Pre-eclipse chatter

[TR]

My mom is flying in to Dallas tomorrow afternoon so I'm really crossing my fingers that it's not cloudy! We're going to a pottery wheel class down in the city Sunday afternoon and I'm already worried about traffic coming back just from the volume of people that will probably be here lol

[mrshandy]

87% I usually work from home but will be at our local office for a program I'm attending. We're taking a break during the eclipse time So I'll be watching from there. A little sad that I won't be able to watch it with DS who will be home from school at that time. DD will still be in school and the school has plans to have all the kids watch it using proper equipment.

I preordered glasses so we're all set.

[helpshareplease]

Apr 5, 2024 8:23:22 GMT -5 luckystar2 said:

I live in area of totality. So we will be watching from our yard. Schools are closed. All my kids sports/activities are cancelled. They keep warning about traffic. So we will just stay home all day.

This is me too. My office is closing early in anticipation of all the traffic. Good thing my office is like 4 blocks from my house. I won't be driving anywhere. I actually intend to get all of my shopping done tonight to avoid the crowds Sunday/Monday. My oldest kid is already talking about going to hang out with friends and my youngest doesn't care/understand what is going on. I will be outside with my glasses from when it starts to when it ends, not just for the totality. I'm pretty excited. I love astronomy stuff. 

[Jalapeñomel]

My school is being bonkers about this, and I'm over it. Everyday we get a flurry of emails about it.

We do get a half day, and we aren't even in totality.

[Patsy Baloney]

My kids’ schools aren’t doing anything for the eclipse and even sent home a letter about “opting out of the eclipse”. What? How does one opt out of an eclipse? Did the moon’s mom not fill out the appropriate permission form?

Enjoy not having the funding for my kids’ attendance that day, thanks! Opting out of your lunacy.

[lilafowler]

Apr 5, 2024 8:17:50 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

This is pretty cool. You can put in your zip code and see what it will look like from where you are.
We are 91.7% in my area, so although it will still be cool here, I’m so glad we are making the drive.




www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/infografias/2024/eclipse-solar-2024-en/?fbclid=IwAR3-bo4FpLJXs7BCtGtrH6mfoSbiXRbvM0DYJwolRwcc-SLnjLp96vvHMEg_aem_AcX3pwbnMLkM8Rb3s05b9aPmvtjMg0Df4mO1RVOhX7Rcrd3qk3f45j4amX-66Jji8ts

Thank you-I just put this in our work group Teams chat and everyone is appreciative 😂

[CloudBee]

We are in the 92% range, I believe.

I had a hotel room booked on a lake just north of Syracuse, but canceled our reservation a few days ago. We didn't want to find ourselves stuck on the side of the highway with who knows how many people. I'm also not looking to experience fuel shortages, or the inability to get into a restaurant. (Hotel room doesn't have a kitchen.) Booking in advance made no difference as it's the news about crowds and the National Guard being deployed that's talked us out of it.

DS received a nice telescope for his birthday last month. For Easter we put a Celestron solar filter specific to his telescope into his basket. That softens the blow of no longer traveling! We're really excited to view the eclipse with his scope!

I ordered glasses for our family over a month ago, so we'll stand on our lawn and use those. Yesterday I realized my parents (out of state) would probably love to view the eclipse, but wouldn't have glasses. I sucked it up and ordered directly from one of the ISO certified companies. Paying for overnight shipping really stung, but I wished I had thought to get glasses to them sooner. When I called to tell them yesterday, they sounded excited.

[lilafowler]

Apr 5, 2024 9:06:42 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

My kids’ schools aren’t doing anything for the eclipse and even sent home a letter about “opting out of the eclipse”. What? How does one opt out of an eclipse? Did the moon’s mom not fill out the appropriate permission form?

Enjoy not having the funding for my kids’ attendance that day, thanks! Opting out of your lunacy.

[scm1011]

We're at 93% and will just watch from here. So many people I know are headed up to Burlington, VT and it seems like the traffic is going to be bananas. I just don't care enough to get caught up in that lol.

[pandora89]

We are 99.9% here but won't see totality.

Most other schools in the area moved an already existing PA from May to the day of the eclipse so bus drivers don't have to drive the kids home in the dark/kids aren't staring up at the sun without glasses. DS & DD go to a local private school and instead of moving an already existing day off, they just decided to shut down the school for an extra day off. We were just off for 2 weeks for March break (all the other schools are only 1 week). Then were off for Good Friday/Easter Monday and now this. Parents in the classroom whatsapp group are not happy about this additional day off lol.

