My wife got all kinds of fired up about the Northern Lights last night, so we piled our kids into my truck and drove a half hour outside of Boise to get away from the “light pollution”. Went to a spot in the desert south of Kuna and sat for like an hour (10-11) waiting to see something. You could make out kind of a faint green glow in the sky, but it was nothing to write home about. We decided we’d had enough and drove home to Meridian.

I went upstairs and started getting ready for bed when my wife yelled for me to come downstairs to the backyard. Apparently, the “good stuff” had kicked in at this point. They had turned off all the lights in the house, and you could clearly make make out sheets of green and pink - even caught some of the nice shimmering effect you see in pics from the arctic.

We heard our oldest daughter yell for us to come to the front yard, as the view was slightly better. I bolted across the back patio through the dark to what I thought was our open sliding glass patio door…..but apparently my son had shut it behind him when he came out. I mean, I went into that thing face-first with all the speed my 49-year old body can generate. My daughter heard the collision from the front yard. I don’t think I’ve ever been been hit that hard in the head in my life. My wife says I stayed upright, but for a solid few seconds I was out cold on my feet - completely unresponsive. When I finally snapped out of it, everything was blurry and my head was ringing. Also, my front teeth had blasted the inside of my upper lip into hamburger, which felt great.

My wife was determined to take me to the ER, but my CNA daughter was able to convince her I didn’t have a concussion. Woke up this morning with a giant goose egg on my forehead and a swollen upper lip.

I give the Northern Lights a B-.