Total Eclipse of the...Clouds?

We were so super excited about the total eclipse today -- I feel like we've been planning for at least a year. It was really cool, but it was also an exercise in practicing being appreciative in the face of disappointments (which so many of us are REALLY good at, unfortunately). 

1) My best friend was supposed to come up with her husband and 3 teenage kids and camp out on our floors and couches. They were in a 93% area, but wanted to see totality. We were nervous about having so much activity in our very, very quiet house, but we were ready. Until my best friend got sick. She's been super stressed lately, and her body picked this moment to just need total rest. So, she needed to take care of herself, but it was disappointing. (And we have SO MUCH FOOD, thankfully a lot of snacky frozen things, but we are ROLLING in snacks and should have a party.)

2) Apparently 500,000 people were expected to come to Rochester, NY, where I live. So we made plans to not go anywhere. And for a while it seemed weird, like...we are one of the cloudiest cities in the country...why would you come here if there were other choices? But, Rochester is also very unpredictable with weather thanks to Lake Ontario, so maybe we'd get lucky. 

3) We did not get lucky. Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, blue skies, just a perfect early spring day. Today looked like this: 

This is actually during the first half of the eclipse, so the clouds do look kind of funky, but STILL.

 We tried so hard to be excited and will the sun to come out. I wore a sparkly eclipse outfit: 

We got a split of champagne: 

And then it just. didn't. clear. up. Here is Bryce, trying to get his pinhole viewer to work (because it was so cloudy we didn't need our glasses): 

It did a great job of projecting...clouds. 

We were super bummed.

4) But, the light did get subtly weirder, until totality happened. Even with clouds, it was FREAKY. And cool, so cool. It was like a curtain of darkness just went SWOOSH over us. It happened super fast. I can see why people used to think it meant end times. That would scare the bejeezus out of you if you didn't know it was coming.

Maybe 15 minutes before, the clouds got real weird.

Holy crap! It was dark, like PITCH dark

And then it started getting light a few minutes later, but it felt long.

It would have been really cool to see the whole thing, clearly. It would have been amazing to see the sky turn dark and stars come out at 3:20 pm. But, it was actually pretty darn cool. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees in just a few minutes. Seeing the birds roosting when it was getting dark and then seeing freaked-out moths making a beeline for cover when it suddenly got light out again was entertaining. The irony: my best friend may have had 93% and no totality, but she had sunny, clear skies. Totality was awesome, but probably not worth a road trip under cloud cover.

We ended up having a good time, even with the clouds.