The grating thing about unannounced or ongoing tests is not so much the surprise factor as never being quite sure what it is, exactly, that's being tested.

That suspicion intersects with another, that almost everything in and about life these days -- pick something, anything at all -- is really just meant as a test of our sanity, of how much we can take, how much craziness we can jam into the claustrophobically-closing, finite spaces all around us, and how much lunacy we can tamp down and cram in, into the potentially infinite space between our ears.

In summer, around campfires, warming against the night chill, it is easy to stretch one's lower back in the flickering light, and look upward, launching one's higher mind, into the clouds of stars.

It is an always stunning notion -- looking up into the skies and into the view of stars, is gazing back in time, participating in time travel.  That light took a long time to get here, but it went the top end of the speed limit, the whole way, as fast as light can go.