Sunday, June 16, 2024
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Picture this: you’re a child and someone has just turned the TV on. You begin watching as slick spies, Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez, tell the story of their forbidden love (featuring lots of explosions and fake mustaches). We flash forward to the present, and watch as their kids, Juni and Carmen Cortez learn the spy arts in order to save their parents; and the world. Cue childlike humor, meta references, family themes, Danny Trejo, and action sequences that make you wanna hum the Mission Impossible theme, wear sick sunglasses, and also maybe kick something.
The movie is Spy Kids and it was one of our intern movie nights this week. Now there’s no denying it’s a ridiculous movie (I mean thumb people, robot clones, electroshock chewing gum?), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t phenomenal. Similarly, some of this week’s happenings would’ve been easy to focus on negatively, but are phenomenal regardless.
Monday I went into ACP, tinkered away with my code (accessed my first ever API, woot woot), and finished the day with a Shrek 2 intern movie watch (the “I Need a Hero” scene needs to be injected into my veins before exams going forward).
Tuesday brought another day of programming at ACP, lunch with Charles, and new material night at a local comedy club. You might expect that a free ticket to new material night for amateur comics on a Tuesday probably isn’t Netflix comedy special levels of humor (and you’d be right), but some of the comedians were truly hilarious and I’m choosing to focus on them instead.
Middle of the week meant another commute to STScI in Baltimore, another Amtrak delay, and a canceled bus route that forced me to walk a good deal. In addition, the lecture I had planned on attending there got canceled, and my Amtrak home to DC was delayed an hour as well. Now it might be easy to rain fury on public transportation for its failures, but I am Amtrak’s biggest fan otherwise (we need more passenger railroad lines), so I’m grateful nonetheless. Not to mention my code finally worked out on Wednesday. Now for a user input redshift, target wavelength(s), preferred filter type(s), preferred telescope(s), and target coordinates, the code will give you the expected observed wavelength at the given redshift, which filters for each instrument of each telescope can observe it, and it will pull an archival Hubble image of the region of sky for reference to help identify potential observing targets. To cap off the day, I went to Rock the Dock, free outdoor concerts down by the Wharf, with the interns. I’ve learned that it’s been awhile since I’ve played corn hole and maybe I should not talk as much trash until I’m sure I’m good at something, at least when facing Evan and Charlotte… or Brynn and Charles… or every team I played against.
Thursday I struggled to implement new features into my code, struggled to download an astronomy software called SAOImageDS9 (super sketchy that I have to manually disable ‘quarantine flags’ on this software), and struggled to convince Charlotte of Spy Kids’ merits at movie night. I’ll leave judgement to the reader on whether Spy Kids is good or not, but just know that it is and if you say otherwise then you’re wrong (again, look for the good).
Friday was a slower day, but I met with Dr. Christopher Stark from NASA Goddard for an informational interview and career advice chat. He was incredibly helpful and welcoming and I now have a few leads to follow up on for additional advice (and maybe jobs?). Shoutout to the SPS Trimble lecture for introducing me to Dr. Stark and giving me the opportunity to set a meeting with him. After work most of the interns rolled to Jazz in the Garden again for some improvisational music, cooled sangria, and wet pants (sat in wet grass).
The weekend started busy, so I’ll run through things quickly. We tried a food festival, but bailed after learning you had to pay. We instead went to the National Gallery to appreciate art (aka make fun of Charles). Afterwards Kai, Kaden, Charles, and I went thrifting and then got groceries. We ended the evening with a calm night out nearby with Brynn, Piper, Kai, Kaden, and I.
Sunday I attended an afternoon party at a friend from school’s house before meeting up with Charlotte and Jenna. We closed the day with movie night featuring Goodwill Hunting (one of my all time favorite movies) and WALL-E. Johnny is back from France by the way, so spike ball resumes this week (undefeated streak to be continued). Wishing I’d been home for Father’s Day, but I at least got to talk to my dad on the phone for a bit and was able to send him some jelly beans (his favorite).
To summarize, focus on the good elements, even when faced with the frustrating or ridiculous. Amtrak can take you from DC to Boston, amateur comedians can sometimes make you laugh, and Spy Kids can always keep you entertained. Yeah there may be delays, jokes in bad taste, and androids made of thumbs, but that doesn’t have to take away from all the good a thing brings. In fact, it just reinforces how great the good parts are.
Jaden Sicotte