Eclipse!

OK, got back from church this morning and got onto the computer to look some stuff up. I knew things would be hectic at the Griffith Observatory (a place I normally NEVER go on weekends - actually this goes for Griffith Park in general), but after poking around the net finding out where the nearest metro rail station with parking was, and failing to get at the schedules (that part of the site was down), realizing that there would be at least one change of trains, an estimated hour trip plus a 30+ minute wait for a shuttle at the other end and it was already 3pm... Decided to drive anyway. Between the eclipse and something Big going on at the Greek Theater, the parking lot was swamped and by the time I got far enough down the hill to park the walk would have been a Bit Much in the warm weather, so I gave up and went over to the Zoo. Which closes at 5, so I didn't have time to visit the new reptile Lair (closes down a half hour earlier), so just hung around near the entry at the nursery and so forth. Apparently there are two Panay Cloud Rats in the nursery these days, a critter I've always wanted to see in person (they look so cute in photos) but of course they're nocturnal so it was "somewhere in that mess of bedding there is a Cloud Rat". Ah well, in the infant care section were four seriously cute baby giant otters. If, as it has been said, a baby is a sign God wants life to continue, a baby otter must be a sign He wants life to be FUN!

I wandered far enough into the zoo to see the flamingos; I like standing and watching them interact like a sort of permanent cocktail party. After they honked their way into their off-exhibit enclosure for the evening, I paid visits to the black necked swans, the meerkats and so forth. Also Reggie the Alligator, doing his usual "I'm a log, really" act on the banks of the pool as seen in this slightly fuzzy snap from my iTouch.



I then left for home at about the time the eclipse started (5:24), and got to watch the light get eerier and eerier as I headed down the freeway, especially when I reached the West 10 to the South 405 interchange (fannishly known as Alpha Ralpha Blvd). It reached maximum about the time I pulled into Marina del Rey, with the usual evening fog already on the way. In fact there was enough overhead to dim the sun into looking like the moon, or in this case like a crescent, LA being far enough south that we got a partial eclipse, not the full annular one. So I got to see the eclipse after all. I'm going to have to pick up a proper filter before the Transit of Venus next month.