It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m chilling and taking a bit of a breather. The past couple of days have been very busy, but pretty fulfilling. Friday I was away all day giving presentations at high schools and to the public in conjunction with the “Reach for the Stars” program I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, although the star party that had been planned for Friday evening had to be cancelled due to cloudy weather.

In my last two blog entries I’ve written about my recent trip to Lebanon, in part to mark the “100 Hours of Astronomy” that has been the subject of numerous posts by my fellow bloggers here at the Cosmic Diary. I actually posted my previous entry while in Lebanon, and I hope I was able to convey some of the very enjoyable and interesting experiences I was having while there.

As I indicated in my previous post I am spending the “100 Hours of Astronomy” — and a lot more time than that — in Lebanon. Arrived Friday afternoon (after long and boring flights), and they’ve been keeping me pretty busy here.

Many of my fellow bloggers are writing about their plans for the “100 Hours of Astronomy” events that are coming up this weekend — and which, in some cases have already begun. Well, I have my plans, too, and it looks like I get to have a bit of adventure thrown in with my “100 Hours.”

Wow! Has it really been over a month since I last posted? There’s an old saying that “time flies when you’re having fun” — I’m not quite sure that we’re having fun yet, but I have definitely had worse times in my life. Things have definitely been a bit busy of late . . .

It’s the beginning of a fairly busy week for me here in New Mexico. I’ve got a big conference call tomorrow with my department head and fellow faculty members in preparation for the on-line teaching that I’ll begin in two weeks. On Friday, I’ll be heading over to Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park near the city of Carlsbad, for the first in a series of presentations I’ll be giving throughout State Parks in southern New Mexico over the next few weeks. This is a project I received some State funding for when I visited Santa Fe last year to meet with some of the Legislators.

I’ve noticed that several of my fellow bloggers have recently been writing and commenting about having to write proposals to have their work funded. Indeed, this is a part of the whole process of doing science, and in some form or other it always has been. There isn’t much, if any, of a profit-making element to astronomical research, and those of us who go into the field definitely don’t do so for the money. (Nor should we.)

Hi everyone,

While a lot of astronomical research these days requires either very large and high-technology telescopes or spacecraft missions, that’s not true in all cases. Sometimes you can do good, valid work with small instruments.

I’ve realized that it’s been about a week and a half since I’ve posted, so I guess it’s time to share a few more things.

It took me a little bit longer than a day to get this post ready, but I had some things crop up. But now let’s see what I can write.

The whole point of the Cosmic Diary is to show that those of us who do astronomy for a living are in fact living, breathing human beings — just like all of you. And as you can see from the little blurb on the right side of the diary, I have the extra “attraction” of being somewhat famous — or perhaps infamous. But I’m still just a person, who happened to have something rather extraordinary happen to him a few years ago.

With all this in mind, let me introduce myself . . .