Pleep Celebrates Lunar Eclipse, Winter Solstice & Alice's Birthday

Early Tuesday morning, a rare event occurred - a lunar eclipse in conjunction with the winter solstice.  Here on the ocean, it was a crystal clear night and the full moon lit up the ocean.  Between 1 and 5 a.m. the eclipse caused the moon to glow spectacularly red, a result of particles in the atmosphere.

The last time a lunar eclipse occurred on the winter solstice was in 1638. For history buffs, that was the same year the Holy Roman Empire surrendered to the French at the Battle of Breisach. Also that year, Ottoman Empire Sultan Murad IV recaptured Baghdad. And, a gentleman named John Harvard left his estate to a local university near Boston that later took his name.  Pleep doesn't think much of the current crowd at Harvard and is fairly certain John Harvard would join him in monkeybutting the whole gang.

Pleep was up watching the event and Peggy was reminiscing about one of her favorite winter solstices.  She went to visit the Parkers in London for Christmas.  Beau and Harry were very little.  Everyone piled into the car and drove down to see Stonehenge.  Because no one had thought to check the calendar, it turned out to be the winter solstice, one of the very busiest times at Stonehenge.  It was packed with the crazy crowd - witches, druids, and generally crazilky attired folks.  Beau & Harry were not very interested in the crowd or in Stonehenge itself.  Instead, they sat in the double stroller, backs to everything and counted the cars, trucks, and buses passing by. 

Alice's birthday, 22 December,  is always close on the heels of the shortest day of the year.  Pleep really wanted to be in Chicago to celebrate it with her, especially when he heard Moon was stopping by with a load of gyros from Five Faces.  Instead, we will be toasting her from Florida and will take her out to the local haunts when she arrives in February.

Because it was in the 70s, Ed and Stan decided today was the perfect day to turn off the HVAC system and do a bit of repair.  It involves applying a rust repair coating, primer and then finally rustoleum paint all to the pan.   Each stage requires adequate drying time so the whole process will take a couple of days.  Pleep pointed out that if George were here to help there would be plenty of time to go to the local pubs between stages.  Also, maybe a couple of trips to the Ace Hardware store would be required, especially because the Ace is on the way to the surfer bar.  Pleep thinks the surfer bar would be a good place to chat up the locals and get their advice for how to keep the HVAC system tuned up.