Happy 40th Anniversary, Star Wars

25 May 2017 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Star Wars Tags: ,

May 25, 1977, Star Wars was released in the United States. 

I first heard of it was in class in elementary school in Wheaton, Illinois. Our teacher mentioned it. I think one of the dads of the kids in my class worked for an advertising firm, and they were trying to promote it. So she heard of it from him (possibly through his son). And before it was even released, the teacher (who wasn’t really my favorite for a variety of reasons) mentioned it to the class. I think it was something like, “there’s a new movie coming out this summer called, Star Wars, and it’s supposed to be really good.” (With this, she redeemed herself some … )

So we saw it sometime after school got out (though I don’t think it was the first day …) Looking in the newspaper, I saw those bold black letters in the movie listings and show times, and I remembered the mention in class. Newspapers were needed to see show times back them. No online listings or apps.

We went. I sat mesmerized. I barely moved I was so captivated, and with my brain so alive with spaceships and laser (blaster) fights and lightsabers, my foot fell asleep. It blew me away! 

I’m pretty sure there was an extra scene in the very first showing that I saw — one where Luke throws th grappling hook and misses the first time as the storm troopers are trying to capture Luke and Leia. Later, he makes the shot on his first try. Maybe there are others … or not.

I saw it many times after that first one. It would be the first movie that I’d want to see multiple times. And at the end, seeing Darth Vader spin away in his damaged TIE fighter (not dead), I had hope that they would make more movies to continue the tale of Luke, Leia, Han, C-3PO, R2D2 and the others …

The rest, as they say, is history. 

Happy 40th Anniversary! 

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May the 4th be with you!

04 May 2017 3 Comments

by alightningbug in Mom Stuff, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Writing Tags: , , ,

Somewhere … sometime … a long time ago … in a galaxy we’re in right now, somebody noticed that, “May the 4th,” sounded a lot like, “May the force,” and thus Star Wars day was born. So may the 4th be with you … always!

I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog. We’ve been busy. Sometimes super busy! And it meant that I had to lighten up on something or I’d just fall down exhausted and become a blob. Actually, I did become a blob and exhausted, so I guess I should say that I would have been a worse blob. So the blog got lightly set aside. Sorry, blog. Sorry, WordPress.

I’ll do some catch up in the coming days and weeks … things we’ve been doing … are doing now … and stuff that may be yet to come. Subjects covered with include Science, Robotics, Apatite, Salad Surprise, Dance, Balcony Gardening (Herbs and Plants that Survived the Winter), and more!

I hope you enjoyed the rainbow I posted on May 2. The photo was actually taken on May 1. Rainbows may be a little cliché in some ways, but they are still so amazing when they show up in all their spectacular glory. It was a really impressive start to May.

May the 4th be with you, and may it be a good one!

Rainbow 

02 May 2017 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Beyond Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday evening we had this spectacular show of sky and color and general awesomeness. 

Rainbow


 

We all dashed outside when my daughter noticed the light coming inside through the window looked a little strange. It is probably one of the most beautiful rainbows we’ve ever seen. 

If you look a bit to the left of the main rainbow you’ll see a faint second rainbow. And we even saw a little third rainbow that was quite unusual too — it was right next to the main rainbow but the stripes were thinner and maybe the colors were reversed. So possibly it was like a reflection of the first rainbow? It was really hard to capture that in a photo. But Dave got a close up where you can kind of make it out. 

The way the light reflected off the clouds just made it that much more amazing. The photo here is right out of my phone with no Photoshopping. It doesn’t do it justice. I might try to bring out the other rainbow in Photoshop, but you just can’t really capture the feeling on “film.” It was huge. You could see the rainbow stretching over so much of the sky. Amazing! Photos are just souvenirs of this rare and spectacular show. They will have to do for now. 

Same rainbow but on the right side of the sky.