Rooting for NASA and the Blue Collar Kids.

I took Adalia outside tonight; I tossed her a tennis ball while I puffed on a new cigar I'd gotten a day or two ago. She ran around, tail wagging, leaping on top of the ball and often on top of imaginary items that apparently seemed like a threat to her. I usually give her the head-tilted, one-eyebrow-raised "you're weird and you're cute" look.

It's such a cold night. My kind of night. The moon was veiled by a mob of clouds that covered the sky, giving it a ghostly look and a hazy bow. I thought about how something can be so beautiful and seem so presently clear through a film when we're not viewing the actual thing, which itself is infinitely more breath-taking. Life connection, I suppose, whatever it's worth.

I wasn't planning to smoke the whole cigarillo, but it was about halfway down now.

Adalia continued to run around while I stared up at the sky. I noticed the clouds clearing up in the West, moving East. Within a few minutes, the moon was uncovered and I could see all of the stars. They really are magnificent. I close one eye, and light radiates like a cross from their center. The moon shone straight above me. I've never thought it to demand attention, like a great waterfall or canyon might, but rather it quietly draws my gaze. Granted, it is the brightest luminary object we can view with our naked eyes in the nighttime; still it seems so gentle in its essence. I drew the ear muffs I was wearing down around my neck to better hear the silence of the night. It's the silence of the moon...that is what makes it so grand.

I flicked the last of the ashes away from the cigar and put it out on the concrete below the porch steps. I never really want to go inside at night. In me there has always been a passionate, yet settled attraction to the stars and moon; the planets and the solar system; the depths of interstellar space and the multiverse beyond. When I look at the moon, it doesn't seem fair that only our best engineers and astronauts are the ones to go up into outer space, and for an even more select few, to walk on the moon. We recognize Earth as our home, and properly considered, it is. But we don't just live on Earth; we live in this universe. We have a right to explore and study the place in which we live. I'm going to work to change that. Mark those the words of a 19-year-old high school graduate working to get into college. I want to help the public realize dreams of their own that seem too far out of reach. I want to realize my own dreams and passions.

First though, I should probably take care of getting this tired pup laying beside me to bed.

Sayonara