Twilight

No, not the movie.  The time of day.  I looked up the meaning of twilight this morning and I was surprised at what I found.  Let me explain.

My neighbor and I've been running early in the morning and we're mostly running in the dark.  We'd like to run in the light because we could go into the park, run in a more visually beautiful, natural setting.  But we're not going in the woods before light.  And we're not going in with headlamps, as someone had suggested.  Because snakes.  In the dark, with a headlamp, all sticks across the path look like snakes.  All of them.  Survey says pass.

Daylight savings time was earlier this month and we had hoped we could get back into the park, but we're still mostly in the dark.  Winter solstice isn't for a month so I figured we'd be losing more daylight over the next several weeks before things would start getting better.  As I wondered about this, in the wee hours of the morning, while I waited for a go / no go text from my neighbor on if she could run, I looked up sunrise times.

It was as I expected, sunrise wasn't until 6:58, which means we're almost done before the sun is up.  And it gets worse not only up until winter solstice in a month, but for almost two months because after winter solstice, we gain daylight at the end of the day and continue to lose light in the morning.

Right after that I got a, "we're on" text, so I got up and got ready to run in the thirty-six degree weather.  As we were running, I told my neighbor about the sunrise situation.  But as we continued our turkey day run, it started to get light earlier than I anticipated.  I then realized that "sunrise" isn't the point it starts to get light.  That's the pre-dawn phase.  The question is, how much sooner does this happen with respects to sunrise.  In the case of yesterday's run, we were able to go into the park well before true sunrise at 6:58.

This morning in the pre-dawn light I went back to the sunrise/sunset tables.  There was an option to show twilight times.  Initially I hadn't gone for this option because I didn't care about light after sunset.  As it turns out, twilight isn't just for sunset, it also applies to light visible prior to sunrise as well.

But which "Twilight" time tables do you want?  You mean there is more than one twilight, you ask?  Apparently so.  There is the "Civil Twilight" which is the general light we'd consider as moms and dads and school teachers and bakers and farmers.  Then there's "Nautical Twilight" which—as it makes sense to me—is visible for longer because at sea you have a full view of the horizon.  And last, there is "Astronomical Twilight" which is more restrictive as there must be no sunlight remnants whatsoever for good astronomical observations and measurements.  The technical version of all of this is 6, 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon for the three categories.  How cool is that?  (If you're not sure, it's cool.  Trust me.)

So now the "light enough to run in the park" time makes sense.  Civil twilight is about a half-hour earlier than true sunrise, and that's just about when there's enough light to see the park trail clearly.   Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that we're going to be running in the neighborhood in the dark for some months to come.

The Big Boy Update:  Hardcore!  Last night as we were doing some exercises through the Nike Kinect system, the word "hardcore" was brought up.  I'm not sure if my son said it first or if my husband taught it to him, but we all decided in his post-Thanksgiving, sugar high, bounce around the basement rush that he most definitely was "hardcore."  He kept saying it because we kept laughing when he did.  Later, we talked to Aunts Adrienne and Brenda and he told Aunt Adrienne he was hardcore. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Fever.  Just before Thanksgiving dinner she presented with a 102 degree fever.  And as is the way with babies, we don't know why.  She seems fine now and she definitely was fine once she had some ibuprofen.  Hopefully it will resolve quickly.  Today she's been doing some napping, but is mostly that same little happy girl she always is.

Fitness Update:  Ab Ripper.  My husband challenged my niece, Olivia, and me to do the P90X fifteen minute "Ab Ripper" workout.  Olivia and I gave it our best.  Our best wasn't good enough.  No, that's not really true.  We did a very good job considering we haven't been going to Ab Ripper bootcamp for the last several months.  At the start I said, "Pft, we can do fifteen minutes."  At only two minutes in, I began to complain loudly about the slowness of their clock and theories of ab ripping time warping unfairness.

Someone Once Said:  Knowledge about a situation is the first essential step to coping with it.