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...And Little E Makes 3 And Beyond The Infinite

Star party!

Little E and I went to our first Star Party, held each month by the Arkansas/Oklahoma Astronomical Society – and much to our delight it was really more of a planet party!

The event is held at the wonderfully light-pollution-free Janet Huckabee Nature Center in Chaffee Crossing, on a ridge next to Wells Lake Road. The guys from the AOAS had a 10-inch telescope set up, which is great for ogling the confluence of celestial bodies on view right now.

Me and E got there waaaay to early for stargazing, giving us an opportunity to explore the grounds, meet a gaggle of geese, and relax while the sun disappeared from the sky. It was finally time to peer at planets!

Star Party
The moon and Venus – sky’s still too bright for Jupiter to emerge.

The best time to catch Venus is just as the sun is setting or starting to rise. The planet showed off a nice, easily identifiable crescent shape, bright white as always. This wasn’t an astrophotography setup, so I recorded what I saw the old-fashioned way: I sketched it on paper, scanned it, and inverted it on the computer! In much the same manner as the ancients!

Star Party

Sadly, we missed Jupiter – Little E was trying to catch lightning bugs. But when it was darker, the telescope was re-aimed at Saturn.

Star Party
Yep, about that dark. Cell phone photo enhanced to make Jupiter more visible.

Not only were Saturn and its rings visible, but its largest moon, Titan, could also be seen.

Star Party
Saturn and Titan

We had lots of fun and stayed up well past Little E’s bedtime (hey, it’s not a school night).

Meanwhile, at the edge of the outer solar system…

Star Party
The Pluto Party awaits.Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Funny Stuff

Scenes from a birthday party

ParTAYThe scene: birthday party for one of Little E’s classmates. Due to bad weather (i.e. incessant rain), the party has moved from the park to indoors at the church the birthday boy’s family attends. It’s still pretty good fun, pizza, cake, the whole works. At one point there’s an attempt to do a hula hoop contest (spoiler: the repeated “contest” attempts fall into chaos pretty quickly and the kids go back to doing what they were doing before). One of the hula hoops is missing though. “Where’s the other hula hoop?” … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Serious Stuff

That amazing kid and his amazing school

“Today we learned about protons and electrons!” my oldest son told me a couple of days ago when I picked him up from school. It brought me up short just a little bit.

Not because I thought it was something he shouldn’t be learning about – it’s absolutely something he should learn about – but I was thinking back to how old I was when I learned about protons and electrons in school. One thing I do know is that I wasn’t in the first grade.

And that’s kind of the magical thing about where my son goes to school. … Read more

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...And Little C Makes 4 ...And Little E Makes 3 And Beyond The Infinite Gaming Television & Movies

Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part four: do it again!

Whoosh!In February, the fine folks at Oklahoma City’s Starbase Studios announced another of their open house events, during which all and/or sundry are invited to tour their exquisitely detailed replicas of the original Star Trek shooting sets, free of charge (though it’s hoped that visitors might be impressed enough to drop a few coins in the hat, donating to the upkeep of those sets so future fan-made productions can make use of them. My wife was pregnant with Little C when Little E and I tagged along with some friends to visit the sets last year, and that was before they had built sickbay and started work on a transporter room (!). There was no way she was going to miss out on this open house.

As the date got closer, Little E expressed disappointment that we weren’t going to repeat the entire trip with the Martins – i.e. Friday night at Arkadia Retrocade, and a visit to the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma (almost an hour further west from OKC). Since he was so keen on doing it all again, we reserved a hotel room in Weatherford and decided to make it a whole geeky weekend getaway. (It should be pointed out that the timely arrival of a tax refund was pretty much the pivot point where we went from “go to OKC and back” to “make a whole weekend of it.”)

What follows is a ridiculous record – over 60 photos – of the geeky weekend in question. Ready to beam up and go to the moon?

OKC+WXford trip
Click on any photo below for the full-size version – I took “the good camera” this time and didn’t rely on my phone for much of the picture-taking this time around.Read more

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...And Little C Makes 4 ...And Little E Makes 3

2UP

Today I peeked around the corner to check on Little C, expecting to find him – as usual – sleeping peacefully in his crib as Little E plays a game or watches cartoons with his headphones on. (Little E had a dental appointment today, hence I had both boys at home.) That would be typical for both boys being at home. But instead… I saw this: Little C watching with rapt attention as Little E plays a game.

Little C and Little ERead more