Time spent doing what you love is never wasted

Recently, I was performing the mundane task of taking out the trash. I went from room to room, collecting the detritus of the week. I then spent a few minutes scooping out and changing the cat litter, and, sighing, finally tied up the bag and hauled it out to the bins around the side of the house. As I lugged the hefty bin out to the curb in the darkness, I did what I do, what I always do, when I go outside: I looked up. I was greeted instantly with an astonishing sight: the reddish, glowing dot of Mars bumped right up against Regulus, the brightest star in Leo. The two were paired less than a degree between each other, low over the western horizon. It was beautiful. Mars was the slightly brighter of the pair, and even in the mildly light-polluted and sparsely clouded night sky of Boulder ...