Week 32 (7–13 August 2023)
Another busy week—cousins were visiting (aunt uncle their two kids plus a boyfriend) so we went to the river and went climbing and played ping-pong and ate a lot (T makes an amazing rougail saucisse). The house was pretty packed and it was a bit much at times, but we managed.
I hadn't seen T for over 10 years! He's a boulderer so we brought him to Casteljau a couple of times, plus he's about to move to Berlin so we told him about BK and Garten and Bright Site and Basement and Berta and Kegel and Ostblock and Südblock. Miss these.
Starry nights
128 kilometers and 134 years away from the monastery where Van Gogh painted his famous scene, the Nuits des étoiles took place in Chassiers. The event was a long time in planning so it was great to finally see it happen!
The sky was clear on Saturday and the stargazing session was amazing, with M guiding the 100-people audience through the summer night, from Cassiopeia in the northeast to Sagittarius in the south via the Great Bear, Boötes, Hercules, the Scorpion and others. On Sunday there were a few clouds but we still saw a lot, especially after midnight when the sky cleared up. Planet-wise, Saturn was rising in the east and people saw its rings in the telescope.1 We saw Tiangong go by and a row of Musk's dumb satellites (Group 6-9) moving through the sky in a neat ant line.
And so many shooting stars! The Perseids were in full swing and even though we weren't stargazing in the early morning (peak Perseids), there were still a lot. Small blueish ones in numbers, but for the first time I also saw a handful of huge, reddish meteors. We were told that these have a different composition so they burn2 in a different color.3
Overall people really enjoyed the event. It was nothing fancy, one could say amateurish, but I think that's part of what makes it feel casual, authentic, magical. Just a bunch of humans in a school playground, looking up at the stars.
Watching
Done (re-)watching the Rocky franchise! (There'll be a Creed IV "for sure" says Michael B. Jordan, but I'm done for now.) There's a few more blockbuster-y things I want to see (hi Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) and then back to MUBI.
- Creed II (2018) by Steven Caple Jr. 3/10
- Creed III (2023) by Michael B. Jordan 5/10
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson 6/10
Reading
Progressed through L'usage du monde, which I've finished at time of writing Note coming some time this week. and arriving back home circa 2 am we could also see Jupiter ↩ technically they sublime ↩ this seems correct, but unless I've only seen magnesium-heavy meteors before last week (unlikely), I probably just never noticed the different colors in small, short-lived shooting stars ↩Footnotes