Tomorrow marks the first day of Fall here in the Northern Hemisphere. With the Fall Equinox occurring at 6:54PM tomorrow night, we can say hello to 70 degree weather, deciduous trees, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes (oh wait, those already happened). We can finally say farewell to heat waves, intense sunburns, and the constant need for air conditioning. Actually, who am I kidding -- our farewell to heat waves might have to be postponed another month, we’re still in the 90s all next week!

As I’m sure most of you can relate, I have been ready for the fall season to arrive for quite some time now. I’m not a huge fan of scorching-hot 100+ degree days here in the Sacramento Valley. With fall just around the corner (literally), we can start to see Halloween and the Holiday season on the horizon. This is your reminder to start your holiday shopping early!

As Max said last week, and I quote, “We’re gonna get spooky, then we're gonna get jolly”.

Have a fabulous weekend, Crusaders. See you in the Fall.

Maya Angelou was an American author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet and civil rights activist. She received many honors throughout her lifetime and in my opinion, is one of the most inspirational women I've ever learned about. 

Did you know? She even wrote and recited her poem 'On the Pulse of Morning' especially for President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993. This is really, really, amazingly awesome because this marked the first inaugural recitation since 1961, when Robert Frost delivered his poem "The Gift Outright" at J.F.K.'s inauguration.

 That is kind of a big deal...

1. Light from some stars takes so long to travel to our eyes that when you look at the star-speckled night sky you’re actually peering deep into the past. NASA’s Hubble Telescope can look as far back as 13 billion years ago.
   
   
2. Outer space is silent. Eerily silent. That’s because sound waves need some sort of medium to travel through. And space is a vacuum. A dark, silent vacuum.
   
   
3. The sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of the solar system. It’s so big that you could squeeze 1.3 million Earths inside of it.
   
   
4. Our sun is one of at least 100 billion stars, just in the Milky Way. There might be as many as three sextillion stars in the universe. That’s 3 followed by 23 zeros, or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s more than all of the grains of sand on Earth.
   
   
5. The Milky Way is a huge city of stars, so big that even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to travel across it.
   
   
6. When a massive star explodes, its scrunched up core forms something called a neutron star. Neutron stars are so dense that just a teaspoon of their material would weigh more than Mt. Everest. The explosion can spin the neutron start to mind blowing speeds, up to 600 rotations per second.
   
   
7. Ordinary, observable matter (like stars and planets) makes up a measly 5% of the universe. The other 95% universe is made up of invisible dark energy (68%) and dark matter (27%).