Christmas came and went in a flash and all I can say is WOW! Miss Trixie in her usual manner made a huge splash with presents for the grandkids and I doubt that we will be able to do better than that in any following gift-giving. For those of you that know her it's not a surprise but if you do not, let's just say the best decision you will ever make is to invite her to any potluck or other event where she can share her bounty. You will not be sorry.

SAN LUIS VALLEY — Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, HPAI for short, has now been detected in the SLV according to a recent article by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), and more wild bird mortalities have been reported since the announcement.

Winter has certainly arrived across our Nation. This week Colorful Colorado and the West is getting some much-needed snow on our mountains, which means there will be rain events further east and south. All much appreciated after last summer's drought.

The Ursid meteor shower runs from Dec. 17 to 26, and peaks on the night of Dec. 22. It's a ‘Welcome to Winter Meteor Shower’ with the longest night of the year on the 21st as winter begins. This will be a good shower with the New Moon on Dec. 23. We just need good weather.

In Greek mythology Andromeda was the Princess of Ethiopia, daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus.

Hopefully by this time you have all either eaten the big bird and its Thanksgiving leftovers or thrown it out fearing food poisoning. At which point you probably gave it to the dog to throw up all over the rug later in the day. At least it's gone for another year, and we can move on to fresh food at least until Christmas when another round of “don't waste food” runs rampant through our houses.

By the time most of you read this you will have already found yourself elbow deep inside a cavernous turkey carcass trying to stuff it with old bread. At least that is how it used to be before people found out you could make dressing in a casserole dish much easier.

The two stars that I seem to mention the most are Arcturus and Spica. Since I wrote about Spica last month, I thought it was time to tell you about Arcturus. You know the drill: find the Big Dipper and follow the arc of its handle to Arcturus.

This is the year of the comet, so far, we’ve had Lemmon and Pan STARRS. Soon you’ll be able to see ISON, but for now you’ll have to settle for our “old faithful” comet Encke. It’s “old faithful” because it has the shortest orbit of any known periodic comet and appears every 3.3 years. Periodic means that it orbits the Sun in a reliable pattern like a planet.

I know some of you readers out there who are probably too young to remember the days before Al Gore invented the Internet or even the time he claimed to have done so. But believe it or not, prior to the www-everything, U.S. Mail was the primary carrier of outrageous claims and promises to your mailbox.

This time it's the Leonid Meteor Shower that runs from Nov. 6-30 and peaks on the 18th. Since the full moon was on the 8th, and the new moon will be on the 23, they should be fine.

By the time you read this, the votes should have all been counted and tallied and we can, at least, watch a little bit of television without a political ad being blasted into our homes.

This past weekend found Miss Trixie and Ol’ Dutch traversing the plains of North Texas and through Oklahoma’s Arbuckle Mountains in a journey back in time. For it was home to Kansas for me and the 70th anniversary of the founding of my home church.

The new moon was on the 25th, we still have beautiful dark skies for viewing. The Milky Way is beginning to move from the South to the Southwest as Earth's solar orbit changes into the autumn position. The other end still appears in the NE. Don't forget to look for the Taurid fireballs in the eastern evening sky.

I do not suppose there has ever been a larger jump in technology than there has been in the last decade. And some would say it really all took a light year leap forward in about 1947 with the crash of the UFO at Roswell, New Mexico, where the U.S. Government supposedly reverse engineered alien technology found in the flying saucer recovered there. For it was then that the transistor was “invented” and suddenly we were in a new era that led to a communication unrivaled since Eve gave Adam the apple. And we all know how that turned out

Algol is one of the stars in the constellation Persius that sits below Cassiopeia. Its Arabic name means head of the ghoul, or head of the demon. Beta Persei is the official name, but Algol is more common because of what it means.

There is an old poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge named “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and before you say I have a typo in the title of the poem and it should be “Rhyme,” it's not. I guess he didn't have a spell check on his laptop back in 1798 at the time he wrote it or something.