Out to Pasture

IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/Bill Ingalls

ROLLING, ROLLING, ROLLING: Our breakfast 'entertainment' this morning was watching orbiter Atlantis rolling down Cape Canaveral roads toward its final resting place, a display at Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex.

The slow, final parade was both cool and awful to watch. Sure, it was great seeing the shuttle in motion, and appreciating its place in history. But it was also like watching an eagle with clipped wings plodding along. :( This particular 'bird' has soared 125,935,769 miles during 33 spaceflights. It made 12 trips to the ISS and back, and was the very last shuttle flown, landing on July 21, 2011. 

It's the shuttle we saw in person, with our very own eyes, leave the planet for STS-132. And now, it's a museum piece.

Of course, NASA big wigs, including administrator Charles Bolden, tried to remind us that it's not the end. This is a transition, and that back in the day shuttle was the new thing, after the Apollo program was retired. (Of course, I don't find it all that reassuring. In the '60s and '70s we put men on the moon, in the '80s and '90s we were flying astronauts to low Earth orbit, and now, we can't fly any astronauts anywhere. But I digress. ...)

Anyway, we watched Atlantis be put out to pasture this morning. Sigh.

BEFORE AND AFTER: Jaw dropping post-Sandy images continue to flood the media. Today, I found an interactive image from NOAA/AP using Google Earth with a slider on it that shows pre-and post-storm along the Jersey Shore. Just use the orange slider in the center of the image here: http://seattletimes.com/html/picturethis/2019591918_before-and-after-images-of-sandy.html

LAZY DOG: Kirby has taken up residence in the laundry basket at the foot of my bed. I hate to break it to her that it's not a permanent fixture. 

I must say, it looks exceedingly comfy. I wish it were large enough to accommodate me. 

RAINBOW CONNECTION: Thursday, when we came out of yoga and were walking back to our car at the library, a double rainbow arced over the building. Pretty, even via my crappy cell phone camera.

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS: We'll be celebrating Diwali for the first time tomorrow night. I know, we're a bit late to the party, as it's a centuries-old celebration.

Today we learned that Diwali is a five-day festival celebrated between mid-October and mid-November, and that it commemorates the return of Lord Rama from his 14-year exile and defeating the demon king Ravana. 

Our participation in Diwali will come in the form of Annabelle dancing with her Bollywood troupe at a Diwali celebration at the NewHolly Gathering Hall in southeast Seattle. It ought to be interesting and I hope to get some decent photos. 

November Dawns

MARK IT: November is upon us and that means it's time to vote! 

Christian and I are on permanent absentee ballots, so we voted at home. Because we had our ballots here, the kids were able to participate. They read the ballots, and we talked about some of the candidates and races, and we even let them each fill in one little bubble (per our direction, of course).  

I will be glad when the election is over. I am sooooooo siiiiiiiiiick of all the ads.

LEFTOVERS: Some Halloween leftovers that didn't make the cut yesterday. Here's CJ demonstrating the "Gangnam Style" dance for his science class.

  

And here are the kids slogging home through some puddles, post trick-or-treating in Magnolia's business district.

TALES OF TERROR: I asked the kids today to write stories about a Halloween gone terribly wrong. Here's what they came up with. CJ's is first. There was a boy named Tyler. One Halloween, just like the one yesterday, Tyler went trick-or-treating. That faithful day, he came across a zombie. He asked the zombie to give him a trick or a treat, but he said to Tyler: "I am not a candy giver. You should see my proof that I am NOT in a costume." Just then, the zombie pulled his brain out. Tyler shrieked with fear as he dialed his parents and 911. 911 responded to Tyler with this: "Really? Do you think tha-" It stopped when they heard the zombie yelling "Brains, BRAINS!" and straight after that, a police truck arrived to the place where it was happening. A few seconds later, the KIRO 7 news truck, the army, and Tyler's parents arrived to the scene. The zombie was brutally shot with a AA-12, a  AK-47, and a X1 calibur. The zombie was killed, and Tyler went home safe that night. During the KIRO 7 new broadcast that night, it was mainly focused on the zombie sighting.

And up next, Annabelle's. ...

