Stargazing

For the first time this semester, I have not been irritated or frustrated with my astronomy lab. My assignment for Lab 7 is to look for meteors over two nights. I was intending to do it (hopefully) this weekend (if it was clear) so I could stargaze in the dead of night when the meteors are most visible. But last night, my son asked, out of the blue, if he could look for shooting stars. And even though meteors aren't super-visible at 9:00 at night, the night was too perfect not to go stargazing. The weather here is abnormally warm (20 degrees higher than average) and the evening was perfectly clear. After Dominic's bath, I laid a quilt in the front yard, grabbed a second quilt to keep off the chill, and we cuddled and looked for shooting stars. It was one of the most relaxing, peaceful, and enjoyable things I've done in months. And, luckily, I even saw two shooting stars! One was right over Cassiopeia and the other was slightly higher in the sky in the blank area where the light pollution prevents me from seeing any stars. I imagine our neighbors think we're crazy, but at least one of them was thoughtful enough to dim his headlights as he used our neighbor's driveway to turn his vehicle around.

I'm finding French more difficult this semester, but I can't quite figure out why. We're learning to use conjugations we've already learned in new ways. For example, this chapter we're covering reciprocal verbs, the plus-que-parfait tense, and using the subjunctive for opinions. I never found the subjunctive difficult, but now I can't seem to wrap my head around the conjugations and I can't figure out if it's because I'm having difficulty with the concept or if it's the new irregular verbs that have been added. I'm finding grammar very difficult to study for.

On the plus side, I learned a French joke!
Que dit une tasse de thé dans un ascenseur ?
- Je veux mon thé!

It took me way too long to understand that. Puns are the lowest form of humor. ;)