According to dailygalaxy.com, the Mars Phoenix vessel has its own Twitter stream. It’s a chipper, upbeat little spacecraft, too! If you want to hear frequent, short updates on what Phoenix is doing (as interpreted by a staffer at NASA, no doubt), check it out.
Today after picking up my daughter, I noticed not one but two news crews parked outside my daughter’s school. One might be a fluff “end of school” piece. Two means something happened. So I pulled up to the second one and asked what the dealio was. I said, “is this something my daughter should hear? If not, I don’t want to know.” Apparently, someone who wasn’t supposed to be there was exposing themselves. That’s all I got out of them before I started going basically “LA LA LA NOT LISTENING” because, hello, my child was in the back seat.
Em doesn’t seem to know anything about it, thankfully. I haven’t seen anything on the news yet, and I’ve got a call in to Em’s teacher.
In light of events, let’s go with a bad guy-themed picture today: Repo Man. Yes, that is what my daughter said, “repo man.” In this picture, the repo man has come to take the family baby. Note the evil moustache and pleased expression on the villain, as well as the open O mouth of alarm on the mother and, I assume, father. Oh, the humanity!
ETA: I found a news story about the flashing. They got the time wrong by a good hour, and they spelled my kid’s school name wrong. I e-mailed. It’s been a hour and no correction. Journalists today stink!
Emily selected a game today to play with her speech therapist and was not enjoying it.
Em, with a sigh: “I hate this game.”
Therapist: “But you’re the one who picked it out.”
Em, thoughtfully: “Good point.”
Hee! That’s brand new. Also, hilarious.
Today’s Emily art: Sneaky Sam. Looks like she’s tiptoeing. That’s sneaky, all right!
I’d been interested in this, and Planetary Joe mentioned it at the Schiele yesterday, but looks like it worked!
Phoenix touches down safely on Mars
Emily Lakdawalla at JPL labs is diligently posting on the Planetary Society blog as things happen, including “you saw ’em here first” pictures of Mars from Phoenix. A young woman named Emily helping with the Mars mission? Is there, perhaps, time travel involved here?
While we’re at it, a few other science-y links:
Earth to Jupiter: it’s called Clearasil.
New telescope designed to look for oceans.
Teen figures out how to get plastic bags to degrade in mere months.
Best viewing spots for the Northern Lights
Not strictly scientific, but fun:
That one looks like a bunny.
And now, goodnight!
A few weeks ago, Emily and I went to the Schiele Museum while my husband was in Kentucky. My friend Rachel had suggested this. She knew that Emily had developed a keen interest in space, and the Schiele museum has a great planetarium and is only a half hour down the road.
Emily enjoyed the museum all right, but not in the traditional way. She whizzed through the museum at a pace I call “Stropewalking.” It’s when you’re getting to where you’re going and woe betide anyone who gets in your way. It’s named after its creator, my mother. Genes control interesting things.
As soon as they announced the planetarium show, Emily stopped her power tour of the museum, where she’d been basically killing time anyway. We had a GREAT time at the show. The Schiele museum cleverly placed their gift shop outside the planetarium exit, so there was nothing for it but to buy glow-in-the-dark stars. Immediately. I knew where this was going.
Sure enough, when we got home, they had to be put on the ceiling in representations of the actual constellations. I’m not going to have my daughter stand on a ladder and try this, so it fell to me. And so now she has semi-accurate representations of many constellations on her ceiling. Emphasis on the “semi.”
The interesting part is that although the pack came with small and large stars, she wanted to stop when we ran out of small stars. She knew that constellations had both small and large, and she didn’t just want to dump the big ones in there willy nilly. So when I suggested we go back to the planetarium yesterday, she was delighted, not least because she could get more stars to go on her ceiling.
The Spring Sky Show was at 3, but she had her shoes on at noon, and I couldn’t stall her for long. We wound up hitting “Oceans in Space” narrated by Avery Brooks at 1pm. Emily sat upright with great interest. We hit “Dinosaurs” at 2pm – not that great for us, but we watched the stars go since they left them running. Emily listed sideways in her seat. Finally, we hit the Spring Sky Show at 3pm, hosted by “Joe.” Emily was interested, but nobody but an immediate family member would know it, since she was practically on the floor.
Joe’s good. Next time we go, I wanna shoot for a show that Joe’s running.
Emily left the show with more questions than last time, like “Are all stars except the sun in constellations?” And “Do all people live in the Milky Way?” This time, not only did she wants the constellations on the ceiling, but she hit me with questions like, “What were the stars in the Summer Triangle?” She already knew Castor, Pollux, and Sirius, but now her individual star repertoire has expanded to include Deneb, Altair, and Vega. They’re appropriately labeled, with dotted lines connecting them.
I’ve found some things online that I wish I had, like glow in the dark yarn or glow in the dark thread because let’s face it, my pencil marks leave a little to be desired.
Next week the Spring Sky Show ends and the Summer Sky Show stars. Emily has expressed a desire to go back. I’ll get out the stepstool and limber up in preparation.
