October 6 [Astrometry]
October 6
I was gonna let Aric sleep in some, but when I looked out the window I saw that it was all foggy outside, and he was still sleeping, and I thought that maybe I could play in the fog some and then come back in, so I opened the window and flew out into the backyard and was making little cloudlets when I saw him at the window.
He was just standing there watching what I was doing, and so once I'd finished gathering a cloud I flew up to the window and he backed away so that I could get back in, and I told him that I was sorry I'd left him but he was sleeping and there was fog, and he said that he liked the fog and he liked driving in the fog.
I thought it might be too late for that, because it was starting to clear off, although maybe where there were more trees that were closer together than backyards there might still be some thick fog. And he thought the same thing, and asked how I felt about driving around and looking for some.
So he got dressed, and then we went down to Winston and he drove out to Ravine Road, and there were a couple of thick spots, then once we got past the dirt mines and the 131 Highway, there were a few spots that were pretty thick, and he had to slow down because you could hardly see anything.
It wasn't going to last; the sun would drive it away. In the thinner spots, I could see that the tops of the trees were already lighted by the sun, but it was fun while it lasted. And then he turned down a familiar dirt road, and we drove down to the little clearing that was out there.
I got out and flew around, gathering up some of the fog that was still caught in the shadows of the forest, and I made a cloud like I had on Monday, and he stood in the back of Winston, leaning on the cab roof, and watched me.
Then once it was done, I pushed it up a little bit, and I landed in the back and stood up next to him, and we watched as it slowly drifted away.
When we got back in Winston, he said that even though he didn't have the top on Winston we could still have some fun, and I thought so, too, so I unfastened his pants and then sat on his lap.
He put his arms around me to help hold me, and I couldn't help but nip at his wrists a couple of times, and I even drew blood once by mistake, although I didn't remember having done that until after, when we were getting cleaned up as best as we could. He still had a towel in Winston from when he'd come out weather-watching with me.
We were still kind of giggly and he hadn't fastened his pants yet and I was thinking about seeing if I could get him interested in a second time when he saw a couple of deer come out of the woods and look around. I guess they weren't scared of Winston, because they started grazing right at the edge of the woods, and so we both watched them until they finally walked back off into the woods.
Aric started up Winston, and backed it towards the road, and when he got on the road I asked if I could drive at least until the end of the dirt, and he said that I just wanted a chance to sit on his lap again. Then he told me to promise him not to crash, and I said that I would do my best. And he said that if we saw any other cars, he was going to take over and I had to get off his lap, and I thought that was fair.
But we didn't, and I got to drive all the way until the stop sign. And I didn't crash.
We went back home and took a shower together, and that turned into sex in the shower. It was a little awkward because the floor was slippery and it was narrow and he wasn't quite at the right height, and he had to stop to adjust the shower head once because I'd slid forward a bit and it was hitting him in the face.
Then we had a late breakfast, and I guess Angela and David had the same idea, because they came upstairs while we were still eating, and Angela saw what we had and said that just oatmeal and coffee wasn't a proper breakfast, so she got some eggs out of the electric icebox and cooked enough for all of us to share.
It was clouding up outside, and we'd planned to go get the hay a little bit later, but I knew that it would get ruined if it got wet, and Aric didn't want to put the top on the back of Winston because it was a lot of work, so he said that we could go right now.
So I said goodbye to Angela and David, and I had to give Aric directions to the Farmer's Market, which was something I was not very good at. I didn't know the names of all of the roads, and a lot of them had rules that you could only go one way, so we maybe didn't take the best route there.
But we got there, and the hay-woman showed us where her truck was and Aric parked Winston right next to it and put the haybale in the back.
He said that we might as well take it right to my dorm room, and he didn't need my directions to get back to the college. He stopped right by the back door, and I held it open for him as he struggled with the haybale.
On our way up to my room, we passed by a boy who I didn't know but had seen before, and he gave us a strange look. I guess there weren't any other people in the dorm who had a haybale.
Aric put the haybale in my closet for me, and I stood on my hind legs and wrapped my forehooves around him and he hugged me back, then leaned down and kissed me.
I said that he could come to lunch with me if he wanted to, but he said that he still had some homework that he needed to do plus he had to put some bandages on, and I told him that I was sorry. Sometimes I got kind of bitey when I was in estrus, plus it always seemed like the last one was the worst, maybe because you knew that after this you weren't gonna be able to get a foal until next spring.
