Merry Christmas Everyone

Ho ho ho!

I'm up before dawn and caught the Star of the East just as dawn started rising over Lake Michigan.  Sorry for the blurred image, I'm not very good with this camera even after years and years but I think it's pretty cool.  I also took a quick photo of my Christmas tree lit up in my front window about 6:45 a.m.  I did not have a clear idea until this morning what it looks like from the outside!

This is looking off my side stoop that opens to my driveway, toward the southeast.  The glow of dawn can be seen roughly at the roofline of the garage and the Star of the East can be seen near the top of the tree's branches just to the center right of the photo. [Note added later: I thought it could be Venus, but I checked a sky map for the month of December and it is probably Jupiter - or a comet that is right now at about 30 degrees angle in the south/southeast sky.  Holy Hathor!]

Thar she glows...  It looks massive, but it's an artificial 6.5 footer and not super-wide.

It was a beautiful, perfectly still morning, and not cold at all, probably in the mid-40's.  This entire month has been unusually mild, perhaps due to the El Nino.  We have had a lot of rain - thank goodness it wasn't snow, we would be buried under 20 feet of it!

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates; Happy Yule and Happy Winter Solstice to those who celebrate those traditions.  I totally missed Solstice this year, but it came and went and now the days are starting to get longer again, hooray!  The tree will be up until the end of January, when it will be noticeably lighter earlier in the morning and in the evening. The lighted decorations all around the house and candles at night help keep the darkness at bay. I am a creature of the light.