At about 5:45 p.m. Thursday my phone started ringing.

First it was friends in Lloydminster, then it was my parents, then it was friends in Red Deer. All of them wanted to know the same thing.

“Did you see that awesome fireball just fly over?”

Unfortunately, I was in my living room watching T.V. and missed the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.

My old boss in Lloydminster was the first to explain it to me.

“It was like a bright flash, everything lit up like the middle of the day,” he said.

I could tell he was excited, but I also detected a great deal of nervous uncertainty.

Next I talked to my dad in Chauvin, who said the passing fireball rattled windows in the house. He caught a glimpse of what he described as 'a bright white burning streak heading for Saskatchewan.'

Of course my first priority was to get something put up on reddeeradvocate.com as quickly as possible. It immediately became clear just how many people were seeking out online information on the fireball — me included — as the Canadian Press story I posted to the website had hundreds on views within minutes of going up.

By Friday morning some very cool videos began popping up on YouTube. Here are a couple I picked out:

See fireball videos on YouTube:

• Amateur camcorder

• Police dashcam

Even though I didn’t see the fireball myself, I certainly got caught up in the excitement. Hearing the awe and bewilderment in the voices of those who saw it, all kinds of possibilities raced through my mind.

To be perfectly honest, the first thing that sprung to mind was the Armageddon movie.

Although common sense dictated that the mysterious object was probably a harmless meteor or a piece of falling space junk, I couldn’t help but thinking, ‘what if?’ What if it was a killer asteroid or some kind of alien spaceship?

With so little mystery left in this world, Thursday night was a rare, exhilarating moment of human wonder and uncertainty — and I missed it!