I saw the first one at 11:32. Bright, thick, blazing down towards the northwest above our neighbors' bare trees.

The second burst down at 11:35. Three minutes apart. Since I can only see maybe 15-20 percent of the sky, that's pretty good.

Shooting stars.

Meteors from the Geminid shower, to be exact. I go stand in the dark bedroom and tell the wife.

"Did you say something?" was the sleepy reply.

Ummm, yeah. You see, there's this meteor shower peaking tonight, and I just saw two from the kitchen door...

"Are these the Leonids, or something?"

Ummm, no. The Geminids.

She suggests I tell youngest son, since he's a Gemini.

He, of course, is still awake, busily on line as I had been. And happily follows me up and back into the kitchen, where his mother is craned down in her nightgown to look outside at the only patch of open sky unobstructed by trees, houses or streetlights.

There are two sleepy heelers stumbling around in the dark room, too. This makes absolutely no sense to them. I mean, we were already in bed!

There is fresh snow on the ground, and the treetops are shaking in the wind, but still the son goes outside. We wimps get stiff necks watching from the door window. Once she claims to have seen a shooting star, but immediately, "No, it was a bat."

A bat!! There's no bats flying around this part of the world in December. There's nothing out there for them to eat.

"Well, it was something flying past the light."

Soon the son comes back in, shedding his leather coat. Two Geminid shooting stars to his credit, which we managed to miss in our narrow span of starlight. And our view is soon obliterated by the glaring reflection of the tiny refrigerator light.

Apparently, if you're a young male, and awake around midnight, you might as well eat something.

All of a sudden, the heelers think this midnight rousal makes sense.

Food!

In less than a minute, some mass of edible material is consumed, and he heads back to his room, his Geminid curiosity and hungry stomach both satisfied.

And the wife has two sleepy heelers again throwing themselves onto the floor at her feet, wondering what in the world could possibly warrant leaving the warm, soft bed to stare out a window in the middle of the night.

"I mean, if there was something out there, we'd bark and let you know..."

"I just want to see one," the wife complains. And in a matter of minutes, which seemed much longer, she exclaims "There! There's one!"

And off she goes, heelers in tow.

And I am alone in the dark again.