of telescopes and astrology

During a vendor-customer technical interview, my manager once introduced me as being an avid amateur astrologer.

Bless his heart, he knew I had a few telescopes and was even working to build my own large Dobsonian sidewalk telescope – right down to grinding out the mirror myself. While astronomers can tell us a lot about the past, in galactic terms, if you wanted a prediction about the future, your lotto numbers, or to know if the gal with the May birthday in apt 403 was compatible with you, you might have consulted an astrologer.

Without much hesitation, the customer manager asked if I could do a reading for his IT systems.

I happened across that memory while on an archeological dig under my house. The remnants of some ancient culture dating back to the mid nineties were in several boxes down there, along with my mostly finished telescope mirror.

With it I found piles and piles of art, articles I wrote for an EverQuest fan-site, a few semi-rare comic books, college papers, my paintball gun, the missing bits of my scuba gear (what I was looking for, score!), some collectible memorabilia from the launch of Ultima Online, and a baby pic of my oldest daughter and my childhood pet cat Maverick, the original orange man-eating king of many naps.

No, Astronomers may have a good idea about what could happen to the solar system in a few million years but they cannot predict the future. I can’t be sure where I’ll store my boxes next – I certainly could not have predicted where the boxes would go when I first packed them three houses ago.

With the ghosts loose, and a fresh reminder to get the irreplaceable properly stored in some sort of albums, I put the lid back on the boxes. The telescope project can wait for darker skies. My perspective checked, I was ready to start making predicitons.

This year, I am getting back in the water. Mask and Snorkel – check.