YOU MIGHT BE AN AMATEUR ASTRONOMER IF:

* You think that not getting enough sleep at night is a good thing.

* You ask your optomotrist about the availability of H-Alpha Sunglasses.

* You center your vacation time around the New Moon.

* You don't buy a house until you've had a chance to see how dark the neighborhood gets at night.

* You build your dream home with a roll-off roof (or optionally, a rotating dome roof).

* All the night lights in your house are red.

* Somebody asks you where you live and you tell him the latitude and longitude of your house.

* Somebody asks where your town is and you pull out a map and show him how to "starhop" from town to town to find it.

* You've named your kids and pets after stars or constellations.

* A pair of binoculars and a small refractor are always in your trunk, just in case.

* Your neighborhood seems to always have more than its share of non-functioning streetlights and porchlights.

* You can hand-draw your own star charts down to the 7th magnitude -- from memory!

* When you take a new vehicle for a test drive, the first thing you do is run by home to see whether your telescope will fit in the trunk.

* During droughts, farmers in your area collect donations to allow you to buy more telescope equipment (to make it rain).

* You spend more money per year at your favorite optics store than you do at Wal-Mart.

* You plant and trim hedges (especially evergreens) and erect yard art to block nearby lights.

* Your friends and colleagues tell just you about the beautiful sky they saw the other night.

* You have a propensity for buying toys that glow in the dark.

* You rewire your house to 12VDC so that it's compatible.

* Your spouse complains about always having to turn the brightness up on the monitor in the morning.