Door to Door Rocking!

I'm not sure why, but a few days ago I was remembering how Paco and I came to hear of Tenacious D. We first saw one of their HBO specials and immediately liked them. In case you do not know who Tenacious D is, it is a comedy rock band(more like a duo), consisting of actors Jack Black and Kyle Gass. And the HBO specials is  all we heard from Tenacious D for a long time. I recorded all the episodes on the DVR and we enjoyed watching them a lot! The sasquatch episode was probably our favorite! Paco figured them out on guitar, and he and his friend Greg would go door to door rocking to people's houses! I was never brave enough to go with him. 

I want to guess that this was sometime in 2004 maybe? Paco was developing his drum skills at the time and was beginning to feel confident about his drumming. And in the sasquatch episode, they recruit sasquatch to play drums for them, except he sucks and ruins the songs. And since the way they do the episodes has an autobiographical feeling to it(the D's rise to power, as they call it haha), I think Paco interpreted that to mean that they were seeking a drummer, and they had not succeeded. He was making a plan to see if he could somehow audition for Tenacious D and be their drummer! Since they seemed like a band that was not very popular(everyone we talked to about Tenacious D had no idea who they were), it seemed somewhat plausible that this could be the case. Obviously, we knew very little about Tenacious D at the time!

We really liked them. I am not sure why we never bothered to check to see if they had recorded any albums. I guess we didn't really take them seriously? haha Then one day I was at Best Buy, and I saw that Tenacious D had an album! So I immediately bought it, and started listening to it in the car on the way home. And wow! To my surprise, pretty much all the songs had a full band to them! Bass, drums, the works! I had to call Paco and tell him the this, so I did. He was a little bummed out of course, but what cheered him up was that the drummer they got for their album at least was none other than Dave Grohl!! In case you are not familiar with who that is, he was Nirvana's drummer, and is also the guitarist and singer for Foo Fighters(now he is playing drums for Them Crooked Vultures, good stuff! Check them out). So I mean, to be fair, he never had a chance haha If they can get Dave Grohl for their drummer, they were not struggling to find one, at all. 

I am not sure why this came to mind recently :) good times though!!! Good Times indeed! 

The Moon!!!

So I have known for a while, as most people probably do, that we only see one side of the moon here from earth.

But it was not until last night that I finally "saw" how and why! It was so exciting!! haha I know, I'm such a geek! It was very discouraging at first because I read the 1st sentence about it in an astronomy book we have and it was really hard to picture what the book was saying. Here is that sentence:

The moving sun
Because earth spins on its axis every 23 hours 56 minutes, but also moves more than 2.5 million km along its orbit in that time, each point on our planet's surface must spin a little further each day to return to the same point in relation to the Sun - and as a result, a full 'day' in solar terms takes 24 hours.

This was one of those things where I read it, I understand what the words mean individually, but I do not understand the concept it was trying to explain. But then I thought about it a lot and discussed it with Geli and used a soccer ball and a beach ball as visual aids to act out what the book was saying and it worked! It made sense. I mean, that sentence specifically was not talking about the moon, but it was the key to "seeing" what the book was trying to explain. It is no longer a fact I accept because I'm told, but now I understand why!! It is a very liberating feeling. I understand the difference between an earth day and a solar day now. I will definitely be reading that book now. 

The reason we only see one side of the moon is because it takes the same amount of time for the moon to spin on its axis as it does to complete its orbit around the earth. Again, it is one of those things that, at least for me, I had to use the soccer and beach balls to be able to visualize and understand it. And the reason that the moon's orbit and rotation times have synchronized is because of the earth's gravity constantly tugging at the moon. Understanding this really felt like some sort of epiphany haha. 

the 2 sides of the moon

It is a very satisfying and fulfilling feeling, at least for me, to understand the world around us the best I can, and to continually learn more about our world and our universe.


I hope to be able to use the telescope a lot more this year. We have a lot of things to look at and learn :)