Rings and Things

SWEET BLING: A couple of weeks ago I spied what looked to be a fun, easy Valentine-themed craft in "Family Fun" magazine. The only supplies needed were two pipe cleaners and a Hershey's Kiss to craft a sweet, showy "ring." Simple!

Unfortunately, the instructions (yes, even complete, with photos) in the magazine weren't that clear, but we managed to fumble our way through and came up with this ...

and these ...

MINDS ON MARS: Just after breakfast, I showed the kids a photo on my computer screen without telling them what they'd be looking at. I had them guess what it was. Annabelle guessed it was a close up of a cookie. CJ mulled it over a minute and then suggested, "Mars?"

IMAGE: NASA/JPL/Univ. of ARIZONA

Bingo!

The photo, on the Discovery News! Web site, is of barchan dunes, which are wind-driven piles of soil moving across the Martian landscape in the direction of their steepest slope. The photo was taken from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

In other news, we also watched a video about the potential use of "tumbleweed" rovers on Mars someday. Fascinating!

And today we took delivery of a stuffed "animal," er, planet. A soft and snuggable Mars! I challenged the kids to find Gale Crater on it, as that's where Curiosity will be landing come August. It took them a minute or two, but they did hunt it down.

TREASURE HUNTING: We went to the Goodwill in SoDo today. It's a big place and there's always lots to look at. Today, CJ seemed to have an eye for fine art. Like this ...

Oh, he so desperately wanted to buy it! He was sure it was some super valuable treasure - even after I showed him that under the $4.99 Goodwill price tag was atop a Ross Dress for Less price tag which also read $4.99.

A few aisles later, CJ spied this beauty and was again enchanted. You will be shocked to learn we also passed this gem up. Though CJ was bummed, he soothed himself by getting a players guide about the game Metroid.

SIDE TRIP: It was such a beautiful sunny day, on the way home from SoDo, I wanted to stop at a park. But not just any park. ... Ever since we moved to Seattle, I've been wanting to hunt down the curiously named Bhy Kracke park, on the southeast slope of Queen Anne hill. Just a couple of blocks from my paternal grandparents' former home, my sister and I used to visit it once in awhile when we'd be visiting Seattle.

Though we had not heard of crack in the '70s or early '80s, based on activity witnessed there in that time frame, I think it used to be "buy dope-y" park. But I digress.

Today, the park is and has a new looking play equipment that the kids enjoyed exploring, including a climbing wall they made short work of.

Annabelle talked CJ into going to the receiving end of the communication station and then took the opportunity to "Rick Roll" him. :) 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, words "by cracky" were used as a popular expression of surprise or delight at the end of the 19th century and Seattle resident Werner H. Kracke was known to say it all the time, according to the Seattle Parks and Recreation department. The words became Kracke's favorite expression of surprise or delight, to the point it became his nickname, though he spelled it "Bhy." Kracke lived for many years on the upper level of where the park.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: Today, the moon hung in the bright blue sky. It reminded me we had yet to viewing some groundbreaking video beamed back from "Ebb," one of GRAIL's twin spacecraft. Taken on Jan. 19, it shows the far side of the moon - the side we Earth-bound humans don't ever get to see.

Before cuing up the video, the kids and I talked about how and why we only see the moon's "face" - because the moon rotates around its own axis in the same length of time that it takes to orbit the Earth.
I found one kind of OK video on YouTube on the subject, but we liked the "Synchronous Rotation of the Moon" video better.

We got a bit hysterical trying to recreate the Sun, Earth and Moon in our living room. I had the easy job. I was the Sun. I just stood in one place. CJ was the Earth, which meant he had to orbit me AND spin rather rapidly while doing it. Annabelle was the Moon, which meant she had to try to slowly spin while orbiting CJ. I think we'd need a much bigger living room to properly execute the experiment.

We finally got around to watching the GRAIL video. Neat-o stuff. In the footage, per NASA's explanation, "the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.
The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact."

We watched it a couple of times. 

Show Time

EXPO DAY: Yesterday late afternoon, CJ said, "My brain hurts." I instantly thought 'headache' and wondered if he was coming down with something. Turns out he and Annabelle (who says her eyes hurt and her head feels fuzzy) both have a tiny little something. But since they're not feverish and/or runny, I took them to their music class this morning. "The show must go on," I reminded them. I figured they needed the practice, too, as they're performing with their class tonight at the school expo. We went home between music and LEGO class so they could rest up. While there, I put some finishing touches on several dozen Star Wars cookies, and we put the final pieces of the kids' poster together.

