I finally did it! I was able to sleep late and not worry about the sun sneaking around and finding my eyes. I did this by placing a tri-fold wall in front of my window, that way when the sun came in it only hit the wall. That wall blocked the sunlight from me and cast a shadow on my bed allowing me to get a good extra hour or 2 of sleep this morning. This will now be a go to idea for me every time I am able to sleep in! For once it seems like I have beat the sunlight.

I recently bought a shirt, and it's not just any ordinary shirt, it has a secret! The shirt came with a UV laser light pen. When you shine the light on a certain area of the shirt (in my case it is a etch a sketch) you are able to draw or write whatever you want! I thought this was the coolest thing, I would have never thought you could do things like that with a uv light source!

Last night I was able to watch the sun go down, and while I watched I was noticing the opposite of what I was able to see on a morning a week or so ago. As I watched I found objects with green and red shades in them, and I saw them gradually loose those colors. While that was happening anything with a blue tint was unaffected and sort of stood out more to me. If I had noticed this before I knew what was happening, I probably would have thought it was magic!!

Well I just arrived home from watching a movie at a movie theater in Winter Park where you can order food and drinks while you watch the movie. I have been there before tonight, but every time I regret getting anything to eat because it's so dark while the movie is going! Tonight the food was brought to my table and then the next thing we know the lights dim and the movie starts, leaving us to figure out what we are doing and try not to make a mess eating in the dark while trying to watch a movie at the same time. They tried to light the theater with very dimmed lights overhead and dingy led rope lights along the bottom of the walls, but there is defiantly not near enough light intensity to see what I am doing. I am almost willing to sacrifice the quality of the movie to just get a little extra light to at least keep a drink in a glass and not everywhere else!

I replaced the lamp in my refrigerator this afternoon because I had a feeling it was getting a little dim in there. I just used a standard appliance bulb, and when I screwed the new one in there was an immediate noticeable chance. The color temperature was a more brilliant white and the light was bright enough to cover all the areas inside. Before I threw the old bulb away I looked at it to see all that black stuff that Sue was telling us about in class, and there it was! It was pretty neat to know what the process was that made that happen and why it happens!

Last night I was driving home from my job and on the horizon I saw blue lights going. I knew they were police lights, but I was just amazed at how far away I was able to see them. And even before I saw the actual car I was able to see the lights going on the other side of a hill. I assume they are LED lights, but whatever they are, they are super bright! It was almost blinding to drive by them, and even after I passed and had gotten a fair distance away they were still visible in my rear view mirror.

Today on my way to school I almost ran a red light along with another unfortunate car who actually ran it. The sun was directly behind me and as I came up to the light it was difficult to see the what the light said because all three colors looked lit up! I was almost certain it was green, but as it turns out it was red! I am unsure why the city would use lights that allowed the sun light to make that happen. I thought it was crazy how the light from the sun was able to do that!

Yesterday was a gloomy rainy day. It was a little unfortunate for me because the new windshield wipers I just bought were not the correct kind! So the entire middle of my front window was constantly filled with rain drops. This was so aggravating, because lights from other cars just reflected off the rain drops making it a constant struggle to see. I would have never thought that the light reflecting off of the rain would be such a big deal, it was almost like when you are trying to see where you are walking while you are crying and the water in your eyes just makes everything blurry. So needless to say I defiantly went back to the auto shop and had them put the correct wiper blades on my car.

I posted about a light I bought a couple days ago, and I am glad to report it is actually more of a light than I gave it credit for!! After I turn it on it has barely any light output, but after about 5 minutes it brightens up nicely! I am not sure how this is explainable, other than it possibly takes the light a little while to make it's way through the plastic colored things. I think this may be the case because the areas with darker colors it dimmer for a little longer than the lighter colors and the white places are the first to come to life. So ultimately I am now pleased with this light!

This morning I was awoke by the most annoying ray of sunlight. I fell asleep on my couch last night and in the living room there are sliding glass doors with vertical blinds on them. These blinds sometimes might as well be nonexistent, like this morning! It seemed that no matter how I turned or what I did that ray of light was going to find my eyes somehow. So as usual I forfeited to the light and got up.

I found a new favorite parking spot at my apartment this afternoon! I usually take the closest one to get to my door, but after constantly getting into a car that seems like it is 100 degrees from being baked by the sun light, I decided to take a different approach. During the hottest period of the day the sun casts a shadow from the buildings I live in onto the parking lot in a few places, so I sacrifice my good parking spot to get these shady spots now. Because just like the lamps we work with in class the sun's light gives off heat! So avoiding being completely in the light will at least make it a little less hot when I get in my car.

