Doors and Dolls

HAPPY HOBBIT DAY: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle ... " 

And so begins one of the Best Books Ever - The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. A couple of days ago we received an email letting us know there would be a Second Breakfast celebration at the community center where the kids take classes on Friday. The party was to make note of the fact that today marks the 75th anniversary of the first publishing of The Hobbit. For me, that meant it was time to make some Hobbit-themed cookies to go with the tea they'd be serving. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, all I had to do was type "Hobbit cookies" into a Google search engine, and I found a link to a charming idea. What better to make than a round cookie that looked like the distinctive door to hobbit holes? I modified the design I found there a bit, using fondant to make the doorknobs and adding hinges. I used gingerbread, because I thought the color would be right and wanted earthy flavors, like ginger and cinnamon. 

USA Today had a story about the anniversary, reporting that Tolkien was a British professor, and that he wrote the book for his four children. In its first printing in 1937, 1,500 copies were printed. Fast forward 75 years, and the book has been translated into more than 50 languages and has sold over 100 million copies.  The kids have not read The Hobbit yet. That's a wrong we have to right soon! 

HELLO, DOLLY:  Between their morning (Bollywood, programming) and afternoon (acting) classes today. we spent about an hour wandering the aisles of West Seattle's Target store. There were lots of fun Halloween decorations to ogle, but the real scary stuff was in the doll aisle. Such as ... this!

CJ couldn't quit staring at the Dating Fun Ken doll, complete with three different looks, depending on the date he was going on. For the first date it was a conservative plaid shirt and brown hair. For a beach date, there was blond Bieber hair, and a tight Malibu t-shirt. For the concert, Ken gets Krazy and wears a tank top and shocking pink hair. With each outfit, he's wearing "skinny jeans" (which Barbie couldn't even fit into).

As if that wasn't bad enough, the real horror awaited just one aisle over.

Don't let her shirt fool you. She is NOT cute.

And let me just add, I don't think it was winking at us. If I'm not mistaken, that's the soulless stare of a zombie baby that comes to life after the kiddies go to bed. Shudder, shudder.

TOUCHDOWN: Endeavour, atop a 747, departed Edwards Air Force Base at 8:17. 

(If you missed the takeoff and you're interested, there's video HERE.) The mated vehicles then took a 4.5 hour flyover of northern California and the Los Angeles basin. Here's a great shot of it being ferried over the Golden Gate Bridge from NASA Dryden photographer Carla Thomas. 

This afternoon, it touched down at Los Angeles International Airport, not far from its final destination, California Science center's Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE: CJ completed another project in Scratch today. Though you can't tell from this static screen shot, the mini program he made today was interactive, with his "sprite" (character) asking viewers a question.

I have to admit, the cartoon was a bit hard for me to read, as most all of it is done in L33T

If you have JAVA, you can click on the green flag and the animation will start. The sprite will say a series of things and when he's done talking he'll ask you a question, which you can answer by typing in the box at the bottom of the window.  Good luck.

Learn more about this project

Thursday Recap

THE LONG GOOD-BYE: Endeavour continued her final flight today, leaving Texas this morning and taking a scenic route toward California, to allow more people to see the shuttle aloft one final time. It flew over Arizona, so that astronaut Mark Kelly (the commander of Endeavour's last mission) and his wife Gabby Giffords could bid it adieu. This afternoon it touched down at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a low-level flyby of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

MUSEUM FREEBIES: I've been meaning to tell you for days now, Sept. 29 is National Free Museum Day, thanks to a promo by the Smithsonian. So, it's time to get your tickets now for NEXT Saturday's freebie now. Go to this Web site: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/ticket/ and you can browse the list of participating museums by state. There are so many to choose from, all free Free FREE!

After you make your selection, you will be able to print out a ticket that's good for two admissions to the place you chose. Love it!

CREATIVE WRITING: We turned to Scholastic's Story Starter tool as fodder for the kids' writing exercises today.

Since we've last used it, Scholastic has updated the gizmo that generates story starting ideas with the virtual pull of a lever. Now, there is the option to choose a genre before starting the story idea machine.

Annabelle immediately chose sci-fi. CJ chose the "scrambled" category, which is random.

Annabelle was instructed to write a story about a mind reading space pirate who can predict the future. Here's what she did with that. ...

There once was a space pirate and he liked space treasure. This space pirate was very mean and nasty and wanted all the treasure in the universe he could get his hands on. one day he came  to Earth, and seeing all the money and minerals there, he got as greedy as can be! He went around grabbing money from wallets, stealing tips from people at stores and restaurants,and anything else he could do to get his hands on money.

