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one of the seat belt buckles in the jeep stopped latching a few weeks ago. it kinda surprised me because it’s only 24 years old (1993 cherokee). now i’ve had cars that were built in the 1960′s and 70′s, and they still had working seat belts thirty years past their prime! (sigh) i drove around with a jumper cable holding everything in place for spite before i took it apart & fixed it. the latching mechanism inside reminds me of a space invader.

i started my residency at the makerspace last week. the staff suggested that i use tinkercad, “a simple, online 3D design and 3D printing app for everyone,” to make my own lanyard badge. it took me a few hours, but i did it. the 3D printer only took 47 minutes to turn this…into THIS!this week i’ll make my first tabletop teeter totter in two pieces. i designed the teeter board late friday afternoon.

last night i saw the breakfast club on the big screen again. the last time i saw it in theaters, i was just out of high school. now it’s 30 years later & it’s part of an 80′s film series at a local theater. michael gurau sent me the link on facebook, and said he’d never seen it in the theater. i said “let’s go!” there are other movies on that list that i’d like to see again, but the breakfast club holds a special place for me. it was one of the first movies that didn’t weed out the dark parts of high school. the breakfast club went beyond comedy & focused on subjects that divided and united us. can’t buy me love was another movie that dealt w/the same chasm between similar cliqués.

so there’s a movie about a guy named dave who makes a cardboard maze in his living room while his girlfriend is out of town. it was playing at tapcade which is the only place where i can see weird movies, play old video games, and eat street tacos. one of the bartenders told me the movie was “pretty cool.” after playing space invaders, dig dug, galaga, and popeye i went home & watched the trailer. “whoa!” i said to no one in particular & then i downloaded the whole thing from amazon. this movie has a little romance, a lot of comedy, and a bloodthirsty minotaur. the bartender was right.

i got together to jam with a couple of friends wednesday night. chris, clay, and i started playing when we were in our 20′s. a LOT of water has gone under that bridge since then… a lot of performances have been saved and mangled, and a lot of band names have been scrawled on posters. our latest music moniker is motel mancini. we’ve played under that name since 2015 at the river market. a couple of weeks ago someone flashed the bat signal, and we all gathered at the bat cave aka chris’ house. here’s a couple of minutes from our 3 hour jam.

schedules have been cleared, the planets are lining up, law enforcement officials have been paid off, and three amigos are getting ready for a long overdue jam session on wednesday! chris and clay texted me a few days ago, and asked if we could all play in a garage studio that i’m renting. i replied “sure! it doesn’t have air conditioning or a bathroom, but sure!” chris quickly offered his house as an alternate location.

yesterday jenny said “events near me” into her smartphone. it was friday night, and we were looking for something entertaining nearby. we found it! the first annual mission sunflower festival was going on just a few minutes away, and as soon as we arrived we both got a sticker. we also ate kettle corn from a food truck, heard live music from the good sam club band, and we got to hang out w/chrisy mull! i caught a stray frisbee, and threw it back to the kids who were entertaining themselves.

the 2017 solar eclipse came and went much faster than the traffic that followed the astronomical event. the moon was zipping by at 1500 mph while southbound cars on I-635 were moving at a snail’s pace long after the moon’s shadow was gone. my dad asked me to take pictures of the eclipse, but i only took mental notes & decided to draw cartoon illustrations instead. castle northmoor (pictured above) is where i watched the eclipse. it’s a 25 minute drive from my house. i was there about two hours before everything got dark, and for awhile i had the whole thing to myself– that’s when i called my folks & jenny. here are a few highlights:harlan shaver III welcomed us (he was a little drunk), and told everyone stories of how his grandfather, harlan shaver, had built the castle back in the 1980′s. by the time he came up the staircase, a dozen adults and kids had joined me at the top of the castle… including chloé mull and her boyfriend gary!one of the children standing close to us was a little girl who had a voice that should have been coming out of a middle aged woman. it reminded me of froggy from the little rascals. we wondered of she was just a really short adult until she said “someone at my middle school is going to blow a loud horn when the eclipse happens.” we didn’t hear her school horn, but someone on the ground did play the star spangled banner on a trumpet right before it got dark.the sun and moon had been playing peek-a-boo with us while we waited for darkness and crickets, but when it actually happened we were able to take off our protective glasses & see the total eclipse. it was like being with survivors adrift on a lifeboat until someone sees an island and points and says THERE IT IS!!! we only saw it for a few seconds before the clouds rolled back in. it was still cool to be with friends and strangers and share the excitement with everyone.

tomorrow afternoon the moon’s shadow is crossing over america, and throwing a portion of it into total darkness. a lot of curious people (including me) are going to drive to a spot where they can experience that phenomenon. pat rawlings, however, thought beyond the planet, and imagined what the eclipse would look like from the moon almost 30 years ago. the atlantic posted his illustration on their website yesterday,

there is an atari 2600 podcast that i go to for the inside scoop on my favorite retro gaming console– although jenny says that my “inside scoops” are actually “useless details.” oh well. wednesday the host (ferg) posted a show on enduro! this game has improved my driving skills over the years, and it has also helped me get a good night’s sleep.