THIS is why they drink so much coffee in Seattle...

When I woke up yesterday morning, I noticed a big, glowing, ball of fire in the sky. I immediately contacted police, who informed me that they had also noticed the strange anomaly, and they put me in contact with an astronomer at the University of Texas. When I mentioned, in a panicky voice, the very serious nature of my call, the astronomer merely sighed loudly and spoke to me in a way that suggested he’d been answering many of the same sorts of calls all morning:

Astronomer: It’s the sun.

Me: The sun?

Astronomer: Yeah. The sun. It’s been there forever. Since the beginning of time. It’s the thing that provides us with light and heat and makes this planet habitable for humans. Unlike, say, Neptune. Neptune is cold. Really cold. No one wants to live there.

Me: Have you been there?

Astronomer: Neptune? Have I been to NEPTUNE?

Me: Yeah. I mean, if you haven’t been there, how would you know if you’d want to live there or not?

Astronomer (after long, incredulous pause): I’m just guessing. I don’t think I’d be happy in the negative 350 degree temperatures.

Me: Wow – negative 350 degrees? That’s like- what? Like Antarctica?

Astronomer: (total silence)

Me: Um, so the sun, huh? Thanks…

It had been a while since we’d seen the sun here in Austin. And yesterday was perfect – not a cloud in the sky – but today it’s back to being cloudy and dreary and depressing. (Although I have seen the sun peek through the clouds a couple times… but I'm not holding onto the hope that it will actually stick around...) We’re not supposed to have sun again until Thursday, and then it’s only for one day. Then it’s back to cloudydrearydepressing for another fifteen years. I think I’ll go to Hawaii…

Speaking of traveling, I finally hung my big “traveler’s map” that mom and dad gave us for Christmas on the wall in my foyer. It came with one box of pins, but mom ordered an extra box, which was a good idea. They’re color coded – the red ones are for places you’ve already visited, and the green ones are for places you WANT to visit. Well, I ran out of green pins pretty quickly. Even with the extra box. And since I’d really love to visit EVERYWHERE, I had to be rather choosy when selecting spots for my green pins.

Here's the whole map...

Western hemisphere... I only put one red pin in the U.S., not in each individual state... well, except for Alaska and Hawaii. And I only put a pin in Toronto, even though I've "sort of" been to Vancouver... but it was really just the airport. I'm pretty sure I've been to a few other places in Canada, too (I seem to recall my parents talking about Nova Scotia...), but I was probably too young to remember. But I've definitely been to Toronto about five thousand times...

Now, like I said, I had to conserve my green pins. I put one in La Paz, Bolivia, because that's the highest capital city in the world and I think it'd be cool to visit... and I put one in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, although I'm really more interested in visiting the countries, not those particular cities. I also put a green pin in Reykjavik, Iceland, which Rick thought was really weird ("Iceland?? You want to go to Iceland???"). What's wrong with Iceland? I've heard lots of good things about Reykjavik...

And along with the red and green pins, I also had two yellow flags to mark "favorite" destinations. So on the Western half, I put one in Hawaii...

...and on the Eastern half, I put one in Rome. It's kind of hard to tell in the picture which pins are red and which are green -- but I have quite a nice collection of red pins in the Europe/Scandinavia area, but that's about it. Although I did put green pins in Prague, Vienna, and the Switzerland/Austria border (I think that's where Liechtenstein is...) But everything south of Europe is a green pin...

And most of those places would probably be sunnier than it's been here for the last few weeks...