Something besides Emily art today. Knitting content!
Pattern: Knitted Kitty by Lilian (warning: pattern contains profanity)
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca sportweight
Needles: #5 (3.75mm)
Bertha at http://karmakitties.com/ sent Emily a care package in December. I knew some things I wanted to send her, like Koigu, but based on her blog, everybody who sends her packages includes some kind of really beautiful thing for her toddler. I got intimidated! There were any number of things I could send, but I honestly didn’t have the time to knit something worthy. So I procrastinated and procrastinated, as I am wont to do. Finally it had gotten to the point where it was just shameful, and I had to send something. I finally abandoned my plans for sweaters and darling little original hats in favor of a very cute and easy pattern so I could get something in the mail to her already.
This was an incredibly easy pattern. You don’t even have to know how to purl. If you can knit a rectangle, you can make this cat. You make three little panels, then seam them up and stuff them. Voila. Cat.
The eyes are spare embroidery thread, and the nose is leftover pink alpaca. I’m a little concerned that I didn’t fasten them securely enough, but I trust Bertha to be able to fix them if they come undone.
I’m told that June is quite happy with the cat, so it looks like this was a good choice. I’m hapy to have a new pattern to add to my repertoire. Quick, easy, and cute – just how I like ’em!
It just occurred to me that school’s ending soon and I haven’t made a teacher gift. Now, I know I’m not obligated to make a teacher gift, and I may not make one, but I did do these knit flowers in 2005, these earrings in 2006. So there’s kind of a precedent now. Plus I knit baby sweaters for her kindergarten and first grade teachers, who both had babies. Soooo… yeah.
Any suggestions? I have one main teacher and a dream team of at least three other specialists.
I’m back on the Jayne horse again now that I can breathe better. Not perfect, but better, and that’s good enough! I’ve got four hats and four kits waiting to go out, so I’ll be hitting the post office momentarily. Actually, only three of those hats are going out. I’m waiting for an e-mail back from a guy in Oregon – I’m missing his address. Hats next up to: CA, MO, CO.
Emily got it into her head earlier this week that we needed to make gelatin. Not “Jell-O,” “gelatin.” This is because she found it hilarious to pronounce the word “juh-LAH-tin.” Ah, jocularity, jocularity. We made some yesterday and she had it last night. “This is DELICIOUS!” she said.
She’s on a cooking spree lately. At her request, we made lemonade yesterday, the only way we always make it – from scratch, with lemons, water, and sugar. Here’s the recipe. Only modification: she doesn’t like pulp, so we squeeze the lemons through a sieve.
Yesterday I looked at her and thought about how much she was growing up, and took a chance. “Would you like to cut the lemons?” So I showed her how you curve your fingers to avoid cutting them. I watched her like a hawk but didn’t really interfere. It could have been really bad – nothing stings like lemon juice in a cut – but she did great. The cuts didn’t exactly bisect the lemons perfectly, but so what? It’ll come with practice. She picked out the bag of lemons at the store, since one of those 2 pound bags gives just about the perfect amount of juice. She didn’t boil the sugar in the water, obviously, but she did pour the cooled syrup into the pitcher. She cut the lemons, and she helped a bit with squeezing, but it’s hard for her little hands. I did the trick where you roll the uncut lemon on the counter to make it easier to squeeze after cutting, but even so, it took some muscle.
Emily poured in the water and the lemon juice and stirred it with a wooden spoon. And she’s been drinking it regularly. I took the opportunity to point out how food we make ourselves tastes so much better. I am a mom, after all. We say these things.
Today’s Emily art is Musical Lin. I don’t know who Lin is, but clearly she enjoys belting out the tunes. Time to get another kit packed up. Hope y’all have a great day!
My allergies are definitely getting better. I can often breathe through my nose now, although I make some alarming sounds doing it. Unfortunately, all the lying on the couch has messed up my back. It’s an old injury that flares up from time to time, usually from neglecting to exercise and keep the muscles strong and limber. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.
Emily’s EOG tests are done, much to everyone’s relief. “Now I can go to fourth grade!” she says. I have it on good authority that her teacher was going to recommend her for fourth grade regardless of how she did, since the teacher says that’s clearly where she needs to be, so all the angst Em felt was probably for nothing. Well, I suppose it builds character.
Em got to announce the weather over the loudspeaker yesterday morning, to her great pleasure. She likes to get to school early so that she has a better chance of being around when they pick someone to do these things. The bell rings at 7:30, and they ask kids not to arrive before 7:00, but you’d better believe Em’s ready to go at 6:50, standing at the door and staring out like a dog with a full bladder, ready to bolt at the first opportunity.
No, I did not just compare my beautiful child to a dog that needs to pee, and if you thought you read that, you’re mistaken.
Today’s Em art: Mother Nature. It seemed fitting given the pollen. I dig Mother Nature’s groovy frock and boots, and the fact that she has hearts for fingers.
Time to go clean out the freezer. It had something pressing against the door and popped open in the night, and now everything’s ruined. Well, it’ll be an opportunity to start fresh, eh?