This evening we made our THIRD trip to Shoreline for the day. There, we checked out all of the other students' displays - everything from models of the solar system to sewing projects to LEGO robotics. Also on display was the group build project from the kids' LEGO class - the space shuttle on the launch pad. Very cool!

We had a bit to eat and then it was time for the live performances.
CJ and Annabelle and their music classmates performed a couple of numbers involving the xylophone. Here's a crappy, blurry, dark picture of that happening.

Afterward, we watched a series of performances, including piano, trumpet, upright bass, singing, a play (in Spanish) and more. A few videos were screened including an entertaining stop-motion animation short featuring LEGOs and one rather animae looking sci fi short that was technically impressive. CJ and Annabelle both had a great time this evening and can't wait until the next expo.

Every one of the 6-plus dozen Star Wars cookies disappeared. They were much appreciated, so that was nice.

SHARING: This afternoon via a comment on yesterday's blog post, we heard from author Jeanne Walker Harvey, who wrote "My Hands Sing the Blues," about African American artist Romare Bearden. She has started posting collages inspired by Bearden/the book on a blog: http://jeannewalkerharvey.blogspot.com/p/kids-artwork.html . Through the magic of the Internets, she came across our blog post in which I reported that the book prompted CJ and Annabelle to make collages (both of which are still hanging on our wall), and she wanted to know if she could share them in her blog. I told her "Of course!" of course.

OH AND ANOTHER THING: Day before yesterday, I received an email from the Director of Science Communications for Autism Speaks. They'd found a photo of CJ on my Morguefile.com account a few months back and used it for some publication. This time, their communications director was writing to see if they could use other photos of CeeJ for a brochure they're working on regarding science. I told them, "Of course!" of course. So, it's been a regular media blitz for us lately. ;)

SHADOWY FIGURE: First thing we did this a.m. was check the news to see what was up with Punxsutawney Phil. Turns out the groundhog saw his shadow, which supposedly means six more weeks of winter. Tell that to the flowering trees I saw today.

MEASURING UP: As always, science class was loads o' fun today. There were two (count 'em, two!) mini field trips during class. The first was to a courtyard off the lunchroom, where the kids' science teacher had installed a rain gauge. It was a shade of things to come.

One back in the classroom, the kids found out they each were going to build their own rain gauge. Yee-haw! We can hardly start to

The teacher had a prototype, which we took outside (marking the second field trip) and the kids took turnes being the rain. :)

We're looking forward to using the rain gauges at home. So much so, that when we heard there was a low chance of rain this entire weekend, we all were a tad disappointed, if you can believe that!

SOMBER ANNIVERSARY: This is a tough (to put it mildly) week for spaceflight fans. In a span of seven days, this is the 'season' when NASA lost the Apollo 1 astronauts, the Challenger crew and today, the fine folks on board Columbia.

Tonight, we watched a short and bittersweet video featuring several of Columbia's astronauts. CJ, Annabelle and I all cried while watching it. :/ It's so excellent to hear the excitement in the voices of the astronauts- particularly of Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli army, and  Kalpana Chawlam of India, representing their nations.

Damn, they were all so, SO close to coming home, mission complete. Little did they know, their fate was sealed when they left the launch pad and projectiles flew up damaging their heat shields.

Columbia was the very first oribter launched, STS-1, on Aprl 12, 1981, with just two astronauts aboard.  It was the first American manned space flight since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project on 15 July 1975.

What a contrast it is watching STS-1 as compared to reliving Columbia's tragic end.

Eyes on the Skies

WINDOW ON THE WORLD: We worked on some science stuff right out of the gate this morning. One of their assignments involved cutting out a picture frame, mounting it on a window and then classifying the types of clouds you see through it.

Today was a cloud bonanza. In the frame above, you see a cumulus cloud, but the sky also offered up cirrus and stratus clouds today. A nice variety.

The kids also did worksheets on reading a thermometer. I appreciated that they were on the Celsius scale, as we should have converted to that a loooooong time ago.

GROWING LIKE GANGBUSTERS: We checked on our Root-Vue today and wowie! They're growing like crazy. CJ and Annabelle will be crunching on carrots soon.

