My bad luck streak with meteors.

I love stargazing, but I hate meteor showers.  They’re bad luck for me.  Whenever I try to view them, things go wrong: the weather gets bad, the only urban location with an open sky available to me has a building in the way, I’m traveling for a convention and don’t have the chance to stargaze, and so on.  Despite my streak of bad luck, I decided to give things one more try with this year’s Perseid meteor shower.

Things were off to a promising start last night.  My backyard has a grand view of the sky, with only a few trees and mild light pollution blocking my view.  Otherwise, the grand tapestry of the heavens was open to me.  The weather was superb.  The night was clear, peaceful, and warm.  I sat in my backyard with a perfect view of the meteor shower and waited.  Sure enough, I finally saw some meteors.  After all these years, my luck had finally turned around!  I beheld the Perseids.  Streaks of brilliance crisscrossing the sky in a celestial shower.  I gasped as luminous bodies sprinted across the sky, only to wink out as quickly as they appeared.  Some were little sprites while others were fireballs.  It was glorious.  My unlucky streak with meteor showers was broken!

Until I turned my head to give my neck a rest and found myself face-to-face with a skunk.

I ran in one direction, and it ran in the other.

Stupid meteor showers.