It's no secret that I'm rather intrigued by the universe.  And no I don't mean "the universe" as in the new PC term for God.  I mean the universe, you know stars and bangs and what not.  Well today that affinity managed to somewhat backfire on me.  

I love outer space for several reasons.  I enjoy reading about galaxy formations, wild phenomena that everyone loves to attempt to explain yet everyone knows they truly have no real concrete understanding of, and I really like learning about dark matter.  Oddly enough, I've found that for me,  by understanding what little I can understand about both the theoretical formation of our universe and all the little parts in between, I've found that somehow that makes what's going on down here make more sense to me,  metaphorical mirrors if you will.  I love it.  And because I love it, I spend a large amount of time reading astronomy material and playing with the little star gazing apps on my phone that can surely do far more than I require of them.  Oh they chart stars and give precise numerical data on things I don’t quite understand yet.  But that doesn’t stop me from spinning the night sky and reading all about Neptune’s moons.  And these lovely little apps make this possible for me.  

Well I downloaded a new app that, if I’m honest has left a little to be desired.  Though everyone raved about how great it was (everyone being the faceless App Store users who for some reason at 11:00 at night I thought it wise to trust).  The app is solely dedicated to the moon.  Right off I knew this was likely to be a problem.  The moon has always seemed rather boring to me.  It’s a small rock out there dependent upon us… like our little boring friend in the sky that’s just waiting for us to do something exciting because nothing ever happens on the moon.  The moon doesn’t do anything.  It only pretends to give off light yet it doesn’t even do that well - we all know it’s really the sun’s light that it’s reflecting.  It has no atmosphere and the moon dirt, if it gets on you it basically smothers you.  It’s a shitty little rock.  Well maybe “shitty little rock” is a tad harsh.  It’s the moon.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It’s the moon.  

All that being said, I should have probably not downloaded the moon app.  But I did.  I figured, hey, I’ll branch out a bit.  It wouldn’t hurt me to learn more about our nearest neighbor.  So I downloaded it and found that quite similarly to the moon, the app’s interface was both boring and uneventful.  However, I spotted one cool feature: it allows you to set timer notifications for all the new and full moon phases – now here’s something halfway practical.  It might be nice to pay more attention to the phases of the moon with regards to earthly activities.  Nothing big just something to mildly entertain myself with.  So I set a couple of timers and thought nothing of it.  This was last week sometime.

Well at about 6:00 this morning that timer went off and boy did it go off.  It didn’t just chime a harmonious little “good morning, there’s a full moon” notification.  I awoke to Armstrong gargling about one small step for man and a giant leap for mankind being blasted through my computer speakers.  Now you tell me how you would feel if you woke up to this blasting into your eardrums:


One small step for man....(click)

I’d like to tell you that I handled the situation with grace, merely shrugging off the disturbance and rolling over to turn it off.  But no, no of course that’s not what I did.  I might as well have sprouted wings and flown right off of my bed.  His voice was so loud, and so out of nowhere that for a split second I honestly thought something remarkable had happened and I was getting some sort of miraculous late breaking solar system news update.  It’s amazing how the mind works.  My brain immediately associated the famous clip as being related to outer space, yet I was still halfway in dreamland to the point that I truly thought “this is big…. They’ve found something new and big in outer space and it’s going to be wonderful!  It’s the 1950’s all over again!”   I swear it was like Neil Armstrong was landing on my bed.  I’m sure between that and me doing all but throw my phone in protest, poor Phitty Kitty and Shugahboo were scared half to death – mommy’s gone and lost her mind.  But I hadn’t lost my mind.  I had simply opted to download a moon app.  A moon app that since this morning’s boisterous wake up call, has sent me not one but two more full moon notifications.  For some reason the makers of this app really, really want me to know that there’s a full moon tomorrow.  I could have easily settled for them adding it to my google calendar or something.  I mean there’s no need to go overboard.  It’s just the moon.


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