One Halloween night, one just like the last... Emily, Stan, and Carlos went trick-or-treating. They were going around with Emily as a cat, Stan as a dog and... a Carlos-mummy."Sure is a rainy day!" said Emily."Sure is!"  replied Stan.The kids then came upon a big, spooky mansion... *while giving a nudge to Stan* "Hey, I dare you to go in, you two scaredy-cats! Especially you, Emily. Since you're a cat." said Carlos; Carlos always teased the two.Emily replied: "Are you sure? it sure looks *gulp* spooky.""It does look spooky," added Stan. Carlos pushed them both forward towards the gate."I double-dare you if you're THAT scared!" said Carlos, unlocking the spooky black fence gate, which was covered in cobwebs. Emily and Stan seemed to be drawn to the mansion in a  most particular way, and when they reached the stairs, their legs stepped up by themselves, Carlos-mummy back by the gate chuckling as if they were pretending they were being drawn inside... but they weren't!The door swung open by itself and the kids were marched in by ... themselves! Once they were inside, the door swooped shut and locked itself! Just as Emily turned turned around to unlock it and run out of the mansion... the lock disappeared! A note appeared in place of it reading this: To make your way to safety, you must find the ghost-key!Then, the couch (which was a spooky white) started to float and took shape of a big ghost! The kids could see there was a black key shaped like a ghost inside the ghost (for the ghost was transparent, like all ghosts) and hopped on a white chair trying to reach the ghost ... but the chair turned into a ghost too and made the kids fall! Then a pillow turned in to a tiny ghost, and it seemed to have some gloves inside it - a pair for each of them! They both grabbed a pair (since the ghost was flying low) and put them on. They touched the ghost again and to their surprise... their hand didn't go through! Emily took Stan's gloves in her pocket so she could pull down the biggest ghost while Stan reached through and grabbed the key. When Stan got the key out, the lock appeared on the door again - and the note was gone! Stan used the key in the lock and... it worked! They walked out of the mansion, calm, with Carlos standing outside, a look of glee on his face when he saw them."I was so worried! How did you get out?" said Carlos with a squeal of joy. "We found.... erm... a ghost key" replied Stan, holding the key in his outstretched hand. Once Carlos saw the key for about 10 seconds, it disappeared, and inside the mansion, all was back to normal.... at least they thought.  THE END

MIRROR, MIRROR: With all the Halloween hubbub, I neglected to report on yesterday's science class doings. The kids are continuing to experiment with mirrors. Yesterday they worked in pairs and sat across the table from each other, with a big black book separating them, so they couldn't see each other - until they were given four mirrors and were instructed to use them to check each other out. They came up with some interesting combinations.

Afterward, they built periscopes and then went and spied on people in the library. :) Can you spy the spies?

BE PREPARED: With all the Sandy coverage, we've been talking more about natural disasters the last couple of days. Today, I busted out a couple of booklets the kids received at the Wreck-It Ralph preview from a Radio Disney/Red Cross street team. Called "Ready Freddie!" the 11-page booklet was developed by emergency preparedness public educators in King County, Washington representing several agencies. You can view it (or download it) as a PDF here: http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/preparedness/~/media/health/publichealth/documents/disaster/ReadyFreddie.ashx

At one point this morning CJ asked me if we were going to have a disaster. (Apparently all this preparedness talk has made him understandably wary.) I told him I am not personally privy to such knowledge  and that many disasters come with little to no warning, so all you can do is learn how to try to ride one out and to try to be prepared for the aftermath.

We talked about post-disaster supplies and plans our family has and reviewed what to do in an earthquake or tornado.  

BEARY ENDANGERED: Yesterday I picked up a couple of "Time for Kids" mini magazines at the kids' Shoreline school. The cover story is "Saving Polar Bears." I had the kids read the story and then they completed a couple of worksheets about bears. One of them was all about how zoos take care of Polar bears, and the 'bonus' question was sketching a design for a polar bear exhibit. I was impressed with the thought they each put into it, incorporating guidelines from the article (at least 9 feet of water, 5,400 square feet of space for one or two bears, and so on). Annabelle even drew a "Cloud Maker 3000" in her bears' exhibit. She said it takes the moisture from outside and makes into clouds to help keep the bears cool. 

WELCOME TO MY WORLD: Another great composite image of MSL today. This one a high resolution version from the NASA peeps. 

                            Image credit; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems
It's the port side of Curiosity at "Rocknest," the site where it took its first scoop of Martian soil. 

In the background (right) you can see Mount Sharp rising. In the distance on the left is the northern wall of Gale Crater.

The photos used to make this composite were taken with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).

Trick or Treat

CANDY-GRABBERS: "It's Halloweeeeeeeeen!" 

Those were the first words out of Annabelle's mouth this morning at around 8. By then, I'd been up a couple of hours, working on pony ears, boot covers, and re-positioning a pink tail. 

