A night to remember

I recently had the incredible experience of working at NASA's Glenn Research Center over the summer to develop materials specific to Generation Y. Generation Y will represent the largest part of the population since the Baby Boomers and for this reason are a major point of interest for NASA's Outreach programs. I won't bother to argue Generation Y's age range as it's heavily disputed, but for arguments sake let's say 18-30.

During the development of this pilot program at NASA I wanted to incorporate a musical element into the artifacts we were creating. I had interest in contacting the musical group NASA as it was too funny we shared the same acronym, and I really liked their music. I initially contacted them asking for licensing rights to the song, "the NASA Anthem". They were not only thrilled to approve the request but were honored. (Insert mushroom cloud above my head here) I was so excited and thrilled, this was completely unbelievable. Over many weeks we have continued talking, discussing possibilities of working together again.

To my surprise, Sam from NASA was performing in Columbus, OH just a week ago. It was the perfect opportunity to introduce myself in person, and thank him for his continued interest. My fellow grad student friends, Jason and Sarah, along with my friend Jan jumped in the car and drove down anticipating a fun night.

Walking towards Sam I texted to introduce myself as 'I'm the guy with the big glasses and a plaid bow tie', he responded with, 'I'm the funny looking guy with the bad haircut'. Priceless. We were very excited to share dinner with Sam and talk about NASA, L.A., Ohio, and many other topics. Sam is a truly amazing, humble, friendly, and talented guy. Or as my friend Jason said, "one solid dude". He invited us to attend his show (he so graciously offered to get our group in for free) and invited us to hang out with him in the Green Room. We were all having such a great night. Sam was such a pleasure to spend the evening with, we had all shared later in the evening we wished he lived in Ohio because we'd love to hang out with him on a regular basis. I highly recommend attending one of his shows as the energy was off the charts. After and electrifying evening, we shuffled back to the car and drove back home, arriving at 5am, ouch. To our delight our host posted on his twitter page later that day, ""OH yeah> Props to my people from N.A.S.A. (the space program) that drove down from Cleveland last night to come to the show!!"