Doors and Dolls

HAPPY HOBBIT DAY: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle ... " 

And so begins one of the Best Books Ever - The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. A couple of days ago we received an email letting us know there would be a Second Breakfast celebration at the community center where the kids take classes on Friday. The party was to make note of the fact that today marks the 75th anniversary of the first publishing of The Hobbit. For me, that meant it was time to make some Hobbit-themed cookies to go with the tea they'd be serving. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, all I had to do was type "Hobbit cookies" into a Google search engine, and I found a link to a charming idea. What better to make than a round cookie that looked like the distinctive door to hobbit holes? I modified the design I found there a bit, using fondant to make the doorknobs and adding hinges. I used gingerbread, because I thought the color would be right and wanted earthy flavors, like ginger and cinnamon. 

USA Today had a story about the anniversary, reporting that Tolkien was a British professor, and that he wrote the book for his four children. In its first printing in 1937, 1,500 copies were printed. Fast forward 75 years, and the book has been translated into more than 50 languages and has sold over 100 million copies.  The kids have not read The Hobbit yet. That's a wrong we have to right soon! 

HELLO, DOLLY:  Between their morning (Bollywood, programming) and afternoon (acting) classes today. we spent about an hour wandering the aisles of West Seattle's Target store. There were lots of fun Halloween decorations to ogle, but the real scary stuff was in the doll aisle. Such as ... this!

CJ couldn't quit staring at the Dating Fun Ken doll, complete with three different looks, depending on the date he was going on. For the first date it was a conservative plaid shirt and brown hair. For a beach date, there was blond Bieber hair, and a tight Malibu t-shirt. For the concert, Ken gets Krazy and wears a tank top and shocking pink hair. With each outfit, he's wearing "skinny jeans" (which Barbie couldn't even fit into).

As if that wasn't bad enough, the real horror awaited just one aisle over.

Don't let her shirt fool you. She is NOT cute.

And let me just add, I don't think it was winking at us. If I'm not mistaken, that's the soulless stare of a zombie baby that comes to life after the kiddies go to bed. Shudder, shudder.

TOUCHDOWN: Endeavour, atop a 747, departed Edwards Air Force Base at 8:17. 

(If you missed the takeoff and you're interested, there's video HERE.) The mated vehicles then took a 4.5 hour flyover of northern California and the Los Angeles basin. Here's a great shot of it being ferried over the Golden Gate Bridge from NASA Dryden photographer Carla Thomas. 

This afternoon, it touched down at Los Angeles International Airport, not far from its final destination, California Science center's Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE: CJ completed another project in Scratch today. Though you can't tell from this static screen shot, the mini program he made today was interactive, with his "sprite" (character) asking viewers a question.

I have to admit, the cartoon was a bit hard for me to read, as most all of it is done in L33T

If you have JAVA, you can click on the green flag and the animation will start. The sprite will say a series of things and when he's done talking he'll ask you a question, which you can answer by typing in the box at the bottom of the window.  Good luck.

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