ISS, But No Noctilucent Clouds

I went out alone tonight as Mel was not feeling well. I am not sure I've ever been out this late by myself here before. :) I went out in time to see if there was any sign of noctilucent clouds, but way too early for the ISS. I never saw "hide nor hair" of any noctilucents. Bummer. So, I just kind of walked here and there, trying to look like I was actually headed somewhere and not just wandering around by mistake while I waited for the ISS to appear again. heh heh

I would have just parked my self along this street because it was not very busy, but two dogs came out and started barking. They were guard dogs, so I hightailed it back down to the main road. Unfortunately, this is Friday night and to put it mildly, Rosie (our street) was rather busy. Last night there were only 1/10th the number of cars, all with their headlights on, of course. This second photo shows better what I was trying to take a picture of - the beautiful crescent moon. Later, much later, at least two years later and many miles of wandering back and forth along the dirt path beside the cemetery (whew!), after checking my cell phone a gazillion times to see how many weeks had gone by, turning my camera on and off a few times and then just standing there pretending to be a tree in the shadows while all the cars in Kherson drove past me - finally!!! the International Space Station went over.

Ok. Ok. OK! I exaggerated just a little bit there. It was only 20 minutes of wandering here and there, up and down that section of the dirt path, back down to the barking dogs and back up to the cemetery fence, and then 10 minutes of pretending to be a tree in the shadows and hoping no one would walk by (everyone except one young man conveniently walked by on the other side of the street). I was only 3 minutes from our flat, so why didn't I come back in? Well, I'll tell you - it is HOT out there and it is HUMID out there and I knew for certain that if I came back inside I would never go back out there tonight willingly.

Unfortunately, when the ISS did fly over, it was much farther to the south. I expected this, but was disappointed with how faint it was compared to last night. Here is a picture I took, kind of blown up and lightened just a bit so it's easier to see. Last night the whole pale gray section would have been bright white and twice as big. Such is life - last night I was holding my camera right there in my grubby hand and never once thought to take a photo of it while it was flying almost directly overhead.

Little Birdie on My Windowsill and More

I had another little visitor this morning. The camera was in the living room so I had to go get it and was afraid this little guy would fly off before I got back. But he stuck around just long enough to get his photo taken. There are several birds flying between the tree and just to the right of our window. I wonder if the crack in the building is back? The birds used to build nests in that crack each spring and I could sit here in the office and listen to the baby birds chirping in the wall beside me. No more. :( Nope. It's still filled with that black tar someone filled it with while we were gone a couple years ago. However, if you look closely, you can see that the plaster is beginning to crack off on the other side. When I looked up there from ground level yesterday I could see that there are a whole bunch of cracks above our flat. It's just the plaster that's on top of the stone/brick the building is actually built of, but I know the rain here eats away at brick and stone and causes a lot of damage. (I think that is called "acid rain". Ha.)

Here are the two photos I took last night when we went out to find the noctilucent clouds which didn't exist but saw the ISS instead. Whew! that was a sentence!

While taking this first photo I held the camera at one angle and it focused on the cemetery and the gravestones which totally washed out the sky. It does give a good view of where we were at, though. This is a Jewish cemetery and it is located directly across the street from the building next to us (our building is on a slight bend in the road). We usually walk on the 'our' side of the street and then cross over at a cross walk to get to "our" Oskar store which is located right next to the cemetery. Last night we crossed at the corner of our building where they have put in a new stop light. That was a whole lot easier than trying to wait for speeding traffic and being afraid someone would run over us in the cross walk! I don't know why people have to speed every where here. I mean SPEED - like 60 miles an hour and accelerating down 3 blocks between stoplights when the limit is no more than 35. ALL the vehicles do this, not just the "speeders". It is very frustrating and dangerous - more than one person has been killed in the cross walk to the store in the years since the store was built. But I digress - altho the subject of this paragraph IS supposed to be the cemetery across the street...... And here is a photo from a slightly different angle. For both photos I set the camera in a hole a chain link fence which surrounds the cemetery to stabelize it, angled it differently and used a non-flash setting. I like the way this one looks. The sky was very pretty last night with lots of orange and pink near the horizon. Now, to the photo above, just add a bright light about the size of Venus at sunset, and fly it across the left side of the photo, way up high. That is the ISS. :) :)