Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Hot chocolate is only deathly sometimes.

Donald the Local Fanboy is local once again, back in his rightful home state. And also in my home, a day ago.
While he was here, I introduced him to the art of needle felting, a therapeutic craft in which you take a fluff of wool and a barbed needle and STAB THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF IT until the wool becomes the shape you want.

Yesterday was also our last star party of the season. I ate pizza with the other star guides and solved puzzles with Vanessa, our newest recruit. This was her first year and she has done very well. As far as I can tell, I did very well too, speaking in front of people.
Braden, the oldest star guide, made us all new passports with harder to find targets. Things like the owl cluster and omega nebula.
I do not have pictures of those, but john did image the pelican nebula, and I thought that was kind of cool.
(There's a little 1 in the corner because he matched the photos up with the names when he sent them to us. The stars are a little blobbier than normal and the image is lesser in quality because he took this with the 5 inch 'astrovideo' [Not actually video. It just takes lower quality pictures faster so we have cool results to show guests sooner.] telescope instead of the proper astrophotography telescope in the observatory.)

A quote from Brett last evening: "I am always afraid to touch nature because I am afraid nature will touch me back...with more insects...ugh."
Speaking of insects, the night before, Vanessa and I had been making hot chocolate while the guests were in the planetarium, and a fly fell into her cup and died. But this death was not instantaneous, sporting the full show of frantic, soggy buzzing, its wings making swirly designs in the foam on top. A death that was quite a spectacle, if still gruesome.

Now that the star guide season is over, I am sitting alone in my house feeling kind of sad.

I believe I figured out the death frisbee thing from a couple posts ago. I started watching Sherlock recently and "death frisbee" was mentioned, in reference to a hat. I must have read it somewhere in my explorations of the interwebs, and it stuck in my mind enough for me to write it in my closet.

Friday, August 5, 2016

I would walk 2 barefoot miles and I would walk 2 barefoot more just to BE the man who walked 4 painful MILES to have 5 blisters (at your door)

I made a series of poor choices yesterday that eventually led to me getting squirted in the face with body fluid this morning.

Poor choice #1: Staying up until 2, partly because I am bad at sleeping, partly because working at the planetarium messes with my sleep scedule. (Had our first star party on tuesday).

Poor choice #2: Putting on flip flops instead of normal shoes to go for a walk with my family. I was too tired to put on normal shoes, as explained in poor choice #1.

Poor choice #3: Taking off said flip flops to walk barefoot on the pavement. I wanted to strengthen my hobbit feet. Which, evidently, I do not have.

Poor choice #4: Overestimating the strength of my feet. Mom kept asking me: "Do you want to turn around? Can your feet handle this?" I kept saying, "Yeah, we can keep going, it doesnt matter."
Well it did matter.

So I walked 2 miles barefoot over pavement, and it wasn't until then that I realized I had awful blisters forming on my feet. I didn't walk 2 miles back. Cole and dad had brought their skateboards, so i sat cross legged on the skateboard and put my hands in my flip flops to push myself back.

Also, by brother has been into My Chemical Romance lately, so If you can imagine me, long legs folded up across a skateboard, pushing myself along with hands covered in flip flops, singing Teenagers, then you are doing an awful good job of imagining.

When that was all finished, I had 5 very large blisters total and could not walk worth refried beans. I would show you pictures, but you probably did not wake up this morning and think " Wow! I really need to see giant blisters on the bottom of someone's dirty feet!"
Unless you are a foot doctor, in which case, congratulations.

BUT NOW HERE'S THE BEST PART! This morning I decided to sterilize a sewing needle and just pop the blisters. So i had one foot on my other knee bent around where i could see it, and it stuck the needle through the skin (it didn't hurt at all) AND BLISTER FLUID CAME SQUIRTING OUT AT MY FACE!

I know I gave away the thrilling conclusion at the top of this post, but still. It was wild.