Before performing, James Tiberius Kirk (portrayed by Amy) talked about "his" conquests.

Of course, Leeloo is going to perform as well.

Now, if you had told me going in that I was going to see Leeloo, dance. I'd say "awesome!" If you told me Leeloo would be a guy with a beard, I'd say "not so awesome". Having seen it, it was awesome.

JaRaj El Man-Schwa as Leeloo.

I love, love, love these giant granny squares! I definitely want to make one for myself, as soon as I figure out what colors to use (which, for me, is the difficult part!).

1. i love the simplicity of the pattern matched with the colors, 2. giant granny square, 3. granny square goodness, 4. giant granny 7, 5. Icy pink crochet blanket, 6. finished giant granny afghan!

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

2005 Mazda3 Sport, Yakima Spacecase, Curt Cargo Rack.

This is how you put 2 small children and all their stuff for two weeks in a hatchback.

I should stress that the children are in the car. :)

The economics of the situation should be obvious. I could drive a minivan, burning extra fuel around the city all year, averaging about 10,000 km/year, just so I'll have enough room for this one yearly trip. Instead, I burn the extra fuel being less aerodynamic on the 700 km trip to the cottage.

If I could do it all again, I think I'd get an even smaller car with good torque, and a motorcycle trailer.

Cheers to Curt Manufacturing model #18145.

www.curtmfg.com/part/18145

I did a LOT of furniture rearranging this weekend. My craft area has now been relocated to the office, and these bookcases were moved to the living room. I was smart and emptied the shelves before I moved them, but WOW was it still a lot of work.

I really like having all of my books in one place. I can't believe how few books I have compared to a few years ago, but moving every couple of years forced me to pare down. Before we left Chicago, we donated about 8 paper boxes of books to Open Books. Probably the smartest thing I have ever done.

my brother, the connoisseur of stuffed puppies, lego space ships, and space maker pencil cases

1. Purple Bottled Rainbow Block, 2. Reversible purple daisy market tote bag, 3. Hexagons quilted, 4. Bday Tote Bag Mosaic, 5. Patchwork Pillows v.3, 6. Purple and grey tote bag, 7. Simple tote bag, 8. Scrap Quilt, 9. 241 Tote Bag

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

SpaceCase SC-X01 getting ready to be hoisted at the payload integration facilities at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, 30 May 2024.

SpaceCase SC-X01 is built by ArianeGroup, the same company behind the Ariane 6 rocket that will launch it into space. Staying attached to the rocket’s upper stage for the most part of its three-hour mission, SpaceCase will detach just minutes before the upper stage deorbits and head for a fiery controlled destruction in Earth’s atmosphere.

Whereas the upper stage is designed to burn up harmlessly, SpaceCase SC-X01 is going to show off the opposite side of human engineering: survive the intense heat that builds up as spacecraft return to Earth at speeds of 28 000 km/h.

Most spacecraft designed to return to Earth use ablative materials – as the outer layer heats up it will burn off and be whisked away, taking the heat build-up away with it, and on to the next layer until splashdown.

SpaceCase SCX-01 uses the same principle but its unique selling point is that its heat-protective shield -- made of carbon resin called NAXECO® / resin – is also the structure. Whereas most spacecraft heat shields are glued or bolted on to the spacecraft structure, often in tiles, SpaceCase SCX-01’s monolithic heatshield is the structure of the capsule itself. This has many benefits from weight to simplicity and cost.

To keep costs and production time low, SpaceCase is simple by design. The innovations in this demonstrator include the shape of the capsule that could be used for a sample return from space or another planet – it will orient itself with the heatshield pointing down due to its aerodynamic shape to prove the design and test the material.

Inside SpaceCase SC-X01, avionics will be recording heatshield temperatures and trajectory data and send it to the project team via satellite. There are no parachutes on and no intention to recover the hardware – that will be for a second mission. The team plans to use plug-and-play standard dimension CubeSats inside the vehicle on next tests in the future.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup/Optique Vidéo du CSG - Q. Veuillet