Northern Lights

I've always wanted to go visit my brother in Alaska in the winter so I could see the Aurora Borealis. Never have because it happens in winter. It's damn cold up there. But still so gorgeous.

Apparently this recent display was particularly good because of the solar flares. Lots more pictures here. Every one is incredible. Was hard to decide which one to post.

It's winter somewhere

Thankfully my house doesn't look like this one on a track of the Sedivackuv Long dog sled race in Destne v Orlickych horach, in the Czech Republic. Beautiful, but it makes me shiver just looking at it.

Original photo and more pictures at this link.

The final frontier

With the GOP candidates talking about space exploration in Florida, lots of people on the internets digging up old space stuff. I'd forgotten how much I liked this show. Heck, I forgot it even existed until someone posted these opening credits.



Loved Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Trying to remember, but weren't they also teamed up in the old Mission Impossible series?

Wipe out

Wondering how a kid from Texas gets interested in snowmobiling in the first place. Not many places to practice, but I guess if Jamaica can have a bobsled team, anything is possible.



Tough kid. Got back on the snowmobile and went on to win the gold medal.

Color my world

Outside of religious icons, mainly focused on the Virgin Mary, I'm not really much of a collector anymore. But this just crossed the radar screen and thinking what a cool thing to collect. Love the airplane box.

Definitely click to embiggen or just check out the original photo here.

Strange Days

Not at all complaining, but man is the weather weird. Of course, I'm still sitting on the porch in a winter jacket, but most of the people on the street are in sweatshirts at most. Not unusual to see some of the young and hearty in short sleeves and flip flops. January thaw lasted pretty much all month here so far. Seeing birds that shouldn't here for weeks yet.

Although I did see a couple of blue birds a while back, This isn't one of them. Just a nice photo that crossed the radar today.

[Original by Sean Paul Kelley]

No idea where this was taken, but I want to be there.

Here comes the sun

You may have heard the earth is being bombarded by solar plasma flares. Which created an incredible display of the Northern Lights. That's a time lapse video at the link. Wish I could have seen that in person.

Meanwhile, here's what it looks like on the surface of the that fiery ball in the sky that keeps us warm and cheery.

[original photo NASA]

Never fails to astound me that they figured out how to take photos like this in space, in my life time.

Dragon tales

A few days late but Happy Chinese New Year. It's the year of the Dragon, said to be the year of the Chinese zodiac cycle that brings change and prosperity. Wish I could have been in NYC for the celebration. Stumbled into Chinatown one year, not realizing it was the day, and it was awesome. People partying on the streets everywhere. The side streets were literally ankle deep in spent fireworks paper. This is what it looked like in the Far East:

More photos here.

I didn't actually celebrate at all. In fact life has been quiet in the little city so far this year. Took forever to kick that stupid cold I started with and I've been trying to catch up ever since. Finally renewed my driver's license yesterday. Feels good to be legal. Was kind of freaking out about being stopped on the way to the grocery store.

Anyway, my Chinese New Year present to you are a couple of links that can't easily be embedded directly. I know I keep saying, I don't do cute kitten pix, but this line-up of reimagined album covers is just too cute not to share.

And I really want one of these wunderbras. (Safe for work)

Might as well jump

When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time in jump rope games. Regular jump rope. Double Dutch. And Chinese jump rope which wasn't really jump rope although it did require jumping. As I recall, we made the "rope" by stringing together rubber bands and the rope "turners" held it in place around their ankles. It was kind of like a giant game of Cat's Cradle, only using your feet.

Had no idea that jump roping is now a competitive sport.



If you watch it via the direct link there's a bunch more videos on the youtube page. Pretty incredible gymnastics there.

Great White North

Love looking at the pictures, but still glad I'm only seeing this white stuff on the internets and not my road. My new favorite picture.

Can feel the joy in that shot. Nobody loves the snow more than a big fluffy dog. [original photo, by capecodgurl]

Lost from space

Of all the photos I seen of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia, this image taken from space satellite really gives the visual on how big a disaster it was. That is one gigantic ship.

[Original image via my dear friend Michael Stickings]

I've always been of two minds about taking a cruise. I've never been to sea for a days at a time out of the sight of land. I think I'd like to do that once in my life. But it's expensive, it's slow, and the thought of being stuck on a boat with a bunch of tourists isn't all that tempting.

Let it snow

That is, let is snow somewhere else. Lots of people posting snow photos on the twitter machine today. Some beautiful shots, and it's all very pretty but can't say I'm unhappy that I'm not seeing it outside of my window. It's grey and wet here, but not that cold. Which is AOK by me.

Anyway, of all the pictures I've seen today, this one is my favorite.

Love when stuff like that happens. [original photo, via my tweep ahuntre.]

Sweet tweets

Don't like to leave a sad post on top so here's a twitpic I found in my timeline from Lizzie O'Leary, former Bloomberg economy reporter and now CNN's news transportation journalist. Apparently she's on a little vacation between the two gigs and took this somewhere in Prague.

Original photo.

Also, how cool is the relaxation room at the Prague airport?

Original photo.

If you're on twitter, I recommend you follow her at lizzieohreally. She has a wonderful, dry sense of humor and her tweets are always interesting.

Bye bye love

I've reached the age where I read obits regularly. And so I found out that Marty Najamy died last week. I went to elementary school with Marty. He was my first big crush on a boy. He sat next to me in the 6th grade.

I was so enamored with him that I let him cheat by looking at my answers on the tests. Which was a very big deal. I was totally little Miss Goody Two Shoes and always the teacher's pet all through grade school. The thought of cheating horrified me but I did it for Marty. Never did it for anyone else. Ever.

Haven't seen him or thought about him since the sixth grade really. Once we got to middle and high school we hung in different circles. But still I was sad to learn he died. Worse it appears it was a lingering illness that killed him. Rest in peace.

A man and his dog

This photo just moved me so much in a lot of different ways. Haunting.

Via Cape Cod Gurl, original photo here

Or if you LOVE flying

This video was posted under the billing, only watch it if you're not afraid of flying. Personally I didn't think it looked that scary. I've seen scarier stuff looking out the front end of an open cockpit puddle jumper. But probably you'll enjoy it if you love flying. I did anyway. Could have done without the soundtrack though. Didn't love the music at all.

Long time ago

Damn I'm old. The 1950s happened 60 years ago. And I remember this stuff. Thanks to my pal The O'Brien for finding this old ad. Back then it was all about the pinup girls.

For some reason that reminded me how much I loved the Piels Brothers.



Don't think I ever actually drank a Piels beer. Pretty sure they stopped making it long before I was old enough to drink. But I remember really loving the commercials. This was the only one I could find on the youtube. Wish there were more.

I want to marry you

I love Lego animations. This one isn't that impressive but it is a really cute way to propose marriage. But the reason I'm posting it is because my friend Maddy Peyroux is singing the song he used for the soundtrack.



If you can't view the embed, the direct link is here

As the crow slides

Here's the fun video of the day fresh off the Tweetie machine. Crows are so smart.



What language do you think they're speaking? Pretty sure I heard a nyet in there so I'm guessing Russian.