May the fourth be with you!!!

This picture doesn’t really show it well but every other tree on the right side of this road is white dogwood in bloom. It is so pretty!

This green color of young leaves takes my breath away and same with all that damned pollen.

Have been thinking about buying a new bike. The last one was bought more than a decade ago. The possible price increase from tariffs pushed that thinking into action. Just received a call from the bike shop that it is ready. Have to decide if I go this evening or tomorrow morning for pickup.

Current Lock Screen on my phone features a photo of M101 aka Pinwheel galaxy taken this week.

M101 (aka Pinwheel galaxy) is a face-on spiral galaxy at 21 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. This galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains about 1 trillion stars.

🔭 William Optics Megrez 90 📷 ZWO ASI2600MC Duo 150x1min exposures processed in SIRIL and Photoshop

After that ridiculously easy monthly challenge (3 days of 5+ minute walk) in April, Apple Fitness is back with something real for May - 14 days of 840 active calories.

This Eastern Redbud is my most favorite tree in our yard. I planted this as a small stick that came from Arbor Day Foundation about 15 years ago and now it is almost 20 feet tall. This explosion of pink flowers every spring is just spectacular!!!

Mars approaching M44 aka the Beehive cluster. It will be coming even closer in coming days but I will not see that as the forecast for those days in this area is cloudy skies.

A cluster of stars known as Beehive cluster on a dark background with red colored Mars at the bottom of the image

After this morning’s exercise on the rowing machine, I completed my 2024/2025 season with 355,855 meters of rowing. This is the second best total for me so far. Hoping to do better in the next season starting tomorrow.

I was planning to bike into work this morning but, when I saw the amount of pollen covering every surface, decided against it. Don’t want to suck in all that pollen and start my workday with sneezing fits.

Thanks to the Merlin app, I now know that the damned bird that keeps screaming outside of my window at 5:30 am is a ‘tufted titmouse’.

Last night’s astronomy outing was so much fun! Just three of us with a 14" SCT and a night vision attachment for the eye-piece. We spent a few hours hoping from galaxy to galaxy with a few clusters. And the astronomy chatter was priceless. Don’t know when something like this will happen again.

The Chinese version of “I have forgotten more than you have ever learned” is “I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice”.

Wanted to start watching Andor S2. In the Disney+ app, there was a 14 minute recap of S1. It was so good that I want to watch S1 again before starting S2. Also, some details of the story that seem important have escaped my memory and it will be good to watch S1 again.

Current Lock Screen on my phone: Picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) from last week.

Why is Apple AI summarizing the notifications in French?

On Sunday morning, went to the mega Indian grocery store in NJ - Patel Brothers. Seemed like the latest trend in fashion for Indian people is to go grocery shopping in their pajamas! Wondering if this is limited to NJ or it is a nationwide phenomenon?

Have been listening to Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” on a loop all day long. What a fantastic album it is! Can’t believe it was released 60 years ago even before I was born.

M51 aka the Whirlpool galaxy.

Whirlpool galaxy on a dark background with a few stars.

🔭 William Optics Megrez 90 📷 ZWO ASI2600MC Duo 97 x 1 min exposures stacked in SIRIL and further stretched and processed in Photoshop