Sunday 18 November, 2001 at 3:33AM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (1)

Ok, that's it, New York is just plain freaky. There's been terrorists, buildings collapsing, anthrax, planes crashing for no apparent reason, and now there's meteor showers - yes, meteor showers. I was leaning out the window having a cigarette and for some reason I was imagining meteorites (possibly because there was a really suckful movie on TV Sci-Fi channel called 'Meteorites' at the time, starring that Luke Duke dude from Dukes of Hazard of all people) and where was I ...ok yeah, leaning out the window imagining meteorites when all the sudden I saw one! I was like, "IceQueen, hey wow, that was freaky!" and told her why it was so freaky. It was because the last time I had thought of meteorites was one night in New Zealand when I was standing outside talking to IceQueen on the portable phone, and hello, I saw one then as well. Anyway, shortly after this I see another meteorite bouncing across the atmosphere so IceQueen joins me at the window to check it out.

Within ten minutes or so we have seen about a dozen of these 'shooting stars' flying across the sky - this is at about 2am - so IceQueen hops on the internet, and sure enough, there is a meteor shower predicted for precisely this time! I have a great idea: lets go up to the roof and check it out! IceQueen asks me, "can we even get onto the roof?" ..well, only one way to find out.

Ok, so we have now found a great place to go during summer (yup we're on the roof), fifteen floors up so we can see pretty much the whole sky since ours is the biggest building within half a kilometer. Wanna know how many meteorites we saw? Over forty of the things! How amazing is that? If you don't think that's very amazing, then hey, you must be a freak, because it is very amazing, dammit! Particularly with the heavy light pollution here in NYC.

Why am I here typing this and not on the roof watching god throw rocks at us? Because it's kinda cold - what do I look like, a penguin? Don't answer that.

Final note: IceQueen just told me that if you made linguini with a penguin, you'd have penguini. I'll just leave you to ponder on that one for a few moments.

..couple of hours later..

I woke and looked out the window at about 5am and there were heaps of meteorites shooting through the sky, and i mean heaps. There were moments when two or three meteorites struck at the same moment! In the space of about ten to fifteen minutes, there would have been over a hundred of them visible to the naked eye, and no doubt a whole lot more that I didn't see, it was amazing! Just thought I'd let you know.