The snow has stopped falling. The sun is out. The walks and porch have been shoveled clean. It’s time for some fun in the snow – as I have often said, "I hate snow but Zen loves it so much, I tolerate it." I can add to that, that it makes for a rare photo opportunity for this neck of the woods …

snow on the holly ………………. and in stereo

it’s not the Christmas card, but it is real

Zen really does enjoy the snow !

It’s easy to get up at my usual 5:45AM in the summer when Little Miss Sunshine is a ball of fire at that time of day. But before DST kicks in and on those short days of winter, Mr. Gloomy Moon tries his best to insure my "get up and go" is more like a "ball up and hide" in the ol’ down comforter.

This year I ma going to try emulate Little Miss Sunshine with a "sunrise simulator". Me being me, I had to turn this into a DIY project. I started with and old light table from a print shop. These things were common place back when be for the all-digital desktop era. In my case, I had salvaged a small floor standing unit just under about 2′ square. It’s first use was as a pedestal for a piece of glass art. It was quite striking to have the art light from the bottom. Since moving the light table has collected dust and rust. So today I sanded it down and put it in the paint booth for a nice shiny white finish inside. I also took the opportunity to remove the fluorescent tubes and install 4 incandescent sockets. I needed to angle the light bulbs so I ended up using two outdoor flood light bases.

The sunrise simulator was purchased from sunraintime.com. I had to make a few modifications to the unit so it could be hard wired (it is designed to have a floor or table lamp plugged into it). I also drilled it to mount on the side of the light table. The unit has a three way switch – on / sunrise /  off.

(for the purposes of the picture,s I have removed the frosted glass top)

The finished unit is a second bedside stand and could still display a nice piece of glass art. It is programmed to start lightening up the room at 5:30 and take 45 minutes to reach full brightness. Currently there are four 75w bulbs. That may be a bit too much – sunglasses anyone ?

This post will tempt fate, anger the gods of weather, and spawn the wrath of my friends to the north … but I’m gonna do it anyway !
Zen and I ended the day out at th picnic table watching the sun set. There were numerous clouds and a wind advisory but it was nearly 70 to make it all worth while. The bummer of course is that in mid-February, it’s dark at 6pm so there was not much time to enjoy the setting sun’s color display.
Just think, in less than a month, the clocks change and if we’re lucky enough to get another day like this, the view will last a whole hour more !