Ah, Saturday

The day when Blogland rolls up its sidewalks and a solitary cricket can be clearly heard.

It's been a busy week, with meetings on Monday and Wednesday, the school holiday concert Thursday night, and a field trip to the outdoor ice rink yesterday.

I was driving my husband and our son home Thursday night from the concert and happened to look at the sky to the north. I was amazed to see a distinct aurora borealis. Although beautiful southwest Michigan might be "up north" to our Chicago tourists, it's pretty "down south" to be seeing the northern lights!

There was a distinct greenish arc of light, plus some of those shimmering "curtains" you see in the movies. I had never seen them. They were spooky and so silent. There were also beams of light as if someone was shining narrow green spotlights upwards. Wow.

I did a little web-searching and found on the aurora page that there had been sightings as far south as West Virginia (36.75 deg. N. lat.), so I can be sure I wasn't enjoying extra-bright Grand Rapids skyglow. I also found a great aurora page at Michigan Tech, with pictures and links to forecasts and aurora research sites around the world.

Friday, I drove a couple of the kids and one of the aides from the school down to the ice rink in South Haven. I hadn't been ice skating since I was about 15, and all I remembered was falling. I got my son's rental skates buckled on him and then my own. (On me, thank you.)

Ice is still slippery.

We all went around the wall of the ice rink, holding on with one hand. After a couple of rounds, my feet were starting to remember how to move on skates, enough so I could hold my son's hand and keep him from falling, and not be pulled down on top of him.

They had a hot cocoa break after about an hour. He really enjoyed that. By then he was starting to get tired and a little cold, although it's been crazy-warm the last week or so (50 degrees in December), and it was about 40 yesterday.

But I was starting to enjoy myself. I used to love roller-skating, and ice skating is similar enough that I could find my balance again and enjoy the swooping motion of skating. So I had an unexpectedly great time (I only fell once!) and took home the ice rink's schedule of hours.