On the evening of Thursday, Jan. 27th, my friend Dawn and I went to Yreka, which is about a 30 min. drive from where we live in Weed ( which is at the base of Mt. Shasta), to have dinner and visit with a cpl. of friends. After we had dined, and been there for a cpl. of hours, we went out onto the balcony of our friend's apartment to smoke. Their balcony faces southeast, and overlooks the tops of some houses and businesses in the north end of town. It was a cold night, but completely clear and dry, with lots of stars in the sky. From our point of of view we could see Plieades and a dipper, amoung others. We were just chatting about the weather, basically, and looking at the stars. All of a sudden a faint "star" just appeared in a portion of the sky in front of us, in between a cpl. of other faint ones. I was the only one who noticed it at first. As I watched the "star" got bigger and biggger, brighter and brighter, and turned to an intense bright orange color.(from the distance in the sky, at arms length, it was approx. 6mm in sz.) Then it just BLINKED OUT, like someone had flipped a light switch! I shouted out "OMG, what was that"?, and excitedly told the others what I had seen. As I was pointing to the part of the sky where I had seen it , it happened again, exactly as before. This time my friends saw it too (there were four of us standing there)and we all became very exited.We were shouting the usual "what in the #@*% is that?", and got the attention of the neighbors who live in the apartment below us.As I was telling these people what we were yelling about, and they came up the stairs, it happened again and they saw it too. Everyone was trying to frame it up in their cell phone cameras, but it was just too far away for cell cameras to capture it. None of us had a better camera, or any binoculars, at the time. In the time that we were watching, the same exact thing happened 7 times! Each time it there about 2-3 minutes between when it first "popped on" looking like a faint star, and grew larger and brighter and turned to a vivid glowing orange,and blinked out again. The duration of it's "on" time was about 15 -20 seconds, and always the same. During our sighting we also noticed that the object appeared to be moving VERY slowly to the south, but the movement was barely discernable. There was no sound, but it was was so high in the sky, and so far out, that even had it been a jet, we would never have heard it. Altogether were 8 people on the balcony who all saw it. My friend Dawn and I decided to get on the road and head back home, as we thought we might get a better view of it from out on the open highway. It took another (very tense) 15 or 20 minutes to say our goodbyes, as our friends did not want us to leave. There are alot of bends in the highway between Yreka and Weed, but we were basically heading in the the same direction as what we had seen. But unfortunately, there was too much traffic on the highway (I-5) and too many other lights, to have a good view of the sky.When we got home we stayed outside for some time , in hopes that we would see it again, but we did not.I know it was not a plane, or any other conventional craft. I once worked at L.A.X. for over 6 years, and also worked at Beale AFB for almost seven years, and I know what airlpanes look like-coming and going.I know I should have reported this as soon as I got in the house last night, but I kept thinking that since I had no photos or footage, my report would not be worth much.But I cannot get it off my mind, and was hoping their might be other report to corroborate with mine. (This is actually the 5th time in my life I have seen a UFO, but this is the first time I have even seen this "type" of thing. *(Wit's name deleted--CMS/sg).