How to R2-D2

This year for Halloween we had a three year old who wanted to be R2-D2, accompanied by a Princess Leia mommy and a Han Solo daddy. Leia and Han seemed easy. Buy, borrow, or steal appropriate clothing and get a fairly popular wig. R2 was going to be more of a challenge because I wanted something more charming than store bought. I searched Google Images and pinned to Pinterest. I came up with a plan:

We spent an afternoon at a craft store trying to find just the right materials: foam, felt, glue, and something to craft the headpiece from. For the headpiece we ended up with a plastic army helmet glued to the inside of a salad bowl, both from a dollar store.

We crafted.

I bought a full Princess Leia costume, complete with hair-buns wig and ended up hating everything about it. So I Freecycled it and started from scratch, changing my concept to Hoth Leia. White yoga pants on sale for $5 and a beautiful white vest and snow boots that I'll wear this winter anyway paired with a long-hair wig that my mom helped braid. Han had to buy a henley shirt and black vest, supplying his own pants and boots. We bought $5 blasters and decided to keep them fake looking by not painting them black.

Star Wars family complete!

This was Muffin's first Halloween in the United States so we had to go the extra mile for her. Although, she's only three so the extra mile didn't have to be too far. We drove to a nearby neighborhood where a friend of ours was having a small party. We trick-or-treated at about five houses then went to our friend's for pizza and "grown-up" treats. Muffin ate too much candy but she didn't have school the next day so we could have a later night than usual and manage her the next day without too much difficulty. (Friday night she slept for twelve hours.)

I'm going to skip over Thanksgiving this year -- dinner is at my aunt's house and Mike most likely won't be home for it anyway -- and jump right into Muffin's First U.S. Christmas.

Awesome-o

There's a hilarious South Park episode involving Cartman dressing up as a robot to play a trick on Butters, but the joke is on Cartman when the military thinks that he's an actual robot, who is super-intelligent and must be destroyed. He calls himself Awesome-o.

Well, we saw the real Awesome-o robot this weekend, the Honda Asimo. When you see clips on the news about Japanese robots doing amazing things, it's the Asimo. It was part of the Japan! exhibit at the Kennedy Center. (Sunday was unfortunately the last day.) And it truly was awesome. At one point during the demonstration I said out loud, "There has to be a kid in there." It runs and walks up and down stairs. It plays soccer. Not quickly, but hey, you can only get so much from a robot. I'm unsure of all the technical terms, but something like millions of sensors and gyroscopes are constantly in a state of monitor and correct, so that Asimo can actually balance on one leg and when he runs, both feet leave the ground for a tiny fraction of a second, just like when humans run.

There were also several art installations, like this one, called Day Into Night, which is part of a two-part project called Dots Obsession. (The other was Night Into Day, which was a black background with yellow dots.)

The Kennedy Center is open daily to the public with free tours. Visit their website for upcoming performance and exhibit information. There's a parking garage there and a shuttle from the Foggy Bottom Metro. It's not a very far walk from the Metro station though, and you pass the Watergate along the way, where you can pretend to be a spy or an investigative reporter:


(See more pics at flickr.)

ha ha ha ha ha!

Did Boston learn nothing from the Mooninite invasion last month? Several news outlets are reporting (and by "news outlets" I mean Wonkette and other blogs):

Police Blow Up Suspicious Device In Boston
(WBZ) BOSTON There were some tense moments in Boston's financial district Wednesday morning as police were forced to blow up a suspicious device.

The bomb squad shut down busy Devonshire Street after someone spotted a green box chained to a no parking sign.

The box turned out to be some kind of traffic counting device and was completely harmless.

That little blurb is the only "real news" I could find on it, from wbztv.com

Um, and it's believed that those traffic counters were installed by the city. Not terrorists. Or stoned college kids.

C'mon, this is funny. Aqua Teen Hunger Force closed down Boston today. It's weird that the media is calling it a hoax, though. Doesn't that imply that it was intentional that these little things were supposed to be mistaken as bombs? The CNN article is hilarious as all these serious news people are now having to explain Aqua Teen Hunger Force (and CNN has to explain it in the best possible light, because they're all owned by Turner). For those of you who don't get to sit at home with the tv on all day like me, this has been breaking news on CNN all day long, as one by one these little light boards are discovered, inspected, and detonated. I don't even watch ATHF, but I might start now. What a great punchline. (Oh, and these little doo-dads have been up in several cities for two weeks already. Thank goodness they are harmless. Nice job noticing suspicious things.)

<--- My mini Christmas tree, to keep me amused until Mike gets home and we get our big Christmas tree.

I'm in a fog this morning. I could really use a coffee robot right about now.

I did some sewing last night. Still working on Christmas things--unfortunately not the raincoat yet. I have the pieces cut out. I just need to attach the interfacing then I can start the real sewing. But my workspace is overrun with Christmas presents right now. I started wrapping them last night and even though it's a smidge early to start sending them, I would like to right away so I can get them cleared out.

Do you need more blogs to read in your free time? Check out some of those listed here: Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading.

I Want My Coffee Robot!

Sewing is hip: Circling Back to Sewing.

In other news, when will science produce a coffee-making robot for me? This is exactly what I want: Something that makes the coffee (simple coffee-maker with a timer technology that's been around for ages), then like a rolling hot plate on a pedestal, wheels it into my room, right next to my bed, so I don't even have to get up to have my first cup of coffee in the morning. There can be a little docking station in the kitchen where it puts itself back when I'm through with it in the bedroom, and maybe it can even be hooked up to the water, like the ice machine in a refridgerator door, so all I really have to do is add some coffee beans every few days. I imagine it would be handy for parties, too. At the end of dinner, press the remote, and a few minutes later, your hot coffee waiter pulls right up to the table for each guest. I think the Roomba manufacturers should get right on this!