STICKY SITUATION: We continued to put together the kids' "Fun with Photoshop" display. Today's task: mounting each of the enlargements on a like sized piece of foam board - so they have a bit of 'pop' on the display.

Teaching the kids how to mount a photo using spray adhesive was tons of fun, let me tell you. Mercifully, we managed to get it done without completely ruining any of them.

WAITING ROOM: While CJ was in acting class, Annabelle and I had some fun and games. First, we played Yahtzee using a Super Mario themed set. I've never been much of a fan of that game - too much luck, not enough skill involved, IMHO. But it held Annabelle's interest - until some mental math on her part made her realize she wasn't going to win, and then she wanted to quit. About that time a boy from a school in the building came by with a teacher, who was trying to track down the kid's late parent via cell phone. So, the forgotten boy (a cute kid about CJ's age) happily played with Annabelle and our Yahtzee set. He'd never heard of the game before, so I explained some of the rules to him, but mostly he was drawn in by the Mario theme. I'm pretty sure the teacher was happy to have us help entertain the kid while the wayward parent was tracked down. A few minutes later, the dad arrived.

After Yahtzee, we played a game using our Scrabble SLAM! deck of cards. I have no idea what the official rules are - we just each held 7 cards in our hand at a time and took turns making four letter words, having to work with the word that was on the board.

While we were playing a teenaged girl came over and politely interrupted to ask the name of the game we were playing, saying,. "My mom homeschools my 7-year old sister, and I think she'd really like it," the young woman explained. I had to smile and share that we were doing some homeschooling that very minute. I gave her the game name and told her we'd made up our own rules, but that I thought it was still good spelling practice.

MATHS: CeeJ and Bee were introduced to a new challenge today - multiplying double digit numbers. Their eyes just about popped out of their heads initially. I quickly reassured them they could handle this. After all, these problems were just a single digit number times some multiple of 10, 100, or 1,000. I quickly demonstrated just how easy these types of problems are to solve and they got them all right.

Later in the day, we played around with a new math-focused Web site I discovered via a Tweet: Raytheon's Math Moves U.  According to the site's about us section, "Raytheon believes that tomorrow's engineers and technologists need to be excited by and interested in math today." The site is aimed at middle school students, but CJ and Annabelle, who are considerably younger, found it plenty engaging.

They each created profiles on the site, and explored the games section. They had to do some math that, intially, appeared well above their level, but I was able to show them that by breaking it down, it really was stuff they could handle. For instance, one problem involved the info that 720 sheep can be sheared in 9 hours, and they were supposed to provide a ratio in its simplest form expressing that fact. I showed them how to dial it down, first dividing 9 and 720 by 3, and then by further dividing them by 3 again, and they understood that the ratio is 80 sheep in 1 hour.

HATS OFF TO HAM: We can't let the day go by without mentioning super Astrochimp Ham. Today marks the anniversary of his successful spaceflight, in 1961. For his flight in a Mercury capsule atop a Redstone 2, Ham was secured in biopack couch.

His flight was suborbital, and his vital signs and tasks (yes, he had a 'to do' list) were constantly monitored. Ham had a harrowing experience, as his capsule partially lost pressure, but the spacesuit he was wearing saved his skin. 

Ham's heroic flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds. You can read more about it here:

Ham, Space Chimp

Go Go, Godzilla!

THE WORK CONTINUES: The kids are still piecing together their "Fun with Photoshop" display board for a school expo on Thursday night. Today's creation: Godzilla Attacks Seattle!  We took a photo of a 12" toy Godzilla they had, and CJ erased its background. He then moved it onto a cityscape photo I took from the Space Needle a couple years ago. Meanwhile, Annabelle scoured the Internet in search of the perfect photo of a shooting flame. She finally found it. CJ eliminated the background from it and Annabelle moved it over onto the composite of Godzilla and the city and made all the pieces fit. Fun stuff!

HILL HOPPING: Mid-morning we headed for Group Health, a couple of hilltops to the east of here. I had an eye appointment and I suggested Christian take the kids to get a flu shot next door at the same time.

Fortunately for the kids, they had an option of a nasal mist immunization. Apparently CJ politely ("no thank you') declined it when presented with the sprayer the first two times. When he was informed that his only other option was a date with a needle, he managed to accept the mist.

