"Eclipse excitement dampened by weather, work" by: Jessica Shepard

   One day, I’m hoping I don’t have to work when there’s an eclipse.  
  Or, in the case of early Monday afternoon something with a little less cloud cover, too!  
  I kept waiting for Mother Nature to just get it over with and dump the rain we need then shove the overcast clouds out of the way but nothing is ever that easy.  
  We’re still due rain according to NOAA and my ankle, but as of 3 p.m. Monday, nothing’s falling out of the sky yet.  
  Well, minus the drizzly bits we had earlier in the morning that only serve to make the drive to the courthouse a bit annoying.  
  Overall, I guess that just means we’re going to have to hunker down for a deluge tomorrow if it happens at all.  
  I can definitely attest to the homestead needing a good, long rain shower over every last inch.  
  Still, we made a Sentinel Team effort to see the celestial event and shared one pair of eclipse-safe “glasses” among the three of us.  
  To be fair, I have transition lenses in my glasses regularly, so seeing the slow darkening of the area around us wasn’t really that thrilling for me.  
  I did enjoy the relief from the sun’s rays and an overall drop in humidity, too.  
  However, the 92% bit of the eclipse that I did get to see was fairly exciting for about a minute then it was over.  
  Now, I only know the percentage of coverage thanks to a handy NASA webpage, but it’s interesting to note that we got that high of a percentage of the sun covered.  
  I was certainly hoping for more darkness outside or something sort of unsettling or eerie when it happened but that just wasn’t the case.  
  A few seconds of quick Google searching yielded the date for the next solar eclipse – August 12, 2026.  
  Even then, that eclipse is set to cross over the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic Ocean, and parts of northern Spain.  
  For my fellow Bay City and Matagorda County residents, our next chance for a solar eclipse in our neck of the woods won’t happen again until November 15, 2077.  
  Now, let me save you some math – that’s 53 years into the future and I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on being around to see it in person.  
  Just to put it in perspective, I’ll just be a few weeks over the age of 90 then and I’m pretty sure the eclipse will be the absolute least of my focus then.  
  You know, if I make it that far – not speaking from pessimism but the reality of things, that’s all.  
  Plus, by the time that rolls around I might be able to afford an actual camera lens rated for eclipse photos.  
  Until then, I’m not risking any lenses or photography equipment and I don’t fancy scheduling or purchasing a plane ticket to Spain in two years either – especially when I don’t know how the weather is going to shape up either.