SHINE ON: Thursday afternoon was a delight. There's nothing quite like sneaking away for baseball matinee on a weekday. You feel like you're cheating the work a day world. It's a mini vacation, especially when it's warm and sunny in April!
After just a couple of hours in the spring sunshine, CJ's freckles had bloomed. It was warm enough that vendors were selling ice cream and strawberry kebabs. The only bummer was that the Astros are terrific and the Mariner are significantly less loaded, shall we saw.
Above, Kyle Seager fails to reach base. He also had an uncharacteristically shaky day in the field. Seen fouling off a ball below, Robinson Cano reached base yesterday, but he couldn't overcome an 8-run deficit on his own.
The Ms' starter, Gonzales, did OK against the 2017 World Champions. His 'reliever' Altavilla was really awful, however.
Since CJ got his braces off the day before, he was able to have Cracker Jack for the first time in a couple of seasons.
The disappointing prize was as crappy sticker. #Lame
The kids and I decided this guy has one of the best jobs in the world. He's paid to watch baseball! Did I mention the sun was out yesterday? I about went blind trying to catch this plane flying in front of our star. My camera froze up, unfortunately.
Check out this cool post-game photo of a solar halo.
It's caused by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in Earth's atmosphere. Per Wikipedia, "Halos can have many forms, ranging from colored or white rings to arcs and spots in the sky."
BRACE YOURSELF: Interesting day for the MPA student body. This morning, Annabelle got her 'braces,' and this afternoon, CJ was freed from his after nearly two years.
CJ has been a real trouper regarding his braces. Let's hope he's as great about wearing and keeping track of his retainer.
Lucky for her, Annabelle's braces are not the traditional metal wires and brackets set up. She was a candidate for Invisalign treatment, which uses a series of slip-over-your-teeth molds that get your teeth going in the right direction. The cool thing is you can remove them to brush, floss, and eat things like corn on the cob and caramel corn. ;) Oh, and caramel apples.
I don't think either of the kids has ever had a caramel apple, so to celebrate the day, we made some.
We bought some gummies, some peanuts, some Starburst, some Corn Nuts, and some M&Ms. We also bought some Caramel wraps, and once home, melted them around apples and the kids made their treats.
A day to remember, for sure!
REBOOT: This afternoon, at 3:51 Pacific time, NASA's TESS spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, after a two-day delay. The original launch time was called off April 16 to allow scientists to conduct more guidance navigation and control analysis of the rocket, NASA officials wrote on Twitter.
If you skip ahead to the 19 minute mark, you'll see the actual launch. And if you skip ahead to about the 28 minute mark, you'll see the first stage of the rocket landing. SO COOL!!!! It landed on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.
It's also worth checking out TESS deploying at the 1:09 mark. History in the making!
Over the next couple of weeks, TESS will maneuver into an oblong-shaped orbit around Earth, circling twice for each orbit of the moon.
From there, the observatory will scan the skies, looking for the darkening of stars as planets pass in front of, or transit, them. TESS will build on the body of work of the Kepler space telescope and it team, which found exoplanets in a similar way (watching for transits). However, Kepler circled the sun, rather than Earth, and was focused on one small patch of the sky for its first mission, whereas TESS is set to scan 85 percent of our skies. (FYI, Kepler identified 2,650 exoplanets to date, which is more than 70 percent of all known, alien worlds.)
Photo: Ben Cooper GOS AND NOS: We've had our eyes on the skies this past weekend. Saturday afternoon, we watched a launch, an Atlas 5 that roared off the pad with a satellite, AFSPC-11m for the US Air Force (ULA). The launch on Saturday had five solid rocket boosters, and was super pretty lifting off. (That's important for a rocket launch, right?) Monday, we were all about TESS, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. TESS is planned for a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, monitoring more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. The spaceborne transit survey is expected to cover about 85 percent of our skies, and will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. We watched multiple press conferences about the launch and its mission on Monday morning. https://youtu.be/ZsPStvGgNuk
In the end, today's TESS launch was a no go. SpaceX, the vehicle sending the observatory skyward, tweeted that they'd be performing more analysis of the launch guidance, navigation and control and that they were targeting Wednesday for another attempt. So eyes on the skies on Wednesday, as well! PARKING LOTS: Mark your calendard - National Park Week kicks off on April 21, and to celebration all national parks will offer free admission on Saturday, 4/21. (www.sharetheexperience.org).
