Rebel, Rebel

THE WAIT IS OVER: Busy, busy week here at MPA. I won't attempt to recount it all here. Let's just concentrate on Thursday. Not just a normal Thursday, but one that involved us traveling south to help 44 third graders handcraft custom melting snowman cookies. That was the morning (and more on that later).

The afternoon? We headed north, to Pacific Science Center to get in line to see "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," the latest movie in the epic sci fi franchise.

We called ahead to ask about ingress details and were told we'd be sitting outside leading up until our 6 p.m. showing. We packed and dressed accordingly, and arrived at 2 p.m. ready to tough it out.

I was kind of surprised by the line that was already there, four hours ahead of the showtime.

The kids set up shop and started playing Mario Kart for Nintendo Switch right away.

Surprisingly and happily, around 3, we were allowed to line up inside the facility. So then, we spent the next 2.5 hours marking time and waiting with other Star Wars geeks. There are worse ways to spend a Thursday afternoon. 

There were eight in our party - CJ and Annabelle, their big bros Rick and Ken and their wives, and Christian and I. Happily, we were able to get great seats and enjoy the nearly three hour theater experience (including a special screening about the music of Star Wars, with composer and director John Williams). 

No spoilers here. I'm just going to say we can't wait to see the movie again. And again. 

THE DROIDS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR: Hot on the heels of the newest Star Wars movie, Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. shared a video today titled "How close are we to a Star Wars droid reality?"

The video features Paul G. Allen’s technical advisor Jeff Kramer speaking to the topic. Kramer is a Star Wars fan with an extensive background in robotics who talks about how Star Wars characters C-3P0, R2-D2 and BB-8 operate, and how some of their technological advances can be seen in present day robotics.
https://youtu.be/6eOlJT3zl1s


STAR WARS IN SPACE: I thought our seats for last night's premiere of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" were pretty great, until today, when NASA announced that crew members on board the International Space Station will be watching the movie. Watching "Star Wars" in space? Doesn't get much better than that!

The press release read, in part: 

So who is “The Last Jedi”? Is it Luke Skywalker? Is it Rey? Other theories? Crew members currently aboard the International Space Station won’t have to wait until they return to Earth to find out. Just as Disney did two years ago for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the company is sending Episode VIII to space for astronauts to watch in orbit.

Disney will uplink the film to the space station through mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Expedition 54 crew members, including NASA astronauts Joe Acaba, Mark Vande Hei, and soon Scott Tingle, look forward to watching the science fiction saga at their leisure while they’re living and working aboard the orbiting laboratory that will enable human and robotic exploration of galaxies far, far away.

Doing the Robot

FIRST FIRST LEGO LEAGUE: This weekend MPA was pretty much consumed with Annabelle's participation in First LEGO League.

She is fortunate to have had the opportunity via Amelia's Club at The Museum of Flight. Since September, she and a handful of girls her age have been meeting at the museum each Saturday.

This Saturday, she was there from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. getting ready for an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. competition at Ballard High School on Sunday.

It's actually a complicated, intricate process and we'll blog more extensively about it in days to come. 

For now, I can share that the team did really well in their competition. They met all of their goals on the robot run, and did well enough in the presentations to win the teamwork award for having done a great job in meeting the competition's core values.

By the way, I loved that the robotics competition tables had names like Lovelace and Hawking.

GRATUITOUS: Apologies for the short blog post. Here are some Mt. Rainier shots as a consolation. 

I love it when fog settles in the valley and the mountain rises out of the mist.

 And I'm not sure if this was a sunset or a sunrise, but it sure was pretty.