Fabric of Our Lives

photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ROCKET: While we were lounging in bed in the wee small hours of the morning, another rocket launch was taking place. Rather than get up at 3-ish to watch it, we settled for neat-o footage after the fact.

Hurled heavenward today was the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP for short), "a critical first step in building the next-generation Earth-observing satellite system that will collect data on both long-term climate change and short-term weather conditions," according to a NASA press release. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will use the data from NPP as part of its weather forecasting. You can watch the launch by following this link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=117952441


This morning's launch was from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California - that's relatively close to home compared to Florida. I'm thinking we might need to combine a Disneyland trip with a Cali rocket launch in the future.

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: From a Facebook post today, I rediscovered something I'd seen, oh, 40 years ago. It was an appearance by Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden on "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." I absolutely remember seeing these clips back in 1972, when they first aired. By following the link here (http://www.alworden.com/mrrogers1.htm) you can see Al and Fred in the Mission Control launch room, see Al model an astrosuit, field questions about the moon mission and talk about what it was like to be stuck on the capsule while his astro pals putted about the lunar surface.

It was neat to be able to show CeeJ and Bee the clips, not just because it was interesting astro info and me sharing part of my past with them, but because they have actually MET Al Worden just a couple of weeks ago. How cool is that?!

IN STITCHES: Most of today was dedicated to getting the kids' Halloween costumes together. I (finally!) finished Nyan Cat (hooray). Bee loves it. Our immediate family and one guy at the fabric store may be the only ones who know what it/she is, but oh well.

CJ's costume is coming together nicely. He's going to be an old school Nintendo controller. I built the frame for it today, sewed the device, and cut out the details for it. Christian is gluing it even as we 'speak.'

QUANTITY, QUALITY: We did some language arts, science today and math today. The math was about capacities. Here, Annabelle is pointing out that there are two cups in a pint and two pints in a quart.