After I was done at the eye dr. (no change in prescription despite 3 years since my last visit - apparently my eyesight isn't fading as precipitiously as I thought it was), we all went to a super neat-o toy store just down the block. The Red Balloon has so many fun things for people of all ages. I could spend hours in there.

The kids love the place for the rainbow of M&M candies. They each got a small bag (four ounces) with several colors of their choice inside.

TENNIS ANYONE?: On Saturday, we wound up playing tennis in windy 40-something degree weather. Today was a tad bit nicer, and so we returned to the courts for another go round.

It was cool to see how much the kids' had retained from their Saturday experience. Today, they really hit the ground running, so to speak. Their strokes were smoother and way more of their balls wound up over the net.

Annabelle still misses a fair number of balls entirely. I would link this to two reasons: 1) She doesn't watch the ball all the way to her racquet and 2) She (almost) never stops talking.

I was surprised by the number of people who stopped to watch us 'play' tennis today. And, in case you are wondering, our 'game' of tennis consists of Christian alternately serving a ball to CJ or Annabelle, and them attempting to hit it back at him. My job is to be the golden retriever, running 'round the court shagging balls. One older couple with a baby in a stroller stood for a good 15 minutes and watched our antics. I know people couldn't have been watching because we were so good, so I can only presume they watched because we were so bad. Oh well, I'm happy we could provide some cheap entertainment. :)

After the tennis, we walked over to the playground where CJ and Annabelle got in a few good rides on the zipline.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS: We received news this weekend that we won a contest held by The Wing Dome - one of our favorite restaurants. During Snowmageddeon a couple weeks back, The Wing Dome challenged their Facebook fans to sculpt or create something out of snow that paid tribute to Wing Dome.

So, CJ, Annabelle and I toyed with a few ideas. I tried sculpting some over sized chicken wings out of snow, but quickly gave up. They looked like crap, and Wing Dome's wings are NOT crap. :) So, we went with a much easier approach. We filled squirt bottles with water, added some hardcore red and orange food coloring, shook 'em up and then I looked at The Wing Dome's logo on our 'frequent flier' card while I rather sloppily tried to reproduce it (that colored water came out too fast).

CHECK YOUR INBOX: Annabelle finally checked her email inbox for the first time in a couple of weeks today. There, she found a letter from Congressman Jim McDermott in response to her message to him urging him not to support SOPA and PIPA. Here's how McDermott responded:

Dear Annabelle:


Thank you for contacting me regarding your opposition to H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act. I appreciate your taking the time to write to me on this important issue, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

As you may know, H.R. 3261 would allow the Attorney General or an intellectual-property owner to take legal action against individuals associated with an internet site dedicated to infringing activities (ISDIA). An ISDIA is defined as a website having no significant purpose other than engaging in or facilitating copyright infringement. It would also facilitate legal proceedings taken by the Attorney General and the Department of Justice against foreign nationals that are associated with delinquent d omain names that harm American i nternet users.

I share your concerns about the potential impact this bill could have on free speech, innovation, and creativity. H.R. 3261 was introduced by Rep. Smith on October 26, 2011. Although something must be done about internet piracy, I do not support this legislation or any that will harm the internet, free speech or innovation. The i nternet is an extremely important engine for economic growth, innovation, and communication .

If you are interested in following a particular piece of legislation through the legislative process, the website hosted by the Library of Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov is extremely helpful. It provides a wealth of information about legislation under consideration in the current Congress as well as bills introduced in earlier sessions. The site is called Thomas to honor President Thomas Jefferson and his belief in public access to the workings of government.

Again, thank you for contacting me. I welcome your views, and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Sincerely,

Jim McDermott
Member of Congress

I would say the letter is quite clearly boilerplate (he probably had several hundreds of emails on the same topic), but fine by me. He responded, he explained his position, and it is well written.

GOING MAINSTREAM: Last night I received an email from Linda Perlstein. She's a writer who lives on Queen Anne hill who just finished a story for Newsweek about urban home schoolers. I'd chatted with Linda a few months back, sharing some resources and some of our experiences with homeschooling. Her story just published, and she gave a link.

It was nice to see a mainstream media story that doesn't paint home schooling parents as a bunch of religious zealots. You can read the story here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/29/why-urban-educated-parents-are-turning-to-diy-education.html