Being Here (On Earth)

Isn't life just beautiful?

corner view "traditions"

Since it's close to Christmas, I'll talk about the family Christmas traditions. Every year, we get a tree. (We now have a fake tree which saves money and trees.) Then when it's time to decorate it, we put on Christmas music (our favorite is "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree") and Mom picks out the ornaments one by one for the kids to put on the tree.

By Theresa Marks

 By Theresa Marks

For more traditions, visit my mom, Theresa.

corner view "improvising"

I guess you could call me spontaneous. I love surprises! I love last minute outings or trips (especially if it's ice cream or something).  

I also admire different kinds of improvising. There are a lot, if you don't know, so I'll just talk about a couple, my two favorites.

Number one, musical improvisation. That's when you stay in a scale and hit any of its notes at random. Sometimes you'll get little snippits of cool sounds and may be able to create a new song out of it if you're lucky. It's usually best to record your improvs so you can listen back to them and find songs. Probably the person who's best at this is Keith Jarrett. Pretty complex, but if you really listen he is a genius beyond genius. Another great musician in this field is more unknown, Art Lande. He was my Dad's musical mentor. He goes into different times, like instead of 4/4 time he'll go into 13 or 11 or 7 or 5!

Keith Jarrett

My other favorite type of improv is comedic improvisation. It's my favorite type of comedy and seems to be Robin Williams' too. He's my favorite. You know how we have two funny bones? I think every bone in his body is a funny bone! :)

Here are two quotes from Robin. :) Ain't he great? 

If it's the Psychic Network why do they need your phone number?  

When you create, you get a little endorphin rush. Why do you think Einstein looked like that?

For more improvising, visit my mom, Theresa.

corner view "rain"

Some people don't like the rain.

I love it! Whenever it rains I go outside. (It's always warm here.) I take an umbrella and my iPod and I go out for a walk.

Usually it looks like this.

But sometimes, you'll catch this.

P.S. For more thoughts about the sky, see my blog post below. 

For more corner views, visit my mom, Theresa.

Can you believe we are in there, somewhere?

As even amateur nerds know, light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Much faster then even my Dad's car. :)
The Moon is 1.3 light seconds away from Earth.
The sun is 8.5 light minutes away.
Saturn is 84 light minutes away.
Pluto is 250 light minutes away.

Now here's the wild part...
The next sun beyond ours is 4.2 light years away.

I really like the name of this cluster of stars -- The Dumbbell Nebula. Named because the disc-like shape reminds the eye of a dumbbell (not because the nebula is dumb).  If it was dumb, we'd never know it, because it's a thousand light years away.

The Blinking Eye Nebula probably sees the light of the Dumbbell nebula the same time we do because it's two thousand light years away.

The Bug Nebula and the Red Spider Nebula are four thousand light years away.

The Rotten Egg Nebula and the Boomerang Nebula (I kid you not) are five thousand light years away.

Moving right along, the Black Eye galaxy is 17 light years away from our fists, but it got beat-up anyway.

The tadpole Galaxy hasn't quite found its way out of the pond. In fact, it's 420 million light years away from the nearest known pond.

Three billion light years away is a galactic cluster called Abell 2218; which makes you wonder, is there a Cain 2218? Or don't they have a choice between good and evil three billion light years from us?

Finally I leave you with Hubble Ultra Deep Field Galaxies -- the most distant galaxies known. Formed when the universe was a mere eight hundred million years old. An infant compared to it's present age of more than thirteen billion years old.

If we could get our hands on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Galaxies, would we figure out a way to turn them into the Hubble Ultra Deep Fried Galaxies? Traveling long distances does make us hungry.

Thanks to my Dad to turning me onto all the weird names and inserting some of his weird humor.

Unlike a lot of the things humans say, everything I just wrote is true!

Here's looking at you, kid...

Regards,

From the Red Eye Nebula: