The local star

Does 91-ish million miles count as local? In the case of stars I guess it does. The fairly rare opportunity to see the sun so clearly, rather than the usual dazzling bright thing (or the even more usual completely obscured by cloud thing) made me think about the general strangeness of living on a rotating ball of rock that orbits a much bigger ball of gas in a near vacuum. Odder still is the thought that six months ago - when I blipped this - the earth, and all who sail upon her, were at the opposite point on the other side of the sun, so about 180 million miles away in absolute terms, rather than half a mile or so as it looks on the map.