starry, starry night

Harrison was invited to Emilee's 13th birthday party being held on Saturday. Friday night we watched "all new episodes" of two of our favorite TV shows - Monk and Psych. Then we decided to get our birthday shopping done that night, to avoid the weekend crowds that descend on Saturday mornings.

It was a good plan. I stand by that plan. Except that I was pretty tired, and thus easily distracted from the goal, which was to purchase things for Emilee to make her own portfolio, similar to the one Harrison has (a 3-ring binder with page protectors and tons of art supplies and paper).

So, like a raccoon surrounded by shiny objects, the 22-and 88-cent sales of school supplies had me going in circles, wishing I had Harrison's list for next fall. The end result being that we were at Wal-Mart until after midnight.

Needless to say, we slept in on Saturday - which was fun, as we haven't had the chance to sleep in since "I can't remember when". We got up in time to get cleaned up and go to lunch at our favorite Chinese Buffet restaurant (the servers looked concerned and asked where Grammy and Grampa were... to give you an idea of how regularly we go there). By the time we'd eaten lunch and stopped at a roadside stand for sweet corn, it was time to get home so I could help Deedee set up for the party.

The party was small but nice - in addition to us and Deedee's family, cousin Lisa brought her son Zack to help celebrate, Emilee's friend Heather was there, and Emilee & Dylan's stepbrother Elijah was there with their dad.

Emilee was extremely gracious in receiving her gifts - she even acted like a ream of white paper (the first part of our gift) was as awesome as an i-pod.

Alex, Dylan and Harrison negotiated another overnight, so after the party Grammy and Grampa joined us as we took the boys to the nearby observatory, where a noted astronomer was speaking on "The Size and Shape of the Milky Way".

(Note: from where our sun is indicated in the picture above, it is 26,000 light years to the center of the galaxy.
See? I learned something!)

I was really proud of the boys. They sat in the front row and behaved quite well during the talk, and Harrison and Alex even asked questions after the lecture. There were quite a few kids at the event, but only Alex and Harrison were engaged enough to ask questions afterwards. Bear in mind, this was not an event designed for children or families. It was sponsored by the local amateur astronomers club, and there were some serious eggheads in attendance. The speaker is also a college professor, and he did not simplify his vocabulary as he spoke.

Afterwards, members of the astronomers group manned two of their high powered, dome-enclosed telescopes, and allowed the public to look through them. We got to see a globular star cluster and Jupiter. As Harrison was viewing Jupiter, the man started to explain to him about the "red spot" between two of the "bands". Harrison said, "yes, that's the storm that is always raging"...?!?

When I asked Harrison how he knew that, he looked at me with a puzzled expression as if I'd just asked him how he knew how to breathe. Didn't everyone know that?

http://stardate.org/resources/ssguide/jupiter.html

We concluded the evening with a "McDonald's" reception at our place. The boys ate in the car on the way home, then played upstairs as the adults enjoyed some fresh air on our porch. Turns out, midnight in the summer is the perfect time to enjoy fresh air on our porch, which is usually too hot and muggy or too cold for adults to comfortably inhabit.

We had a great time discussing the tangential UFO/other life forms conversation that had developed at the end of the lecture (much to the speaker's dismay - he kept trying to steer things back to the Milky Way, but the trekkers would not be dissuaded) and that led to talk of all things "beyond our ken".

But I think the highlight of the evening came when Harrison and Alex interrupted us to tell a new joke Harrison had just made up. It was a take-off on a Joke that Tom's family shared with us when we were comparing notes on all of us having a certain amount of A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder), and the interesting dynamics created when we all get together for an event.

Harrison's joke goes something like this:

"How many people with A.D.D. does it take to... CATS!"

I don't know how it translates in writing when read during the day, but believe me when I tell you that beverages would shoot out your nose if you heard Harrison deliver that line at midnight in the middle of a chat about reincarnation and alternate dimensions.