2015 Sep 27 | GITD volleyball, lunar eclipse at Joshua Tree

Exercise time. Ogii: "It hurts!" Yeah, it's supposed to hurt, honey.

I try to check my credit score a couple of times a year to make sure there's nothing weird going on. You used to get the credit report for free but have to pay a bit to get the actual score, but now there a few companies that do it for free, like CreditKarma, Quizzle, and Credit.com.

Gas under $3.00.

Orange stripes, a skull, and a middle-aged Asian woman driving. I wonder if that's her car?

Amazon now has Prime Now, which is 2-hour delivery.

Accident trying to make a turn.

When I ordered my new computer, shipping was going to be $25, but if I picked it up in City of Industry, it was free. Since that's basically on the way to one office I work at, I figured that would be easy. They had a nice reception area.

New laptop and new monitor.

That's a good flop.

And that's the worst. If I could see if the turn or river is a queen for free, that'd be nice, but with four other players, I don't think that's going to happen.

Yep, two players had an ace.

Potentially a good flop for me unless someone already has the flush. I better bet and see what happens.

They all folded. Thank goodness, because the next card made straights and flushes possible with one card.

Accident on the highway.

This guy stopped in a lane to pick someone up during rush hour. Lots of people do this, but they do it in parking areas or somewhere else where they don't block an entire lane of traffic. What a jerk.

A passenger jet being escorted by a fighter jet. Joe Biden was in town, but he was supposed to have left on Thursday, and this is on Friday. Maybe he left late or it's someone else.

Buying a few more glow sticks for glow-in-the-dark volleyball because we had a lot of people RSVP.

Walking down to the beach and something scared Ogii.

Aw, they're just a bunch of cute rats.

I bought these light-up balloons at Target for the corners.

We had a pretty big group this time.

Serving with the pier in the background.

Me hitting the ball.

We had enough players for two nets.

Running after the ball while a spectator hits it.

Jumping hit.

Wrapped aroung her shirt.

It was hard to play facing this way because the lights from the pier blinded you.

Ogii charging up the ball. Even with a giant flashlight they still didn't glow very brightly or for very long.

So we tried using light-up beach balls as well. It wasn't really volleyball, but it was still fun.

There was a little wind from the south, though, so trying to hit it from the north side was pretty hard.

Ogii on the right was easy to find because she had a belt of glow loops.

Ogii swinging at the ball.

Twerking after the game.

Accident closing a lane on the highway on the way home.

Looks like a couple of cars were involved.

This bridge is closed down again. I wonder if they're filming? It doesn't look like construction.

Ogii jumped out of bed, screamed, and said she laid on a bug. No, that's your earplug, silly.

A big pumpkin up on the hill. There were a lot of pumpkin patches below it, so maybe they let you come and pick one out.

The Prius hit 50,000 miles on the drive out to Joshua Tree.

"Obstetrician" wouldn't fit.

Palm tree nursery.

Pastel-colored trucks.

A bigger hill that caused traffic to slow down as trucks passed trucks.

A cop pulled someone over right at the entrance to Joshua Tree.

Nice, it's closed, so we don't have to pay the entrance fee.

There are three entrances, one to the northwest, one to the north, and one to the south. We took the southern one. Unfortunately, there are no Joshua Trees on that road; they are only in the northwest corner. I don't know what these trees are, but they're not Joshua ones.

Ogii by a cactus patch.

We didn't see much wildlife except for a couple of birds.

We figured out a tree would have to have approximately the angular size of a thumb held at arm's length to fill the lens, so Ogii was looking for trees that fit that size.

They also had to be at 90-100 degrees since that's the path the moon would take.

These "exhibit ahead" signs were scattered along the road, but they didn't say what the exhibit was. Sometimes there was a separate sign with a name, but other times there was only a description that was too small to see from the road, so you didn't know if it was worth stopping or not.

The first Joshua tree we spotted!

We drove all the up to here until we saw it. So, if you're looking for Joshua trees, don't come from the south.

The three roads meet here near the middle of the park. This was also the first stop sign we saw.

Left to northwest, right to north, and backwards to south. The northwest has most of the major landmarks.

First landmark: skull rock.

Second landmark: balanced rock and leaning juniper. This could have been a good spot for the eclipse but when we checked the compass the angle seemed a bit wrong. Also, there was already someone there, and we didn't want to have to fight for position with other photographers.

Us. There's also an arch rock around here somewhere, but it was getting late and we didn't have time to look for it.

A lot of observers and photographers were taking their places.

A bit farther to the northwest people were staking out which trees they were going to photograph. Thankfully there are a ton of trees to pick from so you didn't have to fight, although maybe some are better than others.

These guys had four tripods set up for two people; they're serious.

The sun is almost down, so the moon will be up soon.

Since the moon was already going to be partially eclipsed when it rose, we wanted a good view of the horizon, with no rocks or roads or cars or people in the way. We picked out this tree, but when the moon came up, a few clouds partially obscured it.

Not quite as cool as if there were no clouds, but still pretty good. Also, lots of places around the world couldn't see the eclipse at all due to clouds, including many areas in Los Angeles, so we were pretty lucky we saw anything.