A gentle tap on the shoulder

It's a Friday evening and I should be out at the pub or something but after one of the more hectic days I can remember I'm at home finishing off all the stuff I ought to have done during the day. The storm that hit the Hawaiian islands has really thrown all my plans out of the door and I'm trying to be quick enough to rush outside and catch them all before they get washed away.

Having said that, there's been little rain here but the summit of Mauna Kea is being covered by a blanket of ice and snow as I write this. The weather forced our day crew to evacuate early this morning and the critical engineering work we planned for today didn't get done. Oh well, there's always Monday and that depends on the crew working on Sunday to clear the snow around the dome. Winter on the mountain almost always increases the overtime budget!

After spending much of the day rearranging everyone's accommodation and travel arrangements (do you really think I do astronomy all day?) I think we nailed everything and assuming we don't get hit by some unexpected weather over the weekend the switch to remote operations will still go ahead on Monday. We'll just have to bite the bullet and reorganise Monday's planned glorious first night of remote operations into an engineering night, but nobody will know...

Tonight I've been doing all the stuff I planned to do during the day so it was nose to the grindstone. On a Friday evening. I ask you. And in the middle of all of this there was a gentle tap on my shoulder. Not a slap or a clawing of flesh, but a simple tap to let me know someone was behind me.

Bubbles.

I didn't think cats could be so polite, but she silently climbed up on the desk behind me, waited her time and when she realised I didn't know she was there just tapped my shoulder two or three times and ever so gently. Then, of course, once she got my attention, she did her usual posing thing.


There's also Eddie of course, the other female in the house. Unfortunately she doesn't like the camera and was not as polite as Bubbles, so she doesn't get to star tonight. But I'm sure she will soon!