So I kissed him one more time and then dropped to all four hooves, and he told me to be careful not to break Meghan, 'cause most women don't like to be bitten, and then he went back downstairs.
I packed up my astronomy books, and then I got my flight gear in my saddlebags, too, except for my camelback, because it was too big to fit in them. And I thought about putting it on, but I didn't really want to wear it to class, because it would be hard to sit in my chair if I was wearing it. And that meant I couldn't use my GoPro, either, but that was okay.
I nibbled a little corner of the haybale, just to get a taste for it, and then I went down the hall and out to the boardwalk, and then I flew up and over the railing and then mostly glided down to the dining hall. And I landed short of the sidewalk, because there were a bunch of people there going into the dining hall, and I didn't want to get in their way. People aren't as used to pegasuses landing as ponies are, so sometimes they're surprised.
I got a salad and they also had scrod again so I got some. It looked a little bit dry, and I wondered if maybe they'd had it last night and people hadn't eaten all of it. And when I got to our table, Meghan was already there, and so was Peggy.
Since they were sitting next to each other, I sat down across from them, and I asked if they wanted to go to the football game tomorrow night, and she asked me if it was a home game or an away game. I wasn't sure, and I said that I'd find out. So I got up and went into the other room and asked Cedric and I also had to apologize for not sitting with them 'cause I should have but I'd forgotten.
He said that they were in Olivet, and I didn't know where that was, so he told me it was halfway between Kalamazoo and Lansing, and then I think we both had the same idea at the same time, but he got to his portable telephone faster and sent a telegram to Aquamarine.
Then he said that he wouldn't get an answer for a little bit because she had class, but to ask him at dinner if I didn't hear word back sooner. I really didn't need to, though, because unless she had something else really important going on I thought that she'd want to come to the game, and she could always ask Mister Barrow and Miss Parker to take her.
So I went back to my table and told everyone, and we decided that we'd go, because it would be a fun way to spend a Friday night. And my scrod was cold, and it was too dry, too, but I ate it anyways.
It had started to sprinkle when we left the dining hall, and I told Anna that I should fly up and get a quick look at least and I'd meet her in class, and then I took off and climbed up until I was a hundred feet or so above all the trees. I could see it was darker off to the west, and I could also see some flashes of lightning a bit further off in the distance, and Mel was probably out there in it wishing that he had a pegasus in the sky to report the weather to him, but I couldn't because of class.
I told myself that he'd probably done a good job before I started helping him, and that he would probably do fine this time, too, but all throughout Astronomy class, I kept feeling guilty and getting distracted whenever there was nearby lightning or when the wind whipped the rain against the windows.
Professor Miller told us more about finding distant planets, and how you could figure out the size of planets from seeing a transit, and she showed us how it might work for someone looking for Earth, and it still made me cringe a little bit whenever she said that pi equaled three.
I think that wouldn't have bothered me if I wasn't taking math classes, because we did weather approximations all the time. The clouds weren't all gonna stay exactly where you thought or have the exact amount of moisture in them and the wind might be a little different than you planned, so it was never going to be exact.
She taught us about astrometry, which was where you used a telescope to see a star moving, and it was kind of like using Doppler shift, but it was using the moving center part of the star. And it worked best for big planets in big orbits, and she said that was how we knew that the closest neighboring star to Earth didn't have a big, Jupiter-sized planet.
And then she passed out homework, and she told us that instead of it all being made-up, it was real data from real stars, which she thought would be a lot of fun for us, because when we went out and looked through the telescope at the Nature Center, we'd be able to find these stars and see them for ourselves, which I thought was going to be really fun.
By the time we got out of class, the rain had passed, and the only evidence of it was a wet lawn and some leaves and small branches scattered around. Just the same, I flew up and looked to make sure it was all gone, and I could see off to the east the very tail end of the storm, and nothing at all off to the west.
Anna didn't want to sit outside because her butt would get wet on the grass, so she said she was going back to her dorm room, so I went back to my room to do my homework. It smelled nice in the room, and I opened the closet door just a little bit to let more of the smell out in the room, then took off my saddlebags and got out my homework.
I'd almost finished when Peggy came back. She said that the room smelled kind of like a stable, and I reminded her that she'd said it was okay. She said that she wasn't mad, it was just going to take some getting used to.
And she said that next time she had a boyfriend over, she could just open the closet if he didn't believe that she had a pony roommate. Then I asked her why she had never introduced me to her boyfriend, and she sighed and said it was complicated, but it didn't matter any more because they'd broken up. I asked why, and she said because he was going to go to overseas for at least a year or maybe more, and they weren't serious enough about their relationship to try and make it work. I thought that was kind of sad, but she said I didn't have to be; it had been fun while it lasted.
I gave her a hug anyways, and then went to finish my astronomy homework, before I finished reading Matthew.
Jesus said a lot more wise things, and when people would try to confuse Him, He would give them a wise answer and they would go away to think about what He had said. But some of them plotted against Him in secret, and one of His disciples named Judas betrayed Him, and so after Passover they caught Him and took Him to trial, and said that when He told them He was the Son of God, that he had committed blasphemy, even though it was true. God had said so. So they decided that they were going to kill Him, and they put Him on a cross, and the sky turned dark and when He died there was an earthquake and the saints came up out of their graves.
So they put Him in a tomb, and after a couple of days He got up and left, and he told his disciples to meet Him in Galilee, and when they got there, He told them to go baptize all the other nations and teach them the things that He had taught.
Since I was going to meet with Liz, I didn't have time for dinner, so I snacked on some of my new hay instead, which Peggy said was really funny, and she even took a picture of me. I didn't have a bowl or anything to put it on, so it was just as convenient to eat it right from the bale.
Pastor Liz asked me how far I'd gotten, so I told her, and she asked me what I thought about it so far. And I said that I liked how Jesus was going around healing people and helping them, and He seemed really nice, but I guess that there were bad people who didn't like Him. And then I asked why He couldn't have gotten off the cross, or why God hadn't sent somebody to help Him. I think that if anyone tried to hurt one of the princesses, the others would come to help.
She said that His sacrifice was important, because it paved the way for Christians to be saved, but I guess even after she explained it all to me, I really didn't quite understand how. It wasn't quite like directly sacrificing himself to save someone else, which I think was where I was confused.
Maybe it was just confusing to me because after He'd been put in His tomb, He'd gotten up a couple of days later and left it, and then told His disciples what to do.
And she said that it was kind of a hard idea to get your head around, especially the first time you came across it, and that Mark, Luke, and John all told the story in slightly different ways and that might help me make more sense of it. And she reminded me that whenever I had a hard time figuring something out, I could always call her or visit her office if it was during her office hours, and she said that she'd be happy to see me any other day if I needed more help.
So I hugged her and thanked her and then went to fighting practice. And after we'd gotten done warming up, we practiced against just one person for a while, and so I got to fight with Stellan and Kennith and Seth. And then she said that we needed to relax for a little bit while she set up the next challenge, which was a bridge crossing, and she said that she'd decided it was too dangerous for me to participate in it since I didn't have any armor.
I said that she'd let me do it last week, and she said that the more she thought about it, the more she thought it had been a bad idea, and we were lucky that I hadn't gotten badly hurt. I guess she was right, but I still would have rather been fighting than watching.
After I got over my grumpiness, though, it was a lot of fun to see. The mock bridge was too narrow for anyone to stand side-by-side, and since nobody had bows, they had to figure out a way to get across. Rushing across didn't seem to work, because the people on the other side could all attack the person on the bridge, and meeting in the middle and fighting one at a time was a kind of silly way to do it, too, because you lost a lot of fighters that way. The only thing that had worked really well was when Seth charged across with Kennith right behind him. Seth had been killed pretty quick, but Kennith had been able to kill two of the people that were fighting Seth and then Stellan came across, too, and they forced their way through.
I could have asked Mister Salvatore to see if he could get me armor, but that would probably take a really long time and there wasn't much of the year left, so I'd just have to watch for the big battles, but I could still practice with one other person.
And since Karla felt bad that I hadn't been able to do the bridge fight, she let me fight her after they were done with that and getting out of their armor, and I did feel satisfied the first time I killed her.
I couldn't decide if Aric would be mad if I spend the night with Meghan, especially since I was going to the football game with her tomorrow, so I decided that I'd spend the night in my room.
I thought that we ought to have another meeting together and maybe think of something fun that we could all do together. Maybe Aric could come horseback riding with us—we could all ride in Winston, and that way we wouldn't have to get an Uber-car. Or we could go walking on the trails together, or all see a movie. We could go to the beach if the weather was nice; that would be fun. We had a whole weekend, and I bet we could all find something fun to do together.
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Guess Silver Glow is turning into an animal...
... Oooor she's always been an animal.
That is the single most blase way of describing the Resurrection I have ever seen.
"Without the Crucifixion, ya got no third act!"
