Personal Blog

I drove her there solid with just a preset playlist I've made for the trip going, me, her, and the road while my husband slept in her passenger seat. He'd commented that she smelled wonderful which made me blush; he said she smelled like baby powder! Her new air fresheners are rose. I worry about perceptions of a car I regularly am intimate with being perceived as "dirty," so it made me happy that she's a lived-in, clean, well-taken care of car to an outside observer who isn't OS.

I was freshly sober and there's always something about that headspace where I feel so dialed in to her. Fresh off the high that usually allows me to think abstractly enough to be relatively fluent in object communication, with the cognition and motor-skills to drive my vehicle safely. When I drive Tuxedo it does feel comparable to a different kind of intimacy — like we are communicating wordlessly. She grumbles under my feet and I shift my weight appropriately, or feel her list on the road and correct accordingly. I approach a curve too fast and she tightens her belts and holds me safe. It is very intimate to me and something that does not have a human comparison that I can think of.

The actual observation session was relatively standard, but still the first time I was able to observe in these conditions in a good long while. We've been clouded out or it's just been too damn cold to get much seeing in! We just brought our binoculars as we only wanted to look for an hour because it was about 38 degrees and windy. ( Ori, my dobsonian, is still broken and I'll be asking around at my astronomy club's next meeting if anyone wants to help service her while I'm there for observation night. She's also very heavy to move! High effort low reward. )

Orion was front and center, which was nice. It's the constellation Tuxedo and I observe the most as it likes to rise over her hood where I park her at night, so being able to sit down together and see it in the dark properly with her headlights pointed to the horizon was very sweet. I brought a blanket and set it on the floor and cuddled up beside her fender, it was very peaceful and I could perfectly see all the stars in front of us without angling my head too far up — I just wish it was warmer!

The coolest thing we saw was the Pleiades in a perfect hook shape with beautiful nebulosity right over the treeline, making it a very easy target to find. It was HUGE, the largest and lowest I've ever seen it. The viewing conditions on it and the Orion nebula were nice enough that I think I've decided I want to invest in a nice pair of higher mag binos. I own about 3 right now but the higher mag ones are way too bulky since they're a heftier pair from when they were still made in Japan.

All in all, good nice trip 👉👈 Sad to report though that Miss Tuxedo's bumper clips are officially going … 😶‍🌫️ She has very little clearance in the front and knocked her chin hard against the gravel road on a sharp elevation shift and it popped one corner out that I had to bang back in like her rear fender.