Not Back to School Day

WE'RE NOT NORMAL: Today, the kids and I reverted back to our clearly-not-normal existence. For, you see, Seattle Public Schools started today. That means that parks, stores, restaurants, everywhere are basically devoid of kidlings from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. That makes people Notice us and ask questions. (Just take a look at the photo above. CJ had the fountains to himself in Ballard today. On sunny, non-school days, the place is always packed.)

Knowing this, as we struck out on our day's errands, I warned the kids, "People are probably going to ask you why you aren't in school today" and we talked about short and sweet responses. Annabelle said, "We can just tell them we're homeschooled." I told her that's mostly true (although they take lots of classes elsewhere), but it's really not necessary to tell strangers in the store that, it's none of their business and usually just leads to more questions that are none of their business either. ;) "Our school doesn't start until the 20th" which is true, as that's when classes at their Shoreline school begin.

To celebrate our own special brand of freedom, I took the kids to a new frozen yogurt shop in the Fremont neighborhood, Cool Whirled. Fun place! The kids got to choose their flavor(s) of soft serve yogurt (they each got some chocolate and vanilla), and then it was time to choose from toppings galore. M&Ms, Oreos, cookie dough, Cocoa Puffs, animal crackers, chocolate chips and I forget what else made it into their mix. (I know it sounds gawd awful and like a ridiculous amount of food, but they only had less than a teaspoonful of each of those toppings and just a few ounces of yogurt, so it wasn't as obscene as it sounds.)

CJ really enjoyed his creation.Annabelle was just slightly less enthused, and in animated detail, compared and contrasted it to another frozen yogurt shop she has frequented.TWEEPS: This afternoon, the kids and I tuned into a streaming Internet broadcast of the NASA Tweetup for the GRAIL mission, which launches tomorrow morning, early.

GRAIL is a acronym for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. A 12-story Delta 2 rocket will be used to launch twin spacecraft which will orbit the Moon in tandem. They will measure its gravitational field in unprecedented detail and by doing so, hopefully answer key questions about the Moon's internal structure and give scientists a better understanding of how our solar system formed. GRAIL has two windows for launch attempts on Sept. 8 - 5:37:06 a.m. and 6:16:12 a.m. Pacific time. The kids both asked me to wake them so they could watch. :)

I'm so glad we tuned into the Tweetup. By doing so, we got to learn about the super cool GRAIL MoonKam project via which classrooms will be allowed to request pictures of the lunar surface from cameras on the twin satellites. One of the Tweetup participants asked if the program would be open to private schools and homeschoolers and the answer was yes, so you know I, of course I registered Magnolia Prep. The MoonKAM education and public outreach program is led by Dr. Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and her team at Sally Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California San Diego.

My absolute favorite part of the Tweetup was the appearance by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I swear, he's part rock star, part Bill Cosby and just pure genius. deGrasse Tyson spent a lot of time talking about perceptions and it was fascinating. For instance, he said there aren't optical illusions, rather those are instances of "a brain failure. It's a failure of your sensory system to know what you're looking at." He also talked about how people in Australia "don't know they're upside down" because of Earth's gravity and their perceptions.

deGrasse Tyson sounds excited about GRAIL, noting that technology measuring the gravity vectors on the moon will let us "know what's going on down in the center. It's a machine beyond our senses," that will decode secrets of the moon and "bring it to us on a silver platter."

DeGrasse Tyson likened the Tweetup to a field trip for adults, and remarked how field trips are some of the few educational experiences students tend to remember into adulthood. He characterized scientists as people "who never grew up," as they continue to explore and ask questions. He also observed that for the first two years of life we teach children how to walk and talk "and for the rest of their life we're telling them to shut up and sit down." Ouch.

Spaceflight Now has a nice GRAIL page if you want more info: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d356/status.html

MO' MATH: We opened our math books today - about time, might I add. Today's exercise was subtracting dollars and cents. The kids both did well, tho Bee took about four times longer than CJ. Part of that is because it just comes easier to him. The other part of it is this ... HERE FISHY FISHY: One of our stops this afternoon was Swanson's, a super nice nursery just north of Ballard. We were hoping to find a little something for Bee's ballet teacher, as there was a going away reception for her tonight.

While at Swanson's we stopped by the urban chicken coop (those were some big birds!) and the fabulous koi ponds. No lie, their fish probably weigh more than our dog. And they act like they're STARVING and pretty much come out of the water at you, hoping you have food.LOST AND FOUND: The last stop on our errand-go-round today was the Ballard park pictured at the top of today's entry. When we got home, as I crossed our threshold, I noticed I didn't have my small camera bag in hand. I immediately assumed I left it in the car, and decided to let it hang out there until we went to the ballet going away party this evening.

Imagine my surprise when we got to the car this evening and my camera bag wasn't there. "Ruh-roh!" as Scooby-Doo would say.

Despite it not being in the car, I didn't panic. It just didn't *feel* lost to me. I was sure it was in the house or car somewhere. So after getting back from the ballet goodbye, we all looked high and low and *gasp* no camera bag. Well crap.

I knew I had the camera at the park, as I took pics of the kids there, and we didn't stop anywhere else between here and there, so the most obvious (and awful) conclusion was that I somehow managed to leave my camera bag at the park. I thought this a) impossible and b) even if it happened, no way 4 hours later it would still be there, of course. We're talking a busy, city park with a pretty good sized homeless population. Nonetheless, I felt I HAD to drive over there. And so I did. In rush hour traffic. As I pulled up to the park, I craned my neck toward the stone I had been sitting on. And what did I see? My camera bag, laying there. Incredible! I lucked into a parking spot, popped out of the car, grabbed it and drove home. I felt so lucky, I thought about stopping to buy a lottery ticket. I also wondered if perhaps it was karma coming 'round, as just a few days ago, CJ found a really pretty ring with three huge, diamond looking rocks on it. He found it on the floor by the shopping carts at the grocery store. If it was a diamond ring it was worth thousands of dollars. If it was costume jewelry, it was worth a small fraction of that, but it was a nice, fitted ring and might have meant something very special to the wearer. Whatever the case, we took it to customer service where it was (hopefully) locked in the safe at their store.

What comes around, goes around.

WIDE OPEN SPACES: Annabelle, flossing what's left of her teeth ...