[maudefindlay]

Apr 5, 2024 8:40:43 GMT -5 sadie said:

Apr 5, 2024 5:56:44 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

We live where the eclipse will be 94%, which is not good enough for us, so we are driving to Indianapolis. I’m so excited! We will wear green and red for the Purkinje effect and are bringing a colander and moon/sun-themed snacks (along with our glasses, obvs.)

Originally we were going to drive back after the eclipse but tales of 13-hour drives had us book another hotel for Monday night about an hour out of Indianapolis. (Our existing hotel was trying to charge us an additional $500 for the extra night. No, my friends.)

My husband is driving to Indy, too. Apparently, Butler University has a planetarium and is planning some stuff.

IU, my alma mater, is hosting a Cosmic Celebration with concert by Janelle Monae and a spoken word performance by William Shatner leading up to the eclipse.

[livinitup]

I live in the path of totality. My office is closed, kids have early dismissal from schools, and H took the day off. I am probably not sending the kids to school for the half day.

Now that we are close enough to the date, we are tracking the weather. It might be okay! I was going to drive about an hour away for the best view/least cloud coverage but now I am reconsidering for fear of massive traffic to get back home.

It’s really hard to know how many thousands of cars will be on the road in my area.

[rupertpenny]

I haven't heard anything from my kids' school about what they are doing, if anything. It will mostly happen after school hours, but I'm unsure if they will even be allowed outside.

My son does kung fu through the aftercare program, and his teacher scheduled a demonstration at 3:10. We are in the 90% range, and the eclipse is at its peak at 3:00. I'm not sure what the thinking was on that. 

[jaylea]

We will be at 97% here and weather should be the best in the country. But I don’t even have glasses, I thought it was in like August until this week. 😂

The school district bought glasses for all the students so the kids can watch anyway

[sadie]

Apr 5, 2024 9:16:05 GMT -5 maudefindlay said:

Apr 5, 2024 8:40:43 GMT -5 sadie said:

My husband is driving to Indy, too. Apparently, Butler University has a planetarium and is planning some stuff.

IU, my alma mater, is hosting a Cosmic Celebration with concert by Janelle Monae and a spoken word performance by William Shatner leading up to the eclipse.

That's fun! Will mention to him.

[litskispeciality]

I'm in the 90+ area but I have to work so I'm hoping my work will let us step outside for a few minutes. They sent us an "eclipse" package of a milky way bar, orbit gum and 1 pair of eclipse glasses, but then I had to buy more for my dad and DH.

[verycontrary247]

We bought a big set of glasses for DDs preschool class and they are hyped. I might see if I can find moon cheese as well.

[lilac05]

I just sent an email to my kids' schools to see if they have anything planned. We're going to be at 87%, so neat to see, but not as amazing as it could be. My hometown will be at 99%+, but we decided not to deal with the traffic of everyone trying to get back home and get to work on Tuesday.

I have helped countless people get glasses, but didn't get my own. Oops! Now I have to scramble to see if I can find anything today! I don't trust Amazon to actually have legitimate products, no matter what the product description says.

In 2017, my boys were too little to trust to wear glasses the whole time and we made viewing boxes out of a cereal box. I think we might do that again, too, so we can see the difference.

[momin2013]

99.6% here - DS and I will just be out in the backyard with our eclipse glasses. If it’s clear enough of a day, I’m also planning to bring out a sheet of paper and look at the shadows through a colander, as well as from the leaves. I remember the last partial eclipse here looking at the shadows under a tree and it was really cool.

[circa1978]

If I'm reading the calculators correctly, we'd be at 99.1%. We were about the same amount away from totality in 2017 and it was cool. DS's school is doing some sort of event. Now I'm wondering if we should do something in our office. We did in 2017 and it was memorable but now so many of us work from home.

[rubytue]

It just dawned on my that my next door neighbors works for the Webb telescope, and seems to be home most days (we aren’t close, but neighborly). I hope he sets up a telescope or something. Wouldn’t surprise me.

edit - also wouldn’t surprise me if he travels for the extra 12%. 

[wildrice]

I haven't given this any thought, but now I'm feeling like I might have some FOMO. I don't have glasses or anything so I guess I'm not looking. I should see if the library still has any. I didn't realize it was going to be as high here as other local posters are indicating - I knew I wasn't going to travel for it so I just kind of wrote it off as something I wasn't going to do!

[erbear]

Apr 5, 2024 9:14:48 GMT -5 pandora89 said:

We are 99.9% here but won't see totality.

Most other schools in the area moved an already existing PA from May to the day of the eclipse so bus drivers don't have to drive the kids home in the dark/kids aren't staring up at the sun without glasses. DS & DD go to a local private school and instead of moving an already existing day off, they just decided to shut down the school for an extra day off. We were just off for 2 weeks for March break (all the other schools are only 1 week). Then were off for Good Friday/Easter Monday and now this. Parents in the classroom whatsapp group are not happy about this additional day off lol.

