Hot chocolate is only deathly sometimes.

Donald the Local Fanboy is local once again, back in his rightful home state. And also in my home, a day ago.
While he was here, I introduced him to the art of needle felting, a therapeutic craft in which you take a fluff of wool and a barbed needle and STAB THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF IT until the wool becomes the shape you want.

Yesterday was also our last star party of the season. I ate pizza with the other star guides and solved puzzles with Vanessa, our newest recruit. This was her first year and she has done very well. As far as I can tell, I did very well too, speaking in front of people.
Braden, the oldest star guide, made us all new passports with harder to find targets. Things like the owl cluster and omega nebula.
I do not have pictures of those, but john did image the pelican nebula, and I thought that was kind of cool.

(There's a little 1 in the corner because he matched the photos up with the names when he sent them to us. The stars are a little blobbier than normal and the image is lesser in quality because he took this with the 5 inch 'astrovideo' [Not actually video. It just takes lower quality pictures faster so we have cool results to show guests sooner.] telescope instead of the proper astrophotography telescope in the observatory.)

A quote from Brett last evening: "I am always afraid to touch nature because I am afraid nature will touch me back...with more insects...ugh."
Speaking of insects, the night before, Vanessa and I had been making hot chocolate while the guests were in the planetarium, and a fly fell into her cup and died. But this death was not instantaneous, sporting the full show of frantic, soggy buzzing, its wings making swirly designs in the foam on top. A death that was quite a spectacle, if still gruesome.

Now that the star guide season is over, I am sitting alone in my house feeling kind of sad.

I believe I figured out the death frisbee thing from a couple posts ago. I started watching Sherlock recently and "death frisbee" was mentioned, in reference to a hat. I must have read it somewhere in my explorations of the interwebs, and it stuck in my mind enough for me to write it in my closet.