This pirate gt every single bit of money he saw, then went back into space. When he hit the earth's atmosphere though, all the money spilled out! the pirate grumbled and started to predict the future (which he always does) and he saw he would go back to Earth. And he did. the pirate, when he got back to Earth, the pirate read a guy's mind (he does that too) and avoided him, getting money and minerals. once the pirate left Earth, he was very happy with all the money he gathered.

CJ's prompt instructed him to write about a brainy lawyer who was shipwrecked on an island. Here's what he came up with.

Just a few days ago, a criminal suit happened and it was filed against a pirate who murdered a innocent man. The lawyer the pirate hired was smart, and the pirate choose J. Williams to defend the pirate. After a few hours in the trial, the lawyer had a 1-week recess to find evidence that the pirate was innocent, so the lawyer sailed on a ship. After 5 days, the lawyer got the ship wrecked on a island. The ship was sinking, so the lawyer got on the island. The next day, the lawyer was attacked by Jaws, a great white. The lawyer was nearly killed by Jaws, so he tried to build a fire, but he got lit on fire by the shark. The next day, the lawyer realized that he needed to report to the court, but he was already too late. A tree fell down and hit the lawyer, and it nearly killed the lawyer. He had no food, no water, and no will. Jaws strikes again, and he ate the lawyer. If you do not spread this news, the same thing will happen to you.

I suppose those who say lawyers are sharks would see some karma in CJ's story.

MOVIN' & GROOVIN': For fun and exercise, we did a half hour plus of Just Dance 2 for Wii this morning, and this afternoon, the kids spent over an hour outside, enjoying the September sunshine. They rode their scooters in the alley for a spell and then played soccer in the yard.

This afternoon they also went to their yoga class in Ballard. That's always time well spent.

COOKIE-ING UP A STORM: Today we were in production mode, making some cookies for a celebration tomorrow. Stay tuned ...

Shuttles and Scoundrels

AVAST ME HEARTIES!: Happy "Talk like a Pirate Day" t' all o' you! In the cropped photo above, a very young Annabelle was wearing nothing but a diaper and a pirate hat about 7 years ago. Time flies.

A few days ago, CJ was asking if pirates are real. Christian and I told him they are real and there are pirates to this day. In fact, it was just a little over a year ago that a couple from the Seattle area and two other people were  killed by Somali pirates 

This afternoon in the car CJ asked if all pirates are bad. I thought about it and I told him I think the answer is yes. A pirate is a thief (or worse) on water. When we got home we watched the BrainPOP movie about pirates and the cartoon did a nice job of revealing them as real life scoundrels.

PIGGYBACK RIDE: Bright and early, we watched coverage of space shuttle Endeavour's final flight. It left Kennedy Space Center this morning, but she wasn't launched into low Earth orbit, per usual. Rather, this was her trip to the retirement ranch, final stop, Los Angeles, for display at the California Science Center. 

In its heyday, from STS-49 in May of 1992 utnil May of of 2011, Endeavour flew 25 missions totalling 122,883,151 miles and 299 days in orbit. Endeavour was the youngest shuttle, the last to enter the fleet. During its first mission its crew rescued an Intelsat satellite, and on its final mission, Endeavor delivered a key component to the International Space Station.

photo credit: NASA, of course

I have to admit, it made me a bit depressed to see the storied shuttle having to hitch a ride on a 747. Sigh. The shuttle era is officially over. 

LEAFY GREENS: In science class this afternoon, the kids had a fun and educational time doing crayon rubbings on different types of leaves. Their rubbings revealed interesting patterns that couldn't be seen by the naked eye. 

The rubbings were really pretty, too. Turned out to be both an art and science project!

From their rubbings, the kids learned that the leaves all have systems of veins in them, just like in our bodies. In both plants and animals, these veins deliver water and nutrients.

Obviously, there were different shapes of leaves, and each type had different vein systems.
Palmate leaves look like a hand or a fan. They have veins radiating out from the base, and radiate toward the edge of the leaf. Maple leaves (both big maple and Japanese maple) are examples.  

Pinnate leaves are feather shaped or multi-divided, arising from both sides of a common axis. Ferns, or palm trees or the English laurels (invasives, which we have ALL over our neighborhood) have pinnate leaves.

Reed/grassy/flat type leaves, with veins that run parallel, like train tracks to one another, are paralleled leaves. These are in grassy/reedy plants, and the tropicals we have up top in our yard. I think we'll be doing some more leaf rubbings outside of class. Very cool.

