3. One of the great pleasures of life is a beautiful sunrise.

Very often in life, we are blessed with brilliant sunrises and magnificent sunsets. Most of us will take the time to view either one or the other and offer colourful adjectives to describe the scene. I think more people will watch a sunset than a sunrise just because of our sleeping and work schedules. We are almost always able to see the sunset, but often a gorgeous sunrise occurs while we are still in bed.

I love to watch a morning sunrise, especially in Winter. Since we live on the 20th floor of a condo we have a spectacular viewing room that faces south. In the morning, I sit in one direction and watch the sun come up and in the evening I sit in the other direction to watch the sunset. Because of the conditions of the air in Winter the sunrise tends to be far more colourful and brilliant than at any other time of the year. Each morning I am usually awake and out of bed before the sun actually starts to peek above the horizon. I am often greeted with a kaleidoscope of colours - pink, mauve, scarlet, orange, magenta, and gold reflected on a white or grey pillow of clouds or a bright, clear, turquoise sky. Each morning I assign God a grade out of 10 points on the sunrise for that day. He invariably scores very high marks.

Sunsets can be equally spectacular. I find them more interesting in the summer or autumn when our air may be tainted by smoke from distant forest fires in BC. One of my interesting life experiences with sunsets occurred when I was in Uganda. Since it is much closer to the equator than we are in Calgary, the sun sets much more quickly. I recall one time in Uganda we were viewing the sunset from our hotel's rooftop and I decided to race to my room to get my camera. It took me no longer than two minutes, but during that interval, the sun did a nosedive into the horizon and was completely gone when I returned. I experienced much the same reality in Hawaii.

I am also a huge fan of sunny days. I think the sun is a human rejuvenator and does recharge my energy level all the time. As the old saying goes, " A day without sunshine, is called night!”