A telescope.

It's certainly nothing fancy. Anyone who actually knows anything about what they're looking at would probably think I wasted my money [even though I did get it on sale]. It's a Meade, which means it's totally consumer and mass-produced and cheap.

But, goddamnit, it's a telescope. And it's mine.

And I bet it beats the hell out of that one I almost spent a thousand Coke Rewards points on. Which would've cost me what I paid or this one if I'd actually bought it without using Coke Rewards. And that's not on sale.

It came with this disaster of a USB camera that's going to be very, very difficult to work with, but I might be able to get pictures of things that aren't waving about wildly [so: not distant trees]. Unless I want to get faces of satan and strange monkey skeletons holding shields. Which, sometimes? You just want to do that.

They're all on Gremlin's laptop, though.

I got this picture by just putting my camera up to the eyepiece I was using. I think there was also a mirror involved.

I forget. I was tired. A lot tired. Also, annoyed because the clouds weren't likely to clear up until after midnight, AND the fucking moon is all crescent-like and waning. So, instead of enjoying my new telescope at night right away, I went to bed, and ended up sleeping straight through 'till 5am. Possibly because I was worn out by all the warnings of 'do not stare at the sun'. Because I was going to, y'know?

So, meh.

But the moon will be full again eventually, and it doesn't actually need to be all there for me to look at it. And I can look at other stuff, as long as the sky is clear. And as long as I remember not to look at the sun, because I need to be warned about that every three seconds....

If you pay more for these things, do they have warnings about not looking at the sun?

Sorry. I'm rambling. Possibly because I'm almost giddy. Part of me has always wanted a telescope. Fortunately, that part of me is still around five years old, and is therefore perfectly allowed to be giddy over a mass-produced, low-end, consumer grade telescope.