Potpourri

BOUNTIFUL HARVEST: Today, we picked the first carrots from our new raised bed garden, and what beauties they were. Admittedly, we probably planted the seeds too closely together based on the Alien-worthy looking one that seems to be attacking CJ's face.

Carnival carrots they were, picked in a packet in a hardware store by CJ months ago, planted with care by the kids, first in a peat pot and then in our garden, where they were watered until harvest time, and washed after harvest.

They're interesting in shape and color, and super flavorful.

BEAM ME UP: We continued our MPA Mini Olympics today. This morning, while the USA gymnastics team battled their way to the gold medal, CJ and Annabelle were working the balance beam.

Annabelle nails the dismount

I assigned them a 'routine' of sorts. They had to walk the length of the beam (in our case, a 2x4 on the floor of the addition), do a one-footed pivot, walk back to the other end of the beam, do a scale (foot out behind them) and then a hop off dismount. 

The both had trouble with the pivot, so basically it came down to who could do a clean one first. In this even, CJ was the victor. Another gold for him. 

For our second event, it was simply about balance and strength. I had them do the scale and see who could hold it longer. Annabelle was victorious, scoring her first gold medal of our games

THIS DAY IN SCIENCE: Whilst looking for the schedule of events at Pacific Science Center today, I stumbled across something I'd forgotten about. It's PSC's Calendar of Science. They have it on their Web site, as well as in daily Tweets. It's full of fun factoids and would be a great resource for any teacher as a daily item of interest for their students. For instance, today marks the anniversary of the founding of  Schönbrunn, the world's very first zoo, in 1754, and it's still in operation today!

DOME-O-MARS: This afternoon we headed to Seattle Center. Our mission was two-fold. First, we needed a Space Needle cookie cutter. Mission accomplished. 

The real live Space Needle looked lovely today against the blue sky. I will just never get tired of staring at it.

Adjacent to the Needle, we sneaked peeks at the newish Chihuly glass palace (not its official name). We still haven't been there yet. However, there were people standing outside it passing out two-for-one coupons today, so maybe we'll use that as our excuse to go. It's certainly intriguing from beyond the gates!

Next up: a special planetarium show, a mash up of their standard "The Sky Tonight" offering "with special content focused on Curiosity's 8/5 landing on Mars The show will highlight brand-new NASA content and images." Well count us in!

The host of the show was great. Super enthusiastic and he knew his MSL pretty well.  Though we didn't necessarily learn anything new, it was very enjoyable ... except, the host kept mentioning how so many things could go wrong and how Curiosity could crash onto Mars and we wouldn't know it for 14 minutes until after it's toast. I've known this all along, of course, but something about sitting in the dark, hearing him say that, looking at pictures of MSL really made it hit me. And true confession time, I started feeling verklempt. That's right, getting misty over a friggin Mars rover. Yup, that's me. What a hopeless nerd. :/


WE SURRENDER?: Came across an article today that caught my attention. The headline reads "All the American Flags On the Moon Are Now White".  Of course the first reaction is, 'What happened to Old Glory?!" Upon reading the article it turned into a, "Well of course, DUH!" moment. 



The kids saw the headline on my screen, but I didn't let them read the story. Instead I asked them if they took their shirts off and went outside and hung them on a stick and left them there, if they returned 40+ years later, do they think their shirts would look just the same? 


CJ immediately said "yes" but I asked him, "Really? With the sun and other elements on them for FORTY YEARS?" At that they both answered, "No," and that's what happened to the moon flags, too. While the moon might not have snow, sleet, hail, tsunamis and such, it certainly does have sunlight and its UV rays to contend with. And those flags weren't exactly made with space age textile technology! Rather, they were normal nylon, made in New Jersey, and cost $5.50 in Apollo days. Moon weather - an interesting topic to think about, eh?