On Saturdays I work in the Space Place Dome Theater with Jan, a boomer who is so bubbly and batty, with such eccentric pronunciation, that I haven't ruled out that she might actually be in an evil coven such as the ones you're always seeing in Satanic granny media.* Jan was doing the star identification intro at the console, and I was sitting on the floor in the corner enjoying my tea.

JAN: ... Orion, Canis Major ...
SOMETHING IN THE SHADOWS UNDER THE CONSOLE: *wiggle*
ME: ?
JAN: ... Leo, rɛdʒʊlʊs ...
MOUSE: hi
ME: *internally* Well, well, well. It appears the maintenance guy's email about rodents in the building is out of date! They have reached the Dome!
MOUSE: eep! a human! *scamper*

And that's how I met our resident varmint!

[after the show]
ME: So, there's a mouse.
JAN: A MOUSE?!
ME: It was skittering around down here.
ME: *pointing flashlight* It went under the console.
JAN: A LIVE MOUSE?!
ME: I already texted our maintenance guy.
ME: Gonna go down and let the supervisors know, and grab some supplies
JAN: *SHRIEK*
ME: *running back up the stairs* WHAT? Are you okay?
JAN: *pointing dramatically* THERE IT IS!
MOUSE: you guys have the best audience, you know that? they sneak food in here all the time and drop it on the floor, probably for me! ♥️
ME: Gonna put on my rubber gloves
ME: In case I get astronomically lucky
MOUSE: well i can see i'm no longer welcome here, bye!
MOUSE: *disappears down one of our cable-conduit pipes like fuckin Mario*

So I told the supervisor, and the custodian,** because what the hell was I planning to do with the rubber gloves, and the supervisor got a trap and marched up to the console to set it up. Jan held her flashlight, and they both crouched way under the console desk to examine the mouse's warp pipe.

MOUSE: can i help you?
JAN: EEEEEK!

And then, in her haste to get away, Jan proceeded to whack her head on the underside of the console desk, and the supervisor scrambled back on all fours and ran screaming from the dome.

The rest of the day was a tense psychological thriller as Jan sat with her feet up in her office chair, fretting about The Mouse's whereabouts and her flowy pants and "open-toed shoes," which were some definition of "open-toed" that was beyond me, on account of being close-toed, and periodically checking under the console with her flashlight and shrieking when the mouse would poke its head out of its warp pipe.

ME: Don't put your head under the desk again, okay? I'm not sure if I could tell if you had a concussion
JAN: I'm gonna go home and change into mouse-proof clothes on my break.
ME: I doubt the mouse is gonna wind up in your shoes or pants, but I hate anxiety, and if changing will help alleviate yours, then go for it.

I didn't want to laugh, because phobic reactions like that are involuntary and unpleasant, and lord knows I have phobic reactions to dumb shit, too.*** But I also have this core-deep sense that every phobia is kind of absurd, so it did strike me kinda funny.

Anyway, Jan got through her shift unsqueaked, and took off for home, and I was there waiting for the next presenter to come in, vacuuming and grumbling about the absolute goddamn slobs our patrons are. Seriously, we don't allow popcorn in the Dome. Why is it everywhere? Do they trail it in like comets' tails? WHY DO WE SELL POPCORN.

NEXT-SHIFT COWORKER: Hey.
ME: Hey. So we're probably going to regret this conversation, but are you afraid of mice?


*I even caught her listening to Mötley Crüe, which I hear is Of The Devil!

JAN: With the music I listen to, you would never guess I'm a senior citizen, would you?
ME: I dunno, aren't most of the band members senior citizens by now?

**Custodian has taken it upon himself to help me practice my Spanish. He was very proud of me for my casual "Hay un ratón en el domo."

***You chew on ONE BALLOON with your tiny sharp toddler teeth and suddenly you've got a lifelong anxiety. Limbic systems are idiots.

Mom and I went to Monticello, Utah, to see the Ring of Fire annular eclipse!

PLANNING PHASE

ME: Okay, I'm gonna get two nights at this motel, because I think we should go down two days early on account of the projected bonkers traffic.
MOM: They're also worried about whether this many people heading into the path of the umbra will strain resources.
ME: Right! Next part of the plan: we get some just-add-water freeze-dried camping meals in case the food situation is not good. I'll bring my kettle. If we hit trouble, we can always enjoy a nice pouch of astronaut stroganoff.
MOM: Good plan!