(Sorry, can't find the origin of this quote.)
Silver, some very prominent accidents featured that very technique. If Ted Kennedy was still alive, you could ask him. But, (Good News Department) at least he wasn't texting.
Walking in fog is fun, but driving in it is terrifying. Groundfog is fun because one can touch the fogtop. Dense but shallow fog at night is fun because one can only see a few meters laterally; but amazingly however, one can see the stars above.
¡The approximation for the CircleConstant is 6!
All of the independent verification of Matthew (darkening, earthquake, resurrection of saints, et cetera), prove that the Bible is right.
That was totally not sarcasm.
7781740
We all ain't nothing but mammals.
Silver Glow would be excellent at Cinema Sins.
That is a cute way of describing light rain, did she not learn the term drizzle?
Interesting to get an update of Peggy's love life we haven't heard about her secret boy friend for a while, I still think he might have been married.
Silvers definitely making sure Aric is getting his point accross, but being in a low magical enviroment means the Equestrian magical hybridisation field isnt as strong, or even working, meaning she hasnt just picked up the gift that just keeps taking?
Saw an article mentioned yesterday, where researchers say that measurements taken by aincient astronmers are accurate enough that they show the Earth is slowing its rotation at 1.8 milliseconds per centuary. Isnt Mercury on the order of milli or microarcseconds per centuary deviation due to relativity?
I think Peggy will be having Mr Bale for a house guest for a long time, even if he needs a bit of refreshing now and then. Might improve her night life as well, why hang out in a dorm, when you can realy hang out in a barn.
Football? Soccar. but I barely even know her.
Foggy morning, always fun! Too bad they're a bit uncommon where I live...
And when it comes to astronomy, you can make even more approximative, 'cause when your answer is a coupe of trillion, who will care about decimals anyway? You can afford a huge absolute margin of error.
7782140
Here's a fun one for you, the moon moves further away from earth by several feet a year.
One can only imagine how much fun dinosaurs would have had surfing.
7782030 I can't speak for anywhere else, but around here, sprinkle and drizzle are two different things. Relative to each other, a sprinkle is lighter but has larger drops. A drizzle is heavier but the drops are smaller.
7782250
Sprinkle and Drizzle are certainly different. A drizzle is a steady, if very light rain. A sprinkle is the warning of rain- those random, big drops that foretell a steady falling of raindrops soon.
Still waiting for the day that Silver gets to drive Winston by herself! Just gotta make something that will help Silver reach the pedals haha.
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Huh, interesting, I've never heard rain referred to as a sprinkle before.
Dear Princess: Could I get a set of Guard training armor? Humans like beating each other with sticks and I want to play too.
Silver Glow
(Now imagine Luna at Pennsic.)
Sometimes, I feel terrible pointing these things out, but that Moriarty chap missed it, and that makes me feel better.
Damn, Aric, you're dating a little carnivore horse. Better be careful she doesn't eat you.
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"You and me baby, ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel"
(I'm sorry, I really am
)
7783703
Maybe Aric could come horseback riding with us"
Yeah, I bet Aric won't have a problem riding a horse with meghan. Or a pony maybe.
Maybe between the three we could get some talk about the funny stuff of human-pony sexual relations (or at least a girl chat between meghan and silver) nothing exceptionally detailed (in the tone of this story) but some general casual talk would be fun to read. You've explored interspecies relationships in other fics but they were related in first person in "the heat of the moment". It would be fun to read something with people/ponies more used to it, like is the human size genitalia confortable for ponies and visceversa? It was weird for meghan to feel a flared penis? How much fur aric and meghan have to wash of their bodies after a roll with silver?
You have to justify that tag after all!
That last one give me a fun idea too, both meghan and aric joining togheter making fun of silver t quirks
7781740
Yup, that second one right there.
7781773
Technically, it's not wrong. Although it does kind of miss some of the point.
7781807
7781817
Yeah, but as long as they stay slow, and Silver Glow and Aric both focus on the road and not, you know, they'll be fine. Probably.
7781912
I disagree. I love driving in the fog.
One icy, foggy night, I drove all the way from somewhere south of Battle Creek back to Kalamazoo with no headlights. The moon was bright, and because of the low fog, you could see further without headlights than you could with them on.
A lot of Biblical scholars view Matthew as a creative reinterpretation of Mark, and one which deliberately emphasised both Jesus's divinity as well as the rift between Christianity and Judaism.
7781945
Except for the reptilians that run the government.
