Saturday, April 4, 2020: Gaming, Books, and Stargazing

Pleiades, photo courtesy of Earthsky.org 

Hello Again!

It's another Saturday night at home, although pre-pandemic that's pretty normal.
Let's see, what's been happening since the last time I blogged...

Thursday night Steve and I played another round of  D&D on Zoom with friends. Online gaming is nice and has been a good escape from reality. It's also nice we don't have to rush after work to play, but I do miss the face-to-face interaction. (An added bonus is that our friends have two large loving pups.)  I managed not to kill off my 1st Level Bard, Fiona.  She's still around, so that is a good thing.

I continue to read through boxes of ARCs (Accelerated Reader's Copy). There have been some good ones I am adding to the library's collection, when we reopen again. For now, like most or all of the Indiana Public Libraries, we are closed.  At the rate we are going, I may end up finishing all the ARCS before we reopen.

Here is a listing of what I have read so far:

Middle Grade Readers: (Grades 3-7) 
Astronuts by Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg
Blue Skies by Anne Bustard
John Green:Star Author, Vlogbrother, and Nerdfighter by Eric Braun
The Space Between Lost and Found by Sandy Stark-McGinnis
Spark and the League of Ursus by Robert Repino
The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
Wink by Rob Harrell

 I also squeezed in an adult book:
How to Land on Your Feet: Life Lessons from the Cat by Jamie Sheiman

Another treat that occurred Friday night was that the Pleiades (M45) constellation was in the sky next to planet Venus. Although we saw Venus, we couldn't see the seven sisters. Some people did, and it was fun to know that they were there. Viewing the stars reminds me of one of my favorite classes I took at IUSB.  We crept up to the roof in the freezing temps and stargazed when the nights weren't cloudy. We couldn't have heat because it would fog up the telescope lens, so we brought blankets, huddled together, and watched the night sky. Now the closeness seems like a foreign concept.

More later! Thanks for reading. Stay well.