Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

So we pushed out a rather major update for Mars in Google Earth, which was covered by this Lat Long Blog post, and also coincided with Giovanni Schiaparelli's birthday for which Google put this image on their main search page (referred to as the Google doodle):

I've been meaning to post about Helen's adventures with Animal Crossing. For those of you unfamiliar with the title, it is a Nintendo game where your character moves into a new town and sets up house. You can talk to other people in town, fill your house with furniture, fish, and plant trees. It's sort of like the Sims except all of your friends are animals. Gus sent Helen the new version for the Wii and she and I play once or twice a week.

So a semi-secret project that I've been working on for a while now has finally been released: Google Earth 5.0 (Lat Long Blog post, NASA Press Release, Matt's post). It has been my privilege to work with some really excellent folks at NASA Ames and Google, Inc., on bringing some of NASA's mess of data together into the geospatial browser context of the Google Earth client. What does that mean? It means that in addition to roaming the Earth and Sky in the Google Earth program, you can now also engage the Mars 3D mode, and visit Mars.

It's awesome, and I was a part of it.

I'm not totally blind, just somewhat vision impaired. Because of this, I prefer clocks with very large numbers, and even better: projection clocks. We used to have this really handy travel clock, but it was unfortunately swiped by those cretins that broke in last year, and the maker does not see fit to supply the same model. It was perfect. It was wallet sized, projected red numbers onto the ceiling, and was also a radio clock that set itself. That final bit brings me to its pathetic replacement.

I realized that I had not released a nine month report for Arthur. Other than having about a month's worth of doctor visits for symptoms ranging from 104 fever to ear infection to crazy rash, Arthur is in great health. No, really. He just had interesting holidays.

Helen is obsessed with cooking shows, specifically Everyday Italian. She watches the same episodes over and over again. Last week we made an egg bread and Tuscan salad. When she saw the two dishes on the table she gasped and said "We made two Giada dishes. Wow!!" She even licked a black olive. Really.

Santa left Helen a coupon for a new bike, and we finally got one for her. Fortunately, you can ride your new bike on the 10th of January in California. Helen picked out a yellow bike (instead of a pink one), and really, really likes it.

I will need to explain a bit of backstory. Several weeks ago, on our drive home we noticed that the sign for our exit had been knocked down. That is a bit of an understatement, one of those gigantic overhead signs had been bent nearly in half and was lying in pieces on the side of the road. It was a sight to see. By the time we saw it, everything was over, so there was no evidence of how it happened. Helen noticed it and had talked about it a bit since then. Today, she had a plan:

Helen: Mommy, who smashed the sign?
Me: I don't know, sweetie.
Helen: Maybe it was the dumptruck.

The holidays were fun, but draining. Arthur was a little sick, and Rachel and I didn't get much sleep. This resulted in me letting Rachel sleep in most mornings, and me taking some afternoon naps. In the second set of images I know it may seem like I'm smiling and only feigning sleep, but I have no recollection of those events and am reasonably certain I was completely unconscious--but apparently having a good dream.

We had a great Christmas this year, my parents were with us, and the kids really enjoyed it.