I know this is a pain for parents, but imagine trying to keep hundreds of kids from looking up at it. Having kids home when you're in or near totality is really the only option, for the sake of the teachers. God forbid something happen to a kid and parents lose their minds. It's not worth the risk...

[plutosmoon]

We are at 96%, I'd have to drive a couple hours up north for totality and decided not to. DD has school and we just got a weird email from them about not letting the eclipse disrupt our daily routine, it said some classes will have a science lesson about it. I think the timing has it starting right before the elementary kids leave school, DD does an after school program centered on science on Mondays, so I hope they have plans to do some viewing. I have a pair of glasses, so I'll go watch outside my office.

[mofongo]

We’re only at 85% I think, yet schools are letting out at like 11am! 🤣🤦🏼‍♀️ not surprising.

[meanie]

We are 85-90% where we live, getting any higher than that would be a loooong drive so we are staying home. I got glasses from the library, I love all the "sun" snacks....might need to steal some ideas!

Peak will be around 3:30 PM here right between school getting out and karate practice and the weather looks great, everything is lining up (lol sorry for the awful pun)

[EvieEthelGarland]

I looked last week at flights to DFW (a friend of friend extended an invitation after learning how interested I am in it) and there were maybe 15 seats from Seattle between Thursday and Sunday on Southwest. The 15 seats were $700+ each way.

So now I'm planning Spain for 8/12/26. We'd been planning a European trip for DS's 18th birthday and that is the day. Maybe there will be less price gouging in Spain? Eh, it's just money, I'll make more.

[Bad Dingo]

We're headed to a farm in the middle of nowhere Canada, north of VT. The weather looks fabulous, I can't wait!!

[Patsy Baloney]

If anyone is looking for stuff to do with kids that’s space-y, we did a space badge at Girl Scouts and the kids were crazy for a salt dough scale solar system we made. Super easy. Here’s the text from our activity book:

Salt dough recipe:
4 cups flour
2 cups salt
~ 1.5-2 cups of water, take it slow until the dough comes together


Make models of the planets. Use salt dough to make tiny versions of the eight planets in our Solar System! You’ll form all of the planets from a 3-pound ball of dough, but before you begin, can you predict the sizes of the planets?

Draw your predictions on pieces of paper, along with the name of each planet, and compare them to the scale model when you’re finished.

Step 1
Divide the entire ball of dough into 5 equal parts.
a. Put 3 parts onto the Jupiter paper.
b. Put 1 part onto the Saturn paper.

Step 2
Cut the piece you have left from Step 1 into 10 equal parts.
a. Add 7 parts to the Saturn pile.
b. Put 1 part on the Neptune paper.
c. Put 1 part on the Uranus paper.

Step 3
Cut the piece you have left from Step 2 into 10 equal parts.
a. Add 2 parts on the Saturn pile.
b. Add 4 parts on the Uranus pile.
c. Add 3 parts on the Neptune pile.

Step 4
Cut the piece you have left from Step 3 into 10 equal parts.
a. Add 5 parts to the Saturn pile.
b. Put 2 parts onto the Earth paper.
c. Put 2 parts onto the Venus paper.

Step 5
Cut the piece you have left from Step 4 into 10 equal parts.
a. Add 4 parts to the Earth pile.
b. Add 1 part to the Saturn pile.
c. Put 1 part onto the Mercury paper.
d. Put 3 parts onto the Mars paper.

Step 6
Cut the piece you have left from Step 5 into 5 equal parts.
a. Add 2 parts to the Mars pile.
b. Add the last 3 parts onto the Mercury pile.

Now roll each planet into an even sphere. Compare your model to the predictions you made at the beginning. Did anything surprise
you?

At this scale, Pluto would be ~one mile from the Sun and our next closest star would be ~18,000 miles!

[MixedBerryJam]

I’m going to Tx tomorrow for totality. I bought my ticket close to a year ago (I even posted here about it) and whoever said at that time to get it now bc prices were only going to rise was right! A couple of weeks ago I thought about changing *one leg* of the 4-leg RT (NOT changing destination, just the date) and it would have added $875 to my $450 ticket. And a round trip, DCA>SAT was over $2k FOR ECONOMY!

I’m planning on setting up my iPad with a time lapse, and then hoping for the best. This is probably the last total eclipse I’ll see and I want to remember it! I’m going to tape a pair of glasses to the camera lens and change a couple of settings I’ve seen recommended.

Of course clouds are predicted.