Back in Action

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic
BLOWING UP: Magically, this morning my volume of email seemed to quadruple. Why? Because NASA is back in business. Hooray!! The shutdown's over ... for now.

One of the messages I received today included this amazing portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings. It was created from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. Incredibly, the composite isn't a NASA product, it was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. The mosaic was created using 12 image footprints with red, blue and green filters from Cassini's imaging science subsystem. Incredible!

The Cassini orbiter and its two cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.  More info about Cassini-Huygens can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

And I was so hap Hap HAPPY to see Curiosity back to posting on Facebook all the way from Mars. Its first post today was, "Allow me to reintroduce myself. I'm back on Facebook and even closer to Mars' Mount Sharp. Check out more recent photos from my journey here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s"

One of the post's commenters said they figured Curiosity was doing this during the government http://media.giphy.com/media/10aZY3TPgp9Dws/giphy.gif

DRIVEN: We spent a couple hours today driving around looking at houses in West Seattle, potentially for the kids' big brother, Rick. Why can't house hunting be as simple as those cable shows, where it only takes a half hour, you look at three nice places, and then buy one?

THE AUTUMN LEAVES: After 'school' today, we met CJ's BFF from kindergarten at a nearby park. The kids played on the playground a bit, but in and with the leaves a lot more. Some of the leave came home with us, in Annabelle's hair.

Afterward, we headed to the local frozen yogurt shop for a treat. Imagine the kids' delight when we ran into a real live oversized-cone.

GO HAWKS!: The kids and I were all sporting Seahawks jerseys when we went grocery shopping this afternoon. The cashier, a young woman, gave me a funny look, and said, " I don't know football, but I do know it's not Sunday." I laughed and told her that oddly enough, the Seahawks game was tonight. It's like Sunday came early.