THE RESULTS ARE IN: Last week, CJ and Annabelle took the "Diagnostic Online Math Assessment (DOMA)" test as a prereq to a weekly math class they'll be taking. Today, on the first day of said class, they got their results. I was happy to learn that the kids are definitely on track when it comes to math. Bee had the 'max score" (grade 6) for number skills, and she was just under third grade for fractions (something we'll work on). She was over the max score (um, how is that possible?) for measurement math questions. 

CJ was just under max score for number skills, he was at max score for fractions (grade 6) and he was just a bit above grade average for measurements.

All in all, it's nice to know I haven't completely academically ruined them so far via our unconditional approach.

Tomato Tuesday

SEEING RED: This afternoon we headed to the sunniest spot in the lot, where our garden plot is. I figured there would be a few tomatoes ready for harvest, but I didn't expect to find a couple dozen plus that needed to be picked. Yikes!  (We also didn't expect to find a couple with noses. Double yikes!)

And so we picked and plucked and with our pile we made taco salad with pico de gallo for dinner. Rick and Ken came over and helped us make it disappear, and we sent them home with tomatoes, too.

HOUSTON, WE'VE HAD A PROBLEM: Last night the Mariners were stinking it up horribly by the second inning, so we looked for alternative programming. I saw that "Apollo 13" was starting on AMC at 8 p.m. And so, we sat down and watched every minute of it together - all three hours (counting commercials).

The Apollo 13 crew was mission commander James A. Lovell (played by Tom Hanks in the film), command module pilot John L. Swigert (a playboy played by Kevin Bacon) and lunar module pilot Fred W. Haise Jr.(Bill Paxton). It's the mission that made Flight Director Gene Kranz's quote "Failure is not an option" famous. 

Below, an archival photo from NASA shows Kranz (in the foreground, with his back to the camera) watching pilot Haise on a screen in Mission Control, Houston (upper right hand corner). Just moments after the transmission ended on the evening of April 13, 1970, a devastating explosion happened on board, when Swigert flipped a switch to stir fuel tank No. 2 in the service module. 

Shortly after the transmission, an explosion occurred that immediately ended any hope of a lunar landing and soon jeopardized the lives of the crew.

The NASA photo above shows a view of the severely damaged Apollo 13 service module in the distance. It was photographed from the lunar module after it was jettisoned. The command module, still docked with the Lunar Module, is in the foreground. 

During the explosion, an entire panel on the service module was blown away. It's amazing the astronauts weren't dead within minutes, really. After the explosion the crew had to use the lunar module as a lifeboat. They lived in it for three days, until they moved to the command module, just prior to Earth re-entry. 

CJ, especially, was rapt for the entire movie. When the explosion happened on board the command module he practically screamed, "See! See! This is why I don't want to be an astronaut! I only want to work in Mission Control!"

I asked the kids not to write a review of the movie, but to write about lessons they learned from what happened to Apollo 13. Here's what they came up with. 

CJ's reflections: 

One lesson I learned from Apollo 13 is that you might want to think twice about going to space, because it can end up with you getting in a explosion and having frozen hot dogs to eat in space. Another thing I learned is that one minor problem (Engine 5 turning off) can turn in to a race for your lives. (losing oxygen) Another thing I learned is to not give up in a situation: even though something might look like no help at all, (duct tape and cardboard) it can save your life. (a filter made up in the capsule) Another thing I learned is that you might think something is a big opportunity, (getting to be the first person on the moon) don't get your hopes to up if you can't get there.

Editor's note on CJ's - in one scene in the movie Tom Hanks ate a frozen hot dog. Because the crew had to save energy, they turned off every powered system they could, including the heat. It was only about 32 F in the cabin.

And now, Annabelle's reflection. ... 

Lessons I learned while watching the movie Apollo 13:
If you don't bring cardboard, plastic, and duct tape on a mission, you might die!
When in an emergency, keep calm. If you panic, you might die.
Always be checking the emergency equipment to see if it works, or something is wrong!
Don't have enough fuel to go to the moon(or wherever you're going)? Abort! Just start to head home, of course, and conserve energy on the way back to save it for re-entry!
Make sure all is well even before the launch, because if a engine is broken, you can't get to the moon (or wherever you're going)!

Annabelle's list reminded me of this graphic I saw on the Pacific Science Center's Facebook page the other day. Love it.

BTW, if you're interested in more detail about *why* the tank exploded when stirred check out this NASA report: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-13/apollo-13.html. I especially liked one line I read in the report. Apollo 13 is "classified as 'successful failure' because of the experience in rescuing crew. 

