So far, so good, smoothly sailing with the ‘rents here. 

Believe it or not, I have a newly installed kitchen faucet, and tomorrow I’m spending quality time with Dad installing new gutters around my house.  We’re doing it before hubby comes back from his business trip; he’d try to stop us if he was here, most likely out of guilt or because he’s tight about spending more money on this house. (He’d rather I spent money on the new house still in planning stages…nary a blueprint in sight at the moment, though.)  We need the gutters, having had too many flooded window wells from downpours which exceed the current gutters capabilities.  (Don’t go there, you don’t want to know…yes, the straw broke the camel's back, the basement flooded recently.)

It’ll be fun, I’m telling myself…I now own my very own personal rivet gun, a fresh tube of RTV in my tool box from sealing the faucet gasket, a brand new basin wrench.  It’s kind of weird, this fix-it thing; I’m used to having to fix things (like a sink hole in the front yard last month) only because of a catastrophic failure.  We haven’t had the time to deal with them until they get incredibly, disastrously bad.  Dad’s got time and wow, he’s bored enough and rested enough to want to jump right at these things.  Almost scary.  All I’d said this morning was that the basement flooded last month in part because the gutters were getting crusty, and lo and behold, I’m shopping at Lowe’s, following Dad while he’s chucking downspouts and elbows in the cart.

Definitely blog-fodder ahead.  (Raven, we might make 48 hours more at this rate, what’s my cut on the winnings? <g>)

But the highlight today had nothing to do with ‘rents, home repair, thrifty spouses, kids…

I think I saw my first UFO.

We’re driving home from Lowe’s about 5pm; I’m looking off to the west, noting a couple of planes at high elevations and their contrails behind them.  I can see the planes are moving east and west, the contrails spreading and thinning behind them.  It’s a normal traffic route of some sort – there are a number of older contrails, already quite thin, attesting to previous traffic moving in the same directions.  They’re well south of my vantage point, because I’m only 5 miles from an airport at the point I’m noticing these planes; they're probably clear of the local air traffic taking off and landing.

After watching the planes and contrails for a minute, I realize I am looking at another shiny, bright plane, 65 to 75 degrees above the horizon, the sun glinting off its belly.  It’s nearly overhead, rather close to the nearby airport.  Because I’m so busy talking with my folks about the gutters we have just purchased, the sight isn’t registering as odd.  At least not right away.

It suddenly occurs to me that there is NO contrail from this plane, even though this shiny object appears to be at the same elevation as other planes I can see above; it’s not moving, either, at least not from my perspective.  I yell at my mom, mid-sentence about gutters, look, look – I think it’s a UFO, look at this shiny object, (pointing wildly) it’s not a plane.  She tries to look, but by the time she clears the gutters between us to look, it’s GONE.

GONE.

Nothing, no trail, no flash, no lights, no nothing.  A shiny, metallic object looking somewhat like a plane at 30,000 feet with sunlight reflecting off it, then NOTHING.

What the hell was it?

Nothing that happens the rest of this week can possibly be weirder or more inexplicable than this. 

Not even stranger than the sight of me on a ladder in mid-November on a 50-degree day in Michigan, hanging gutters with my dad.

9:39:27 PM    comment []