Around 9:00 last night, after the boys were in bed, Cowgrit and I were sitting on our front porch enjoying the pleasant evening. Across the street, our neighbor came out of her house and stood out in her driveway.

After a few seconds, we could see she had a telephone to her ear. When we and everything were quiet, we could hear her talking as just a bare mumbling. (Couldn’t hear words.) We just figured she wanted to enjoy the outdoor temperature while talking on the phone. But after a minute, she pointed up to the sky and said, “Oh cool!”

She continued looking up into the sky, and she said, “Cool!” again. Okay, that made me curious. I got up from my porch chair, and walked down our driveway and into the street. I turned and looked up into the sky where she was pointing, but all I got was a street light right in my face. Our neighbor explained that her parents had called her and directed her where to look to see the International Space Station pass overhead.

There were no stars visible in the sky, what with overcast clouds and the light pollution from the street light, but after a few seconds I spotted a lone bright point of light. It looked like an airplane very high in the sky, but it wasn’t blinking. If it wasn’t moving, I would have described it as a particularly bright star. But it was moving, and pretty fast. It was moving faster than an airplane at any cruising altitude. It was moving about northwest to southeast fast enough to probably cross the sky in just a couple or so minutes. (The ISS orbits around 200 miles up, moving at about 17,000 mph.)

A few seconds after I saw it, and before Cowgrit could get out into the street and look, it disappeared behind clouds. We and the neighbor talked for a few minutes, and then we all went on back in our houses.

I wasn’t 100% sure what we saw was the ISS. I mean, I had never heard of being able to see it with the naked eye. But, it wasn’t stationary like a star, and it was moving faster than I’ve ever seen a plane move. This morning, I checked online and asked a question of some folks on a message board I frequent. That conversation gave me a link:

Satellite Sighting Opportunities

Satellite Sighting Information – Raleigh

Satellite Sighting Information – Atlanta

You can, indeed, see the ISS without a telescope. This information says that tonight will be a good time to see it before the boys need to go to bed. We told them about it, and tonight we’ll be going down the street to their elementary school playground, (an open area away from street lights), to see if we can spot it passing overhead. Especially neat is that Cowgrit10 is studying angles and degrees in math, so this gets to be a lesson in how to apply that knowledge to something really cool. We’ll be looking about 16 degrees above northwest at 8:00 tonight to first spot the ISS’s track over our area.

If you’re interested, use the links above to find a good day and time to get your own sighting of the ISS passing overhead. It’s not a fireworks show, but it’s still pretty cool.

Edit: We saw the ISS pass overhead at 8:00 pm tonight. The sun had just gone down below the horizon, but the sky was still a twilight blue. The ISS was the only bright light in the sky, (other than the moon), and it moved swiftly from horizon to horizon. It was a very cool sight.

Click the photo to see the larger version. The ISS is that white dot near the center of the image. It looked a lot bigger and brighter in person.

Bullgrit

Almost three years ago, I got laid off from a job and company. I got lucky with getting a replacement job within a couple of weeks, so the story isn’t a tragedy. And I’m still at that “new” job.

What with the economy in the sad, sick state it’s in, my “content adviser” has suggested that I repost that story. It’s still a timely tale within the context of the nation’s employment numbers.

At the time of the lay offs, I actually posted two stories: the one I was then going through, and one I had gone through several years earlier.

If you’re interested, here they are again, for revisting:

Introduction

Private Lay Off

Public Lay Off

Bullgrit

Bullgrit

We interrupt the previous post to bring this breaking news:

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon, reading on my computer monitor, when I felt a vibration, a wobbling of the building. My office is on the 5th floor of the building, and I can sometimes, every now and then, feel a little vibration in the floor if a piece of machinery gets moved, or something heavy gets dropped in just the right spot. It only lasts for a second or two, and it’s just barely enough to notice.

But this afternoon, just before 2:00, the rumble continued for 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds and more. The intensity was more than just noticeable, it was obvious. Ten seconds, 11, 12….

Nothing in my office or on my desk was moving, so there was no fear of anything like debris. But it felt like the whole building was swaying. Twenty seconds, 21, 22….

The thought of a bomb came and went. Is this an earthquake? I wondered. This is totally cool!

The thought of evacuating the building came to mind, but since nothing inside was falling, I dismissed that caution. Then after about 30 seconds, the movement stopped. Oh, shoot. That was fun. (Might have been 60 seconds, might have been 15 seconds. Time went all weird on me during the excitement.)

I opened my office door and walked into the hall. My coworkers were all in the hallway, too, already talking about it. “Was that an earthquake?” I asked. No one knew, but there were several humorous theories posed.

I went back to my desk and called my wife. “Did you feel that?” I asked. “Feel what?” she answered. She was in the van, driving down the road.

I posted on my personal Facebook page. I few seconds later, my mom texted me wondering if she was going insane because she felt her office shaking in my hometown, (about 100 miles east).

Checking the local news sites and Facebook, turns out it was an earthquake, up in Virginia.

That was awesome! I immediately wanted to feel it again so I could savor it. It was a really cool experience. Granted, it wouldn’t be so cool if there were injuries or serious damage anywhere. But for me, here, the shaking building was exhilarating.

Here in the southeast, we get tornadoes and hurricanes every once in a while, but an earthquake only maybe once in a lifetime. In fact, we had a tornado hit near our area a few weeks ago. And we’re preparing for a potential hurricane landfall this week.

Hurricanes – been there, done that. Earthquake – cross that off the “hope to never experience” list.

Bullgrit