Smale Christmas 2009

Welcome one and all to Ye Olde Smale Christmasse Missive 2009, in which our Heroes suffer cruelly under the knives of deranged Surgeons, toil relentlessly for the Man, sing for their supper with their tuneful yet eccentric Partners in Crime, and roam footloose across alien Lands searching for the Meaning of Life.

Something like that.

crusing February saw us sailing the Spanish Main, more precisely on the Ships'n'Dip Cruise from Florida to Cozumel and Key West with some of our favorite bands, Great Big Sea, Gaelic Storm and Barenaked Ladies, and some of our favorite peeps (you know who you are). Pausing only to wash the sand off his feet, Alan then headed out to Japan for two weeks for Suzaku and Astro-H meetings, and a most pleasant weekend day wandering the temples of Kamakura. April? Tucson, to visit Karen's parents, and see mariachi bands, Tumacacori, and the Titan Missile Museum (we like to keep it real). After a brief travel hiatus to perform some gigs of our own and take care of some personal business (see below), we china went to China in July to visit Shanghai, Hangzhou, and other surrounding cities and sites. The trip was scheduled around a solar eclipse which did not cooperate, but we did see an impressive tidal bore and a variety of temples, and the food was really good. From noodles to pasta: next we spent two weeks in bologna Italy, first to Florence for Alan's parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary (honest, they don't look that old) and then to Bologna for an X-ray astronomy conference and a splendid day trip exploring the canals and backstreets of Venice. We had a fall weekend in New York with close friends and another in Pittsburgh for an awesome wedding. Karen also went to California for a review and Alan to Boston for a science fiction convention. Wow. Put like that, it sounds like a lot.

CD cover Somewhat closer to home, we sang. Often. 2009 being the International Year of Astronomy, we released a special IYA CD entitled "Shoulders of Giants and Other Astronomy Songs", underwritten by our corporate sponsor, Johannes Kepler (now, see, you think we're kidding about that, but we're not). We also performed at the SingStrong vocal festival, the National Air and Space Museum, the Washington Folk Festival, the Maryland Science Center, Rehoboth Beach Bandstand, Chesapeake Arts Center (where footage of us was videotaped for a NASA video about the Sun), and a variety of other places in MA, VA, NY and PA, including a joint gig with Canadian singer-songwriter Mike Evin. In principle we were also supposed to be working on a brand new Christmas album this year. Maybe in 2010?

Panverse One cover Alan works at NASA/GSFC as Director of the HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center) and has managed to start doing some serious research again, applying non-linear dynamics methods to the long-term variability of black hole binaries and the fast variability of cataclysmic variables (don't ask). He was amused to be invited to NASA HQ for his leaving lunch a mere fifteen and a half months after he stopped working there. Writing-wise, his novella "Delusion's Song" appeared in the "Panverse One" anthology this fall, and is currently being translated into Spanish and Chinese for ebook and audiobook release. He sold a fifth story to "Realms of Fantasy" which should be his 25th published story, a story to "Panverse Two" (like, his 26th), and did a reading, a signing, and four panels at the CapClave science fiction convention in DC in October. And, full disclosure, he had a hernia operation in June.

Karen continues to work as Editor-in-Chief of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate Web at NASA/GSFC. This year she went back to a five-day week, moved to a new organizational code and a new office in a new building, and launched new Websites. She's recently learned a bit about Cold Fusion and databases but leaves the hard parts to those more skilled -- she's just responsible for getting 46 organizations to agree to use the same web design! Outside of work, Karen tried to ride her bike more this year (which wasn't a tall order) but needs to increase the annual mileage by an order of magnitude or so before admitting the tally to anyone outside our house. She still enjoys taking pictures, many of which grace her Facebook page. Take a look!

Well, that's all for now. Thank you for reading Ye Olde Christmasse Missive - assuming of course that you really did read it, and didn't just skip to the end to see whodunit.