Trick or Treat

CANDY-GRABBERS: "It's Halloweeeeeeeeen!" 

Those were the first words out of Annabelle's mouth this morning at around 8. By then, I'd been up a couple of hours, working on pony ears, boot covers, and re-positioning a pink tail. 

Just a couple of days ago Pinkie Pie was nothing but large swaths of pink fleece. 

Fortunately, it all came together in time for school today.

CJ's costume was actually more of a pain than the pink pony. which I wouldn't have guessed at the start.

On the way to school we stopped at the grocery store to get the right gel for CJ's hair. He caused a minor scene there. Every aisle we went in, we could hear people whisper, "Gangnam Style!" 

When we got to the checkout line, a 20-ish woman asked CJ, "Can you do the dance?"

Without hesitation, he busted it out right there in the lobby, in front of everyone. (Fortunately, I had the song cued up on my cell phone.) Go CJ!

At school, only a couple of his peers knew who he was supposed to be. And out on the streets of Magnolia tonight, where we trick or treated the business district from 4 to 5 p.m., I'd guess about 1 in 10 people were Gangnam Style savvy. A lot of people thought he was Elvis. Or Roy Orbison, LOL.

Annabelle was pretty widely recognized, at least as a pony, if not Pinkie Pie specifically.

We were rained on a little bit today, but it wasn't cold or windy, so we really can't complain.  And I was happy to hear the kids 

OUT OF THIS WORLD SELF PORTRAIT: This photo has the folks at Wired magazine gushing, which called it "an adorable self portrait." It's actually a composite of 55 photos MSL took using its MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera, on the end of an outstretched arm.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Stuart Atkinson

The composite was pieced together by amateur astronomer and science writer Stuart Atkinson from raw images Curiosity phoned home on Halloween. 

Atkinson's composite serves as an excellent reminder that you don't have to wait for the news to decide when and which photos you get to see from MSL. Just go to Jet Propulsion Lab's page and there they ALL are, every single RAW image, fresh from Mars. 

Link here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=84

BATTY:  I figured we should do something other than costuming and candy eating at home today. Something, dare I say, EDUCATIONAL. 

So, I did I quick Google for "video bats educational" and it led me to a new-to-us Web site that might prove to be a great resource for future use. Called "WatchKnowLearn - Free Educational Videos for K-12 students."

There, I found a neat-o 3-minute long National Geographic video called "Wild Detectives - Bats by Night." 


Back to WatchKnowLearn. Their "About" page tells me there are over 33,000 "kid safe" videos on their site, sorted into categories using a wiki framework and philosophy. WatchKnowLearn is a program of a non-profit, Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi. Interesting, and definitely a site we'll keep in heavy rotation.