The Reluctant Astronaut

Today was Madison's last day at the school for seventh grade, although it wasn't for any class, of course.  She was there to pick up some items from her locker, and also pick up her yearbook.  

The school had things all lined up in a way to make it easy for all the students to go through the school at scheduled times, so we arrived a little after 11:00am, picked up her yearbook outside while Madison went in for the first time since earlier this March.  

She snapped a few pictures with her phone, and was pretty quick in-and-out of there, as they were all herded along in their masks and told not to converse with people so much.  This wasn't a reunion.  It was a recovery operation!

There's her locker there, which is now cleaned out.  She didn't get her art projects today, but after asking some teachers, we found out she'll get those the first of the school year.  Which is hopefully August.

Today we were doing a bit of research for our upcoming Summer Xtreme script.  We watched a few Disney Channel episodes that had a space theme, and then we watched this classic here:

"The Reluctant Astronaut."  We'll use that idea for a launch point of our series, as an explanation to why Nerdo is in space in the first place.  Anyway, we started the writing for this tonight, after watching the misadventures of Roy Fleming.  It's not a bad movie, although I'm sure nostalgia is a big factor in this one.  I wasn't even alive at the time of all this, but there's something super fascinating about the space program of that era.

Along those lines, there's an astronaut launch coming up soon this week, and that will be pretty amazing to see again in America.  It'll be down in Florida, and there's a lot of building excitement for that.

We did some work today, and we did some writing.  Here's something interesting we made too:

We were doing an experiment with the eyes.  If you stare at the point on Madison's nose above (the one with the three colors around it), and keep staring for about thirty seconds, your eyes will begin to tire of course.  You then immediately look to the white area to the right, and sure enough, you'll see the opposite colors there, and see what the original picture actually looked like.  Blink rapidly, and you'll see the image there in the white area.

Anyway, it was a fun idea we tried out.  It was a nice day today, but there's a little stress in the air as we build up for Summer Xtreme.  We have a lot of big plans and a short time in which to do them.  In other words, just like any other Summer Xtreme.  It's just amazing that we're doing one at all this year, even if it is all online.  It'll be amazing, I'm sure.  Here's an early design idea for it:

That's what the next few weeks will be like for us as we get ready.  It was a quiet night. After the movie, we read and we prayed.  Sleep came easy tonight, at least for us.  Ba-Ba has been having trouble lately.  We prayed for him, and have been praying for him - and all those struggling with cancer.  Particularly lung cancer.

We're grateful for what we have here, and grateful for our quiet home and a nice place to rest our heads.  There is much to be grateful for, of course.  We prayed and said our thanks, and prayed for healing for Ba-Ba, and for healing for our troubled country.