Just a couple of days ago Pinkie Pie was nothing but large swaths of pink fleece. 

Fortunately, it all came together in time for school today.

CJ's costume was actually more of a pain than the pink pony. which I wouldn't have guessed at the start.

On the way to school we stopped at the grocery store to get the right gel for CJ's hair. He caused a minor scene there. Every aisle we went in, we could hear people whisper, "Gangnam Style!" 

When we got to the checkout line, a 20-ish woman asked CJ, "Can you do the dance?"

Without hesitation, he busted it out right there in the lobby, in front of everyone. (Fortunately, I had the song cued up on my cell phone.) Go CJ!

At school, only a couple of his peers knew who he was supposed to be. And out on the streets of Magnolia tonight, where we trick or treated the business district from 4 to 5 p.m., I'd guess about 1 in 10 people were Gangnam Style savvy. A lot of people thought he was Elvis. Or Roy Orbison, LOL.

Annabelle was pretty widely recognized, at least as a pony, if not Pinkie Pie specifically.

We were rained on a little bit today, but it wasn't cold or windy, so we really can't complain.  And I was happy to hear the kids 

OUT OF THIS WORLD SELF PORTRAIT: This photo has the folks at Wired magazine gushing, which called it "an adorable self portrait." It's actually a composite of 55 photos MSL took using its MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera, on the end of an outstretched arm.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Stuart Atkinson

The composite was pieced together by amateur astronomer and science writer Stuart Atkinson from raw images Curiosity phoned home on Halloween. 

Atkinson's composite serves as an excellent reminder that you don't have to wait for the news to decide when and which photos you get to see from MSL. Just go to Jet Propulsion Lab's page and there they ALL are, every single RAW image, fresh from Mars. 

Link here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=84

BATTY:  I figured we should do something other than costuming and candy eating at home today. Something, dare I say, EDUCATIONAL. 

So, I did I quick Google for "video bats educational" and it led me to a new-to-us Web site that might prove to be a great resource for future use. Called "WatchKnowLearn - Free Educational Videos for K-12 students."

There, I found a neat-o 3-minute long National Geographic video called "Wild Detectives - Bats by Night." 


Back to WatchKnowLearn. Their "About" page tells me there are over 33,000 "kid safe" videos on their site, sorted into categories using a wiki framework and philosophy. WatchKnowLearn is a program of a non-profit, Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi. Interesting, and definitely a site we'll keep in heavy rotation.  

Helloween

Image: David Shankbone via Wikipedia

THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE: First thing this a.m. we fired up the TV and checked out coverage from the Northeast in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. 

Obviously, everyone who has seen any Internet or television knows, it's not pretty. Terrible flooding, mass power outages, and the death toll keeps rising. 

EarthSky had a collection of some of the 'best' (worst, really) photos and videos of Sandy's destruction I've seen to date: 
http://earthsky.org/earth/pictures-and-video-aftermath-from-hurricane-sandy

Because of Sandy, we've had the TV on a LOT more yesterday and today than we usually do. As a result, I heard this observation from Annabelle late this afternoon: ate this afternoon: "There are a lot of AARP ads."

She's right. There's also a boatload of prescription meds and medical supplies ads, too. 

HAWAIIAN STYLE: Good ol' Curiosity keeps plugging along on the Martian surface. Recently, the rover fired up its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) to process the soil it scooped up on Oct. 15. According to a NASA press release, CheMin uses X-ray diffraction to analyze the soil. The method reads the minerals' internal structure by recording how crystals distinctively interact with X-rays.

The graphic below (courtesy NASA-JPL) shows results of the analysis. Per NASA, it reveals "the presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous (non-crystalline) material). 

What did MSL find? It concluded that the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii. 

MSL being able to ID minerals in rocks and soil is important to the mission's goal of assessing past environmental conditions on the Red Planet. 

JUST PUT YOUR LIPS TOGETHER: Just before bedtime, Christian and Annabelle were both whistling away. CJ bemoaned the fact that he can't whistle.

Christian assured him he could learn. Without a beat, CJ replied, "I'm already 9. Your brain doesn't soak up much more after you're 9."   LOL!

We did a little coaching and I confessed to CJ that I can't whistle the "right" way - by blowing out. I can only whistle by inhaling. 

STITCH IN TIME: Today was our fourth trip to the fabric store in as many days. The fabric store in the days leading up to Halloween is akin to Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Not somewhere you want to be. (Actually, I don't ever really want to be at Wal-Mart). And the 'fun' for us is compounded by the fact that "our" fabric store is the only one in about a 10-mile radius in a big city, so it's a little extra BUSY. 