7782025
Wouldn't she?
7782030
Sprinkle is commonly used in Michigan to describe a light, sparse rain.
He wasn't married. Or if he was, Peggy didn't know about it.
7782140
Although it would be an interesting twist, for the purposes of this universe, humans can't get ponies pregnant, either here or in Equestria.
It'll make her popular with the few farm kids that go to college and want a smell of home.
Or, in the immortal words of Kathy Ireland, "Welcome to foot, ball."
7782220
They were surprisingly common when I was in Kalamazoo, especially in the fall and spring. Although it kind of depended on how wet the year was.
Exactly! It's kind of hard to wrap you head around how big it is, but the fact that the professor considers the cube root of 100 as 5 tells you that decimals don't matter at all. And anyways, it's not like we could put the sun on a scale and actually weigh it, or stretch out a measuring tape to the nearest star.
7782226
Man, that must have been quite the thing. I wonder how much of a difference in higher tides made for the early development of life, as well.
7782250 7782357
I've never used it in terms of droplet size, but more in terms of frequency. A drizzle is steady, and a sprinkle is sporadic.
7782470
I owned a 78 Chevy truck that I bought for parts, and the original owner was so short that he'd screwed wood blocks to the pedals so he could reach them.
7782854
Unfortunately, it's probably too late in the year for her to get a set of armor, so she's just going to have to do what she can without any.
Luna would probably wreck everyone's shit. Especially if she kept forgetting that she wasn't allowed to use magic.
mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-2743881-1-not_a_hero_by_zedrin-d5fdyws.png
7783177
That's okay--besides the rather rushed publishing schedule, my keyboard is also on the way south. I know know how much typing a Razor keyboard can take before the keys start to become unreliable.
7783226
I already wrote a story where that happens.
7783703
Ooh, like this!
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They're both all about horseback riding.
Hmm, that's in an interesting idea. Maybe if/when Meghan and Airc and Silver are all more comfortable around each other, they can talk some more about that kind of thing.
Meghan's got the toy, so she's got at least some idea . . . and horses don't shed a lot, so there's probably not much fur, although I suspect that both of them have a gotten a fair bit of fur and feathers in their beds by now.
'Let's pick on Silver' would be a fun tension-breaker for them.
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The Moon moves less than an inch further away annually. The Earth probably had a 2-hour day and the Moon was probably only 20 thousand KM away from the center of the Earth, revolving around the Earth in only 14 hours about 4.5 billion years ago. Tides would have been kilometers high.
I've always been a little confused on that myself. What is the actual connection between Jesus being crucified and humanity's wrongdoings that allows for the former to negate (mitigate?) the latter? It's always seemed like a non sequitur to me (Jesus dying 2000 years ago has no connection to the "badness" of the things I do today.)
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Earth Rotation and the Lunar Cycle
Dense reading ahead:
PDF detailing research into Earth-Moon system changes since the Precambrian
The dinosaurs probably wouldn't have noticed a huge difference in the day night cycle, since it's been pretty slow for some time. My understanding, though it seems this all is very much theoretical, is that if the Moon was born from the Earth through some process, the Earth-Moon system would have reached relative stability rather quickly. Essentially, the Earth's rotation, Moon's rotation, and Moon's orbit would have all initially been highly energetic with regard to each other, and like gyroscopes, would have quickly found a more stable near-equilibrium. True equilibrium hasn't been achieved yet, and won't for quite a long time, because as the stability rises, the rate of change decreases.
Maybe a picture will help.
zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/g773.png
Ignoring the actual units of measure in this graph, if we make x represent time, then y could represent the number of Earth days per solar year, the Earth's rotation speed, and the Moon's rotation speed (though not all at the same time).
Just as an example, the modern day is at about x=1.
Likewise, this graph:
people.richland.edu/james/lecture/m116/logs/decay2.gif
If x is time, then y could represent the distance between Earth and the Moon.
More or less. The graph lines are simply the right shape; I don't know the actual math.
tldr: The rate of slowdown is decreasing, so it is taking longer and longer to get the same change, which means that back in history things were changing (and moving) quite a bit faster than they are now. But we're talking a loooooooong time ago; like early Precambrian (early Archean Eon, or maybe even just the Hadean Eon, 4 billion years ago, or so).
7895485
Fascinating stuff, there. Maybe that's why Luna had to take control of the moon--maybe it was starting to come back in, and getting close enough to be dangerous, so she had to push it back out and fix its orbit.