Honestly I am finding it hard to keep up with this blog, mainly because I could never think of anything to write about. But then after doing a little catch up work and really thinking about light in my everyday life, I realized that without it I would be completely lost, scared, and probably end up with some broken bones! Like last night I was on my way to bed and realized I had left a light on in the other room. I went and turned it off and, boom, it was completely dark because there were no other lights on. So I stubbornly tried to make my way back to the bedroom, and before my eyes adjusted I managed to knock over some books and stub my toe. So I must say I am pretty thankful I am not always in the dark and am realizing more and more how light works and effects my day to day life.

Tonight on my way home from work I noticed that the roads looked a little more dark than usual. I was a little curious as to why that was. I thought maybe I had a headlamp go out on my vehicle, but checked and it wasn't that. There are no street lights on the road I drive home, so it couldn't have been that. And then it hit me, the sky was covered with clouds because it had been raining all evening! I never really realized how much natural light we actually got when there is no cloud cover.

I got a new light! Over the weekend I saw these plastic origami type lights, they were so colorful and I just had to have one. Once I got home I set it up and plugged it in only to be a little disappointed by the light output of the fixture. I realized that when I saw it on display it was in an all white tent that was already well lit, so naturally it seems like the fixture I was interested in was putting off a pretty good amount of light itself. Sadly that was not the case, so now I just have a pretty large decorative nightlight.

This weekend I also was allowed to hang out with and shadow the lighting crew at a couple stages. I mainly watched everyone else hang the lights up on the truss and rolled the road cases in and out, but it was extremely fun and pretty educational to see the transformation of a room lit with normal indoor lights to the eye catching colorful room made by the lights we hung! It's awesome how we can manipulate light change the entire mood and feel of an area!

Well we finally replaced the headlamps on our golf cart! So now driving in complete darkness in the middle of the woods! Although it is still very dark because the lights don't make it very far before they die off. At least I made it out alive without running into any chainsaw wielding maniacs!!

Yesterday I experienced how different lighting makes fabrics look different. I bought a black shirt, well at least I thought it was black. Then when I got home and took the shirt out of the bag I was a little confused because the shirt that I thought was black, was in fact a very dark dark blue! It was so weird, but then I remembered Sue talking about taking an apple and looking at it in a couple different lights and seeing how it looked different, but never really changed its color.

Today I was somehow awake early enough to notice the change in the color that I was able to see. At first everything had more of a blue tint to it, and then maybe 10 or 20 minutes later I was more easily able to see the greens and reds in things. It was pretty cool to be able to know why this was happening after Sue talked about it in lecture.

To the other night I worked the closing shift at work. After we closed the store and were cleaning up I walked out back to take out the trash and it was super creepy! On top of being all alone at 9:30pm in a dark ally the one dim street lamp we have out back kept turning off and on! Next time I am tasked with the trash, I will be carrying my flashlight out into the dark with me!

Yesterday I was out and about around the middle of the day running some errands and it was a nice sunny afternoon. After I returned home and took a nice afternoon nap I walked back outside and saw a noticeable difference from the nice sunny day earlier. The clouds had moved in and it had become gray and overcast.

Last night at work I realized the extreme difference between the lighting in the store. I work at Gamestop and in the areas of the store where the new game displays are the lighting is more intense, I assume that is to draw the attention of the customers. The lighting in the rest of the store is not bad by any means, I just noticed that slight difference and thought it was interesting.

The lighting in my apartment's bathroom is horrible. No matter how many different bulbs I try it always gives off a nasty orange-ish color. This is one of the few things I dislike about my apartment and really wish I was able to change.

Well this morning I had the unpleasant experience of my kitchen light going out on me. The light is a fluorescent light, and until today I had gotten used to the gross dingy color that light made my kitchen look like. But after I changed the bulbs and turned the light back on there was a noticeable difference in brightness. While the lighting in my kitchen still isn't all that great since it is lit with a fluorescent light, it at least is no longer a nasty red-ish orange color!

This weekend I had the pleasure of being able to use fire as a means of a light source! Being in Orlando there aren't many opportunities to make a fire, but at the campground I was at a giant bonfire was an awesome source of heat and also lent itself to helping everyone see what was going on around us in the woods during the darkest time of the night.

This morning the glare reflecting off of my car windshield was a huge hindrance during my drive home. It got to a point where I had to take an exit off the interstate and wait a little while for the sun to come up a little bit more so I could see where I was going.

Yesterday, I was unable to post a blog because I was at a campground. And while I was there I experienced light in many different ways. One of which was by depending on very dim street lights along trails in the middle of the night. After walking the trails a couple of times with the poor lighting, I definitely kept an LED flashlight handy!