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May the 4th be with you all! Good start to the day watching these stories. I think the 1st story with Morgan could have done with being shown before the Ahsoka series to give a bit more interest in her character during that series - missed opportunity there. The Barriss story was my favourite of the 2. Nice to get to see what happened after her arrest in The Clone Wars series. Left me wanting more at the end!

I think it's a good conversation to have, but I think I'd also leave out the details about his dad because you don't want to set up anger towards his dad, or have him thinking well its acceptable if a girl ends up in a relationship with me eventually. I think its really important to teach kids about consent and to also teach boys that inappropriate touching or rubbing up on girls "by accident" is not acceptable. Part of growing up is making dumb mistakes, but growing up also means realizing you made dumb mistakes and apologizing or stopping/changing that behavior. I hate teenage/early 20s me. But I've also resolved to do better now. I don't think anyone makes it through those years without acting like a fool. I wish we didn't, but hopefully we grow past it once that prefrontal cortex or whatever is fully developed.

They don't cover this one in the parenting books. About a year ago, Trevor, Noah, and I were playing a board game (Hogwarts Battle). I was about to make an absolutely amazing and game winning move, when I drew the ONE card that could undo it all. It was heartbreaking. I refused to play the game for like a month after that. So ever since then we make jokes about how violated I felt by the game and Voldemort. Fast forward to last night. Noah and I were chatting about something I don't even remember now, but it was semi-serious. Then this exchange happened. Noah - Is it Hogwarts level bad? Me - Huh? Noah - The game. Remember? Me - Oh. Yeah. Worse than that. Noah - Is that the most violated you've ever been? Me - ...dude. No. I'm a female who grew up in the 90s. I have definitely been more violated. Noah - ...well now that makes me think you're talking about rape. Have you been raped, Mom? Me - What? No, bro. I've never been raped. Noah - Oh...so what did you mean? How were you violated? Me - We'll have to have this conversation when you're a bit older. This is really weird for us. I don't typically dodge questions from my kids like this. We've had more than our fair share of awkward conversations. So many of them that we no longer feel awkward talking about most things that teenagers don't like to discuss with their parents. But I'm drawing a complete blank on how to explain the fact that I've been sexually assaulted like many women my age, but it wasn't something I even considered until I was older because that's just how things were at the time. Like, I've been groped and touched by so many people in so many different circumstances, but we were young. Things were different. Culturally these things were accepted and sometimes just expected. So I don't harbor any ill will for most of it, and I know that the boys who did these things have grown into men who probably had some uncomfortable realizations during the #metoo movement. I know many of these men now, and I know that they've grown and would never now. But in the late 90s/early 2000s? We all remember, right? I mean, we've had some discussions about moral relativity while studying a bunch of history and other cultures, but this just feels different, ya know? I mean, we're talking about his mom! And, frankly, one of by biggest violators was his dad! I don't even know where to begin with this. It's a terrible example to give an almost 16 year-old boy that sometimes after a year or so of completely inappropriate interactions, we actually developed real feelings and are now married. That's not the message you want to send! I don't want him to think that SA is just easily forgivable. Seriously. Parenting books don't cover this one.

This is ironically funny. You’re holding BBQ tongs and the only thing that flipped was you. Sorry! I just had to say it.

Today I saw a cool bug

I don't care where I am. If you drive like an idiot or talk on speaker while at the grocery store, you are going to hear from me.

Not gonna lie I’d totally try that blue milk if I could find it.

My students were asking me to tell their parents about the dumpster thing all week. HA! It was laughter antidote, especially after a super sucky day before. One of my neighbors helped me out after and hour of slipping and trying to get out. Let me tell you getting out of a wet dumpster is actually good for cardio!

Sorry I am cracking up at the dumpster situation. This is exactly the shenanigans I expect from you and I love you for it.

I’m sorry you got hit by a lady backing out of a parking lot and I’m glad you — I assume!? — eventually got free of the dumpster.