DEEP ROAD TRIP HEART TO HEART

ME: ... and in Welsh it's "Dw i eisiau paned," because they have a word for a cup of tea in Welsh, but actually their word is also te because they got it by sea and so they borrowed it from a maritime culture, unlike the Portuguese word, which is chá so I guess they got it over land ...
MOM: How do you know all this?
ME: I dunno, Duolingo is weirdly determined that I get my drink order right!

I GET TO DRIVE

MOM: *in the passenger seat* Zzz
RUMBLE STRIP: BRRRR!
MOM: Whoa! What! There's a truck!
ME: Calm down, that was the rumble strip. I'm passing the truck.
MOM: NO THERE IS A TRUCK COMING AT US
ME: *speeding up* Yeah, don't worry, we'll be back in our lane well before it gets here.
MOM: AAH!
ME: *cruises back into the southbound lane* See?
MOM:
MOM:
MOM: sorry. I was really disoriented
ME: I'm pretty sure you were actually asleep there.

( FABULOUS MOAB, UTAH )

Had an audience member in the Dome today ask if the Dome program had "all the star names," because his family bought some star names on "the registry."

Um. Sorry, buddy. I have some bad news for you about your star names.

Yeah, don't waste your money, guys. It would be just as official if you went outside and just gave whatever names you liked to the stars,* and much cheaper. Or you can help name exoplanets. But stars? Nope.

Not sure how you'd break that to someone who's already bought a star name, though. I guess "You learned something today!" is about as good as it gets.


*Not that I'm discouraging that. I'm working out a whole astrological system for a constructed culture, which is ... exactly as accurate as our own astrological systems. But it's really fun to come up with new ways to name the stars.

Tonight we had our first neighborhood party of the year. When it started to get dark, I pointed upward.

ME: Hey, look! It's Jupiter!
NEIGHBOR KID I HADN'T MET BEFORE: Oh! And there's also a hot dog in the sky! Canis Minor!
ME: ... What grade are you in?
KID: Sixth!
ME: Have you perchance been to the Space Place?
KID: Yeah!
KID'S DAD: You work there! I knew your voice sounded familiar!
ME: And I am just pleased somebody remembered one of the things I told you about the sky!
KID: Yup! Also Betelgeuse will explode!
ME: You are exactly correct!

See, this is why I basically do stand-up astronomy. If you make dumb jokes, like saying that the two bright stars of Canis Minor seem more like a hot dog than an actual dog, kids will remember it! And then you'll feel proud and a little surreal that they do.

Last night was some big schmooze deal at the Space Place, with local politicians and their families coming in to watch shows and be convinced that science is worth funding. I start to feel actively hostile if I have to schmooze, but fortunately my entire job for the evening was to show off the Sphere as people were walking by it on the way to the actual movies, and that was something I could handle.

I had the optiion of using any sort of things, just to catch people's interest. I could put on satellite composites of Earth, or other planets, or moons of other planets (fuck yeah, Io!), or panoramas taken by rovers or telescopes--the possibilities were endless.

And none of them really held anyone's attention for very long.

But there was one thing that absolutely did: GIANT EYEBALL MODE.

Yeah, I've mentioned the eyeball before. Basically I can turn the Sphere into Mr. I from Super Mario 64. From my vantage at an info desk, I use an iPad* to control its movement. Nobody notices the one employee carefully watching the crowd and dicking with a tablet--not when a giant fucking eyeball is pointed at them and following their every move.

This has the extremely entertaining dual effect of delighting the kids and SERIOUSLY creeping out the adults. The kids immediately start running around so the eye will follow them and then trying to trick it--it doesn't ever explode into coins, sadly, but it does get them exercising. Then they'll wave at it, and the eye sort of nods back.**

Adults, on the other hand, test its abilities for a bit, then nervously start trying to figure out how the hell it's doing that. Even if you know something's a trick, it's unsettling. Most of them guess some sort of motion tracker, which is pretty funny as I'm standing behind them the whole time, not even, like, behind a curtain or anything. Every so often one of them notices me and gets that "Ohhhhh" look. But usually, it stumps them.

So it might not be educational, but it sure is fun for the kids. That always surprises me--I think if I were a kid that thing would scare the hell out of me--but hey, as long as they're enjoying it, I like being a part of it.


*Or eyePad.

**One kid figured out that the eye could "nod" and, for lack of a better term, shake its head, and started asking it yes/no questions. I couldn't quite hear all the questions, but I got the gist. "Do you like popcorn?" No "Do you like cookies?" Yes "Do you like Coke?" Yes I wanted that conversation to keep going, but his parents called him away.

