Happy Today! Have a Fantastical rest of the Week. I love you; I appreciate you!

Some alien life-form is eating not just our sun, but almost all others in the universe. Can our sun be saved? Can Earth be saved? Sorry, you’ll have to escape to Tau Ceti aboard the space ship Project Hail Mary with Ryland Grace, two other astronauts, and meet Rocky, an alien from Erid (I think that’s the name), to find out.

Housemate Dan and I read the book a few months ago, along with our Book Group, and I could hardly wait to see the movie. I thought today would never get here. We decided to go today instead of yesterday when it opened, because a couple of friends wanted to go with us. We all enjoyed the heck out of the movie.

Ryan Gosling played Ryland Grace, scientist and unwilling astronaut. Rocky was played by, well, himself. Rocky is a puppet. Gosling is an extremely brave, as well as talented actor. Actors should never have to play opposite children or Muppets. Though I doubt Rocky is a Muppet, just a puppet. 

For those of you who know me, you’ve heard the story, I’m sure, about an animated movie, WALL-E, where an animated robot is the last person on Earth, and is visited by a space ship with humans returning to Earth, and Wall-E falls in love with a lady robot and leaves to be with her, and leaves his best and only buddy a robot cockroach all alone on Earth. Yes, I cried over an animated robot cockroach being abandoned. 

Rocky isn’t a tiny cockroach. And, yes, there was a place in the movie when I cried. But there were more laughs than tears. I even picked up some of the musical jokes. If  you need to get as far away as possible from Earth and our current problems, even if you haven’t read the book, go see Project Hail Mary. 

Andy Weir is the author of the book. He also wrote The Martian. If you haven’t read that one, or seen the movie, do both. And you might find some interesting YouTube programs on, including this one on how zero G spacewalks are filmed in movies with Adam Savage. There are plenty more, including several teasers.

The Missing Heron

I think this is the female, but I haven’t seen either her or the male in the last 2-3 weeks. Maybe they are someplace building a nest? Maybe they’ll have little herons and bring them by in a couple months? Anyhow, this was taken through my office window.