That sucks!

I got hit by a lady backing out of a parking lot. My car was directly behind hers and she told me “Why didn’t you stop? I was backing out.” I stared at her because I was directly behind her car when she threw it into gear and backed up. The damage is on the back end of my car. Where would I have stopped? And also, OMG so we just back up expecting people to let us out? She was fresh out of a Pilates class and had no insurance card with her as well as losing her license. I’ve been playing phone tag with her insurance company for the last five days. I also got stuck in a dumpster. I was trying to fish a lid out that I accidentally threw away. I was on a ladder and had a set of long bbq tongs trying to get the lid out when I flipped over the top and landed on my back in the dumpster. I was a crazy lady covered in pickles and shrimp shells asking people of my condo complex “Help me I’m stuck in a dumpster and can’t get out!”

For sure! All set for appearances later on the Mando timeframe maybe, or could she feature in the third game in the “Fallen order” series maybe if not going the live action route. Double length episode and it goes along at a good pace doesn’t it. Good finish - shame project necromancer is seemingly wiped out in full and not leaving a few little threads to the Disney trilogy to try and give a little meaning. Or maybe that’s just it - the process is simply not perfected.

Great ending! I was not expecting any of them to make it, so that was a pleasant surprise. But we are definitely going to see Omega again.

Aside from the whole not-being-able-to-turn-their-heads thing. But they look cool as fuck.

Went to my happy place

I also like the biker scout troopers, too.

I hated when they tried to do “RAW underground” years ago. I felt it undermined the product because it was treated as, look, what we’re doing down here is real. No wrestling ring, no announcers. Just two competitors jumping in trying to beat each other into submission. I thought it was stupid that they’d insult their own product in that manner. Now they’re doing it with NXT. If I wanted to watch a MMA-style fight I’d watch MMA. I don’t tune in to WWE for that.

Still think those red imperial guards have one of the best designs in all of star wars

Talking of tourist trap, this was the photo on my calendar when I flipped over to May - such an odd “look to camera” photo I’ve not seen before! “Come to the Death Star! You’ll never leave!”

I'm trying not to speak too out of turn, but I've found that working with top-tier scientists and engineers has a lot of pros and a handful of cons. There's always a handful who are extremely well over-qualified in their fields and are absolutely brilliant at what they do, but also know that and make sure that everyone else knows that. It takes some tact and skill to work around immense egos sometimes. I'm not even talking about any particular area, or even about NASA specifically. For example, I adore Neil DeGrasse Tyson immensely and still consider him a hero, but he can be a total jackass when it comes to that sort of thing too. I'm lucky that I'm connected to that realm but am able to keep it at an arm's length at my current position. I just need to be able to book them for speaking appearances and get enough bullet points from them to effectively communicate it to the public, which keeps me almost completely out of the mix with most potential drama. It did admittedly take me a bit to learn to navigate it the right way though.

It’s a tourist trap!

I’m very happy to hear that the private school is taking her to finish out the year. I hope it is a much better experience than this last one was.

So we went to clean Q's desk out after school today. The principal followed us around, which I did not appreciate. Q's teacher made sure all of her stuff was turned in (textbooks, Chromebook, library books, etc) and made a big show of it, which I appreciated because I felt like she was looking out for her. While we were cleaning out her desks 2 pieces of paper came out. One of them was a short, 3 sentence apology from one of the boys who made fun of her when the bully hit her. It wasn't a good apology, but he tried. The other was the apology from the bully. I took a picture of it, because this was the big consequence that was supposed to make it all better. Obviously, fuck this shit. When we got home, the private school called and said they would be glad to have Q join them starting Monday for the last 6 weeks of the school year. We happily accepted. We finished one Girl Scout badge that she had already started. Tomorrow she is starting Screenwriting. I thought Tank would like that.

Not a bad day. Look at what a dairy vendor brought in today.