Arrival of the Carnival

“Spring comes in between the 19th to the 23rd of March and at different times. It changes on a yearly basis because the first official day of spring is the (Spring) Vernal EQUINOX. This is when the sun is directly above the equator. It rises due East and sets due West and does not do so on the exact same day every year since the calendar is not exactly 365 precise days every single year. In 2009, spring will arrive on March 20th, as stated above and the sun will be above the equator, crossing to the northern hemisphere at 11:47pm (ish) …”

The image above is of my boss’s white jeep, parked on Cambridge St. on Sunday, warped through the thick glass windowpane of the Lava Lounge. My first customers yesterday took the photo, along with Amilcar’s omelettes, bloody mary’s and coffees. I thought it captured very well how insulating work can be (especially work in the Lava Lounge) to conditions outside. Ironically, I did not find this to be the case whatsoever yesterday. It was a warm, sunny Sunday and I had plenty of time outside in the sun. Even though we served eggs and grits to well over two hundred people, I was still able to enjoy the early spring warmth.

With no coffee or tea (or caffeine of any kind) my body has some extra appreciation for that extra hour of sunshine that daylight savings time has delivered. This week, for example, it meant the difference in energy between getting caught in a nap in my underground den and driving around Somerville with my friend Chad to drop him off at Brenda’s house. We found the house, and he stayed with Brenda, and I thought about pouncing on her very special cat Oreo, who hissed at me in a kind of preemptive strike. Afterwords I took off to the reservoir at Fresh Pond for a solo run around the water. The ratio of labradoodles to people in the city of Cambridge does not seem particularly high, until you get to the off-leash dog park that is Fresh Pond.

The AP reported on the fast rising star Northeasterners could have seen Sunday night… “Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven rocketed into orbit Sunday evening, setting off on a space station construction mission cut short by launch delays that dragged on for more than a month. The launch, though late, turned out to be flawless and the prettiest NASA managers had ever seen. Discovery rose from its seaside pad just as the sun was setting, an especially spectacular sight for a space agency anxious to get the flight going. As the shuttle sped away like a brilliant star, the upper part of the launch plume glowed pink, peach and golden…

Launch controllers could see the shuttle for seven minutes, until it reached somewhere off the New York or New Jersey coast. “We were all rewarded with a beautiful, beautiful launch,” said launch director Mike Leinbach… The system remained tight during the countdown, and the only problem was a pressure drop in a helium-purge system that workers quickly resolved. The only other oddity was a fruit bat on the back of Discovery’s fuel tank that posed no debris threat to the shuttle and almost certainly perished. “Well, you had a little bit of a wait but that will just make the payoff that much sweeter,” Leinbach told the astronauts.”

Final thoughts: I feel the “little bit of a wait will just make the payoff” of spring’s slow arrival “that much sweeter”; somewhere in Florida, a fruit bat is telling his family the most amazing tale of fruit bat survival; just in time for our vernal celebrations of the sun’s victory over darkness, Discovery will deliver the final pair of solar-paneled wings to power the International Space Station.