I did a boat race yesterday with seven family members + significant others, which was super fun, because:
great boat well-sailed with congenial people
the weather cooperated, with beautiful clouds and some swell but not too much wind (unlike today, when it’s nasty out)
we won our class (yay!)
at one point when we were gybing the spinnaker (for which I was on the foredeck doing the end-for-end thing with the pole) some common dolphins came by and investigated what we were up to
i’m experimenting with digital painting and it’s kind of weird and interesting and I might finish this picture of a futuristic hoverboarder one day but i also might not because it’s not for anything and i have no idea what i’m doing.
“For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.”
The latest class of NASA astronauts, recruited in 2013 and already in training, will also be candidates for the first trip to Mars, and for the first time in NASA history, 50 percent of them are female.
The class of is made up of eight recruits in total – Josh Cassada, Victor Glover, Tyler Hague, Christina Hammock, Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, and Andrew Morgan – selected from a pool of around 6,100 applicants. That’s a fierce 0.0013 percent success rate.
The application process alone took 18 months of rigorous medical and psychological testing, and the recruits are now going through two years of training before they’ll officially join NASA’s 46 currently active astronauts.
But what’s really cool is that they’re the first class to be candidates for the mission to Mars. “If we go to Mars, we’ll be representing our entire species in a place we’ve never been before. To me it’s the highest thing a human being can achieve,” McClain told Ginny Graves in an exclusive interview for Glamour magazine at the end of last year.
That training, as you can imagine, is pretty intense, with the candidates learning how to fly T-38 supersonic jets, practicing walking around underwater in spacesuit that weigh 181 kg (400 pounds), and surviving what’s called the vomit comet, which simulates weightlessness through freefall.
Craftversations is back in all its glory with Bri Cuoco who is…maybe not a natural born crafter. But we have a blast talking The LBD, For the Record, and The Voice, and learn to #craftyourtruth. Enjoy, and stay tuned for part two coming Friday!
I really loved this one, especially part 2, and not just because MK asked my question (though that, and the lovely thing she said, were wonderful). I loved it because the Craftversations magic was in full effect. There was such a nice arc across the episode, with the deeper discussion they got into toward the end and Bri commenting about how the crafting felt almost therapeutic.
The two of them together, even out of character, totally had the same cool chemistry that made Lydia/Mary so much fun to watch. It was fun, too, when Bri admitted that she hadn’t read the Epic Adventures yet, and MK had to hold back to avoid spoilers.
Also: As a person with very little craftiness, it was nice to feel like I had some representation on the show, to the point that I was laughing and going “no!” when Bri started brushing modge podge onto the already-applied glitter. But of course, as MK firmly and consistently pointed out, there’s no wrong way to craft; it’s the destination not the journey. And you could see it working; by the end Bri was visibly relaxed and crafting up a storm.
