Two thirds empty, enroute to two thirds full

... or thereabouts, depending somewhat on your latitude.

In the midst of the usual 'rush rush ain't no time for thinkin' about it' state in which I live my commuting life, my lovely little daughter noticed something nice yesterday. As we were going to the car enroute to one of her lessons, she asked me why it was it was light out.

And hey, how 'bout that, it was, for the first time in quite some time, at least for that particular ritual. We'd got just far enough past the solstice that the sun wasn't yet set at the time I usually pick her up for said lesson.

Observant child. As she's still a bit young for angular geometry, and as we didn't exactly have a blackboard available, I didn't get too far into the details of the direction of the axial tilt versus the direction of the sun, but did tell her it had to do with such a thing, and then got to the neat part I figured I could handle describing: that yes, the days are getting longer, and it would now be staying brighter longer for about another six months; the darkest weeks of all behind us for almost another year.

Might sound like a small thing to some of you. But this town is far enough north that the nights do get kinda long. It's a nice thought, this time of year.