STAR trek

My parents live in Nicholasville Ky (thats NichVegas to us local hicks) Anyway Nicholasville is a small town and like most small towns it has it's share of both annoying and endearing qualities. One such endearing quality is that when you look up at the night sky you are presented with natural endless starry wonder rather than assaulted by the bright lights, big city... And that's where this story begins. Once again my parents (shout out, Sam and Carol) and I were aimlessly walking around the lake, whimsically gazing up at the expansive night sky. My mother continued to get so distracted in fact that she fell behind on a number of occasions. She was attempting, in vain I might add, to locate the Big Dipper. I tried to help her out but also failed. However we did successfully (we thought) locate the little Dipper and for that we were proud. After completing our walk, we when inside where I grabbed myself a cold beer, my Dad retreated to his computer office, while my Mom begin to rummage around looking for something in particular. She emerged with a book titled "Exploring the Night Sky" and was a little more than excited about it. After pouring over the book for a few minutes with me watching with minor interest, she persuaded me to go back out into the cold Kentucky night for some slightly better educated star gazing. Once outside and using our new found astrology knowledge we successfully located the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and the constellations Orion and Cassiopeia. At this point I must admit I was having a bit of fun and found I too soon matched my Mom's initial excitement. We rushed back inside to consult our text book and soon were back outside armed with more information. We continued on this track for about an hour and by the time we were through we had successfully located and viewed (thru binoculars) all the major constellations and individual stars including Capella, Polaris, Regulus, and Sirius. (funny how those last two are characters in Harry Potter) We even went so far as to search the internet and view close up pics of these stars taken by the Hubble telescope. Overall I really had a great time, as did my Mom, and I think we even learned some astro stuff out of it too. Just farther proof that you Never know where the Night may take you.