LET JIMI TAKE OVER: Today we had to stop and think about Seattle son Jimi Hendrix. On this day, 42 years ago, Hendrix died of a drug overdose, at age 27. (In doing so, he became a member of the Forever 27 club, which includes Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin.) 

We listened to Hendrix's wild and wonderful Star Spangled Banner solo from Woodstock. 

Afterward I cued up some "Purple Haze" and "Wind Cries Mary," as well.

Gone but not forgotten. Rock on, Jimi.

Ticket to Ride

DO THE PUYALLUP: Today was one we'd been looking forward to for weeks - our annual trip about an hour south to the Puyallup Fair.

The weather was lovely - clear blue skies and nearly 80 degrees. We got there about 11, right when the midway was opening. After standing in a way too-long-and-slow line to buy all-access-to-ride wristbands, we hit it hard for the next four hours.

We started with a classic: The Scrambler.

We soon made our way to the big slides.

 

There were roller coasters to be ridden. First, the screaming steel Wildcat. ... (CJ and Annabelle are in the back of the car with the flame job.)

And next up we had to check out the just-opened, recently-refurbished wooden track roller coaster. 

You can see CJ above in a bright yellow t-shirt and Christian solo in the car behind him. Annabelle's mostly obscured by the people in front of her.

It was a long line for the wooden coaster, but the kids and Christian said it was worth it. Christian said he was actually lifted up out of his seat a couple times by it.

Originally constructed in in 1935, the coaster is coming off a a three-year, $1 million reconstruction project.

Until we rode the sky tram, I didn't realize just how big that wooden roller coaster was. You can see it in the distance in this shot.

There was also a fair amount of circling 'round high overhead today.

The Vertigo was lovely to look at. They were soaring so high up in the air!

See the kids? They are at 8 o'clock with Christian at 8:30-ish. 

 

There was a fun hang-glider type ride, too. Christian thought he was Superman.

 

 

As the kids get older, each year they've become more interested in the thrill rides. CJ is an absolute animal. He insisted on going on the Zipper, as well as the Skydiver (steel cages, spinning and twirling).

In the photo above, CJ and Christian are in the topmost car. Below, they're completing an orbit. 

 

After the Skydiver, we boarded the nearby Sky Ride. It's an overhead tram on a cable that takes you from one end of the fairground to the other. Before we boarded, we learned that the Sky Ride debuted in the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle!

 Here, Annabelle enjoys the scenery. The fair actually looked even bigger from our overhead vantage point.

At the south end of the fairgrounds, where we were exiting, were the extreme attractions. Throughout the day, CJ had been mentioning going on the Slingshot - where a pair of riders are strapped into seats which are attached to steel cables under high tension., Hydraulics are used to stretch the springs and then BOOM! They're shot up into the sky. The sign at the ride said it was 5 Gs (Christian is skeptical of that claim) and that riders go 100 MPH (he thinks that may be true). It was fun to watch. (Here's a random video of someone else doing it on YouTube). Below are pics of CeeJ and Christian's wild ride, but it's hard to capture the size and scope of it in still shots.

 

 

CJ thought it was GREAT fun.

Our last stop was an attraction where Annabelle could walk (and roll and crawl) on water. Miraculous! ;)

True confession time. ... OK, so you notice there are no photos of the educational exhibits, or the arts and crafts and agricultural and livestock thingees. Yeah, um, well, that's because all we did for 4+ hours was the midway. This makes me feel like a huge loser, but after 4 hours of lines and heat and lines and heat, we were ready for lunch/dinner and since we really try to avoid fair food (deep fried butter, anyone!?), we decided it was time to go. Next year, we're doing the quilt show first, I tell you!

THIS, NOT THAT: Since Friday, CJ has been waging a campaign to go see "Finding Nemo 3D."  I told him we'll get to it, but it's apparently not going to be fast enough for him. Saturday afternoon he was hardcore asking to see it that night.

I finally stopped my mudding and taping (yes, the addition continues) and hopped on the computer to see screening times. I checked the Pacific Science Center's IMAX schedule first, as I always do because a) it's super close to our home and b) I'd rather the science center get our $ than some huge movie chain.

I quickly discerned that Finding Nemo was not showing but wait ... what's this?! A limited engagement, ends-this-weekend showing of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?! ZOMG?! Are you kidding me?

"You're going to THIS tonight," I informed the kids and Christian, quickly scooping up tickets.

And so I delivered them curbside for the flick, and picked them up afterwards. They reported that it was a full house, every seat filled front to back. The kids were absolutely electrified after the film, raving about how great it was. I'm SO glad they got to see that epic adventure in a theater, where it should be seen.