Today's crisis is we still couldn't find a black bow tie in this big city, so I had to make one. But now that's done. And CJ's blazer is done. I fixed his shirt (a woman's v-neck blouse transformed into a button down tuxedo type shirt), and we found sunglasses for him today. (Do you know how hard it is to find sunglasses in Seattle in late October?)

Annabelle's My Little Pony jumpsuit is done, too. Cutie marks applied, tail sewed on, she's good to go. 

Note to self and kids: Next year CeeJ and Bee are going to have to give me more than 4-5 days' notice regarding costumes if they want custom jobs. 

Sandy Strikes Land

Image: Cooperative Institute for Meterological Satellite Studies

OH, SANDY!: Today the news was nothing but Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. And with good reason. She's one mother of a storm. Look at the size of her/it. It looks like it's going to swallow 2/3 of the Eastern Seaboard.

Tonight as I type this, reports of flooding, wind damage and loss of life are rolling in, and at least 3.6 million people are without power. When tomorrow dawns, I'm sure the photos and video of the aftermath are going to be shocking.

I had a feeling the featured movie on BrainPOP would be hurricanes, and I was right. I had the kids watch it today and we talked about hurricanes and how dangerous they can be. We also talked about how we are fortunate to have the technology that gives people warnings about approaching hurricanes, which helps boost preparedness and can help minimize loss of life.

GETTING CENTERED: We spent most of the weekend at home, working on the remodel/addition and/or Halloween costumes. This afternoon we decided to get the heck out of here and headed for Pacific Science Center.

We haven't been to PSC for a month or two, which is a long stretch for us. Turns out this isn't the best time to visit. They're in the middle of some renovations of their own, and a large chunk of their main display building is closed. You can't even walk from one side of the center to the other, you have to exit the building, cross the courtyard, and re-enter. I'm sure it will be wonderful when the exhibit opens, but in the meantime, I feel especially bad for out-of-towners or first time visitors who don't know that this isn't normal.

We started out in the dinosaur exhibit, which is enticing from a distance. It's when you get close and take a good look at the dinos or try to use one of the interactive dino displays that it disappoints. Many things don't work, and the dinos definitely look like they're on their way to being extinct.

For instance, you can't tell in the shot above, but the long-necked dino in this photo has gaping holes on the underside of his neck, likely from the strain of the animation.

After the Land of the Lost, we walked over to the Gemini capsule

PSC's globe was featuring live-time weather satellite maps, no doubt because of Sandy's antics. In just a few short seconds, we were able to watch the storm taking shape and barreling down on the Northeast seaboard.

The kids took a spin on the bikes which demonstrate how many calories you're burning. CJ was proud that he spiked it.

In the lobby of the IMAX movie theater, CJ tickled the ivories.

I'm pretty sure he was playing "Three Blind Mice."  While he was making music, I was enjoying this view. ...

TAKING WING: Our main draw to the science center today was the movie "Flight of the Butterflies." It's the story of Dr. Fred Urquhart, a scientist who spent 40 years watching and wondering about monarch butterflies and their migration patterns.

Born in 1911, Urquhart was obsessed with monarch butterflies since his youth in Canada. He grew up to be a zoologist/biologist, as well as a teacher and university professor. After lots of trial and error, Urquhart found a way to tag butterflies, and he and his wife Norah founded the Insect Migration Association. They enlisted thousands of "citizen scientist" volunteers across North America. Through that network, in 1975, Urquhart learned that the remote Transvolcanic Belt of central Mexico is where the millions of monarchs migrated to each year.

Urquhart was able to travel to the remote monarch-filled mountains before he died in 2003, at the age of 90.

The award-winning film did a wonderful job of sharing Urquhart's compelling story, while teaching us all about the beautiful butterflies' life cycles. It was visually stunning and the 3D was amazing. If you get a chance to see it, do!

The movie's Web site has some educational tie-ins we'll be checking out tomorrow. 

DRAGON HOME:  Sunday morning we watched SpaceX's Dragon capsule undock from the International Space Station. Here's a nice, short video of the maneuver.

Just a few hours later, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean (at 12:22 our time), a few hundred miles off of Baja California, Mexico.

The splashdown was successful. Here's Dragon bobbin' in the deep blue sea.

Image: NASA via SpaceX

The capsule, here on the back of a boat, was recovered intact, which is good, considering it was carrying more than 1,600 pounds of cargo and research back from the ISS.

 Image Credit: NASA via SpaceX