star-gazer and can only recognise the Plough and Cassiopeia. As Mrs BP and I were making our way to the car we remembered that this was one of the nights when there were due to be several shooting stars. Blow me down, we had no sooner mentioned it than I looked into the sky and - for the first time in my life - saw a shooting star.

Now it's Friday morning and I have finished the chores. Friday morning is my regular chore time, especially if I have work to do in the kitchen, like redecorating. It is on Friday mornings that Mrs BP goes to the MS centre for some high dosage oxygen treatment: she swears it helps and I quite believe her. She doesn't suffer from MS but has a condition which the doctors have been unable to fully diagnose. It is probably an obscure variant of Parkinson's disease called corticobasal degeneration but there is also a possibility that it is an equally obscure form of motor neuron disease know as primary lateral sclerosis. Not that it makes any difference which it is as the prognosis is the same in both cases. It's a bit of a nuisance as her legs don't always do what she thinks she is telling them to do and walking any distance is slow and difficult; rough or even slightly sloping ground is pretty well impossible. Anyway, while she's out this morning I have been getting the first coat of emulsion paint on the parts of the kitchen wall that needed re-papering after we had our new boiler installed. That was done back in April and it was only last Friday that I pasted up the wallpaper patches. I know I will need to repaint the whole of the wall where the boiler is and I have a nasty suspicion that as the paint won't be exactly the same shade as the rest of the walls I will have to set to and do the whole lot. That should keep me busy for quite a few Friday mornings.

2 comments:

(not necessarily your) Uncle Skip said...

The shooting stars are the Perseid Meteor Shower. They show up just about every year for my birthday.

#1Nana said...

I finished my shift at the Lion's booth at the Umatilla County Fair at 12:30 AM. I came home and sat in my hot tub to ease my tired bones...and I watched the meteor shower. Quite spectacular! There were at least one meteor a minute.

I did my last shift at the fair this afternoon in 100 degree heat...I am so sick of french fries!