Watchin' one of my coworkers doing a Sphere presentation. He gets to the moon slide.

PRESENTER: So what do you see on the moon?
KID WITH COKE-BOTTLE GLASSES: *raises hand enthusiastically*
PRESENTER: You with the Minecraft shirt!
KID: I see the dust of the man who wanted to die on the moon!
*pause*
PRESENTER: Well, that's a cool sciece fiction story! And I'm glad you mentioned "dust," because there's a lot of dust on the moon ...
KID: *droop*

But I was also glad he mentioned the word "dust," because in fact that made me suspicious. I knew about space burials, but I didn't know if there were any on the moon. So I looked it up, and hey--turns out the kid was right! Eugene Merle Shoemaker didn't die on the moon, but his ashes (hence: dust) did get sent up there.

I made a point to let them know during the presentation, just to vindicate the kid--if he's the kind of nerd I was, he was feeling a mix of shame and righteous indignation at being told he was wrong. (The presenter handled his weird comment beautifully, but that wouldn't stop me from feeling that way.) So instead he wound up feeling really awesome that he taught US something today.

FUN FACT: James Doohan's remains are having a hard time getting into space. They've tried launching his ashes twice so far and I think they're going to try again, though just when is a little unclear. Good luck, Scotty!

That I can work from home on days when it's snowy and there aren't too many presentations to do. I love the flexibility of my job.

One of the kids in the dome show today noticed Andromeda was topless and hammed it up about it. But even though Mr. Jester was giving me grief about "This is inappropriate! There are CHILDREN here! Hurr hurr," one of the teachers still told me I ought to ask for a raise. So that's my good thing for the 7th.

Rallied enough from the Deathplague today to actually do a bit of Work-At-Home for the Space Place. So I've been driving myself nuts over this lesson I'm supposed to be designing, because I never actually have been trained on designing lessons.* Finally I sent it off, and today I looked over the feedback and the attachments our Presenter Wrangler sent back, and one of the attachments was a ready-made, far better, actually fun-sounding version of the lesson I was struggling to create myself.

... Why don't we just use THAT?

I will have to ask the wrangler tomorrow. Or possibly next week. I still have the Deathplague, after all. It would be irresponsible to share it with everyone else.


*To the point where I convinced our Presenter Wrangler to give us presenters a lesson about How To Create Lessons. All I ever think of with Fun Activities is bullshit like that one time in third grade that a guy was making some point or other about communication and did so by having us kids give him instructions on How To Make A Peanut Butter Sandwich, wherein he would HILARIOUSLY MISUNDERSTAND said instructions and wind up with peanut butter and jelly smeared all over his face or something. I freaking HATED lessons like that. So I was hoping to get an idea of how to make better lessons than THAT, and showed up optimistically to the Lesson Lesson--

--to discover jars of peanut butter and jelly and bread and utensils waiting in the meeting room. Our wrangler was using THE FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH COMMUNICATION EXERCISE as the basis for his lesson on making better lessons.

I may have cried a little.

(I want to point out that our Wrangler is great, and his tireless efforts to pound education concepts into my head must not go unappreciated. How was he to know that the Peanut Butter Sandwich Lesson was such a specific memory for me? Part of my work-at-home has been trying to figure out how to ask him to give me the very basic of basics on lesson plans. We WILL get this figured out.)

Did anyone in the right regions get to see the solar eclipse today? I thought I wasn't going to because paradoxically I was stuck in the Space Place Dome Theater for a shift,* but nobody showed up for one of the shows because THERE WAS AN ECLIPSE GOING so I had time to run out and hang with the Space Place Eclipse Party for a bit and look through the filtered telescopes and through the filtered glasses and DEAR GOD PLEASE DON'T LOOK AT THE SUN WITHOUT A FILTER PEOPLE.

So yeah, we partied like Space Place people, by which I mean a bunch of nerds stood around and tried to see who could explain space the loudest while peering through telescopes. And now I've got mylar-filtered glasses so I can check out the sun with impunity WHENEVER I DAMN WELL PLEASE and every time I'll feel a little bit defiant. TAKE THAT, THE SUN!

Then I had to go back to Dome Jail. But it was clouding up anyway, so that was fine. I'm just glad I got to see it.


*I suppose on the plus side I could always simulate the eclipse ...