December 25

A bright, clear and still cool morning. The fireworks were tame, and I fell asleep at about 9:30. And then at 11:30 a bomb went off next door, followed in two seconds by another down the block, which was followed two seconds later by another 500 meters further away, and so on for at least 12 of them. I got up and got dressed and stood out in the yard, but there were no rockets or roman candles visible from here, just the noise of firecrackers. Orion was at his zenith, nearly directly overhead, and I could locate Cassiopeia, but not the dippers nor Polaris, they were too dim in the glow of the lights.

Ruben took some digital photographs during our ride and he will come by soon, but not today, to download them to this machine so I can e-mail them.