By Brendan Loy

I wrote last night that the only solar eclipse I’ve ever seen was on May 10, 1994, when I caught a brief, unsafe, naked-eye glimpse of the partially eclipsed sun, perhaps 40% or 50% covered, looking out a bus window in Virginia during a school trip. But I belatedly realized that’s not right: I also saw, from the road in the desert of southeastern California, ~20% of the sun eclipsed on December 14, 2001, using a makeshift pinhole to project it from the window of Becky’s Camry onto a notepad as we drove from L.A. to Phoenix:

Hopefully we’ll get a somewhat more dramatic view this evening. Cross your fingers. After crystal-clear blue skies this morning, it’s now partly cloudy.

UPDATE: I found my welder’s glass! Since buying it way back in 1999 ahead of the sunrise eclipse that I couldn’t see due to clouds, I’ve been hauling it around the country for 13 years — and now that I finally need it, last night I couldn’t find it. But I just located it, in a box in the basement: