Eyes in the Skies

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: Little did we know, very recently we were featured in a super special photo opp. ...

Last night I was catching up on Twitter, and I saw the following Tweet from International Space Station commander Chris Hedfield. ...

Intrigued, I followed the link, expecting it to feature only the Market. Imagine our surprise when we could see our neighborhood!

Read on for more compelling news from the ISS ...

TO TELL THE TOOTH: Have  I mentioned lately that All. Day. Long. the kids ask me 1,001 or so questions, and I'm expected to just pull the answers out of my (insert body part here)? True confession time: I don't know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING.

Today, one of the bajillion things asked of me was "What's fluoride?"

And these kids won't take, "You know, It's that stuff in toothpaste that fights cavities " as an answer. Nooo. They want to know the fancy stuff, like where fluoride comes from - what it actually IS, and how it works to fight cavities.

And so, we spent a good part of each and every day researching. Which, of course, is not a bad thing. It's just bothersome and time consuming. ;) Just kidding. Mostly.

Turns out fluoride is derived from fluorite crystals, like these.

Fluorite is the 13th most common element in the Earth's crust, according to KidsHealth.org.  Further, KidsHealth.org says "Fluoride also allows teeth damaged by acid to repair, or remineralize, themselves. Fluoride cannot repair cavities, but it can reverse low levels of tooth decay and thus prevent new cavities from forming." Good stuff! 

SPACE TWEEPS: The Twitterverse has been all aTwitter over the last 48 hours over an exchange between the most famous starship captain of all time - none other than Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise - and Commander Chris Hedfield, a Canadian astronaut now on board the ISS.

William Shatner (a/k/a Kirk) Tweeted first, and the fact that a real life starship commander replied - from space!- captured the fancy of geeks the globe 'round.

Eep! Sci fi geek love overload!!!

And I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that none other than Buzz Aldrin weighed in today. ...

However, what we here at MPA find interesting is that Buzz's Tweet today goes 180 degrees against what he told CJ at The Museum of Flight's "The Wings of Heroes" panel back in September. That's right, boys and girls, just 4 months ago, none other than our lil' CJ specifically asked America's most famous astronaut if he would like to be part of a Mars mission. Buzz replied without hesitation  unequivocally saying he would absolutely NOT want to go to Mars. Here are my notes from that exchange. ...

CJ was one of a handful of people who got to ask a question of the panel after the presentation. He asked Buzz Aldrin if he'd like to go on a mission to Mars.
Earlier, Aldrin had shared that he and Neil Armstrong disagreed about what NASA's next big mission should be. Armstrong favored a return to the moon, while Aldrin is advocating for Mars. (Buzz did later say he wouldn't be against "mining the moon ... and selling the water to the Chinese to drink." Yowza.)
Despite recommending NASA have the Red Planet in their sites, Aldrin told CJ and the crowd that in college he was a sprinter and a pole vaulter and duration events weren't his gig. Interesting. 

Be what it may, it's fun to follow the musings of astronauts real and sci-fi revered.

Can We Do the Can Can?

PLAYTIME: It was bright blue skies sunny today and not too frigid, so we headed to Ella Bailey park before running errands today.

Above, CJ, is encouraging Annabelle to man up and slide headfirst. What a nice brother. ;) Truth be told, Annabelle has gone down the side headfirst hundreds more times than CJ ever has.

They also did a few loops on the spinning thingee (its official name, I'm sure).

They also did some swinging ... and some 'off road' exploring.

Good times. 

LIFE SKILLS: I decided to make the kids pizza for dinner. I also decided that they would help. And so, they helped with making the dough and the sauce. As we were about to make the sauce a horrible, terrible thought occurred to me. I realized that neither one of them had ever opened a tin can. Oh. My. God. Seriously, how lame sauce is that of me that I haven't taught them how to do it before now. 

But rather than lead with a tutorial, I first handed each kid a can and asked them if the knew how to open it. In both cases, they tried prying the lid off first. :/

After that didn't work, Annabelle said, "Wait! I have an idea!" And she fetched the can opener from the kitchen drawer. Then, she tried to figure out how that contraption could ever be used to crack a can. 

After a few minutes' struggle, I took the opener from them and gave a demonstration. Happy to report, they both know how to open a can now. Probably the best thing I did all day. 

DANCING DOGS: After the kids finished math (more angles), I decided they needed to do some writing, too. Out of the air, I pulled the writing prompt of "Debbie the Dancing Dog." I told them they could write anything they wanted using that title. 

A few minutes into work, CJ proclaimed his story was about how someone who is a slave could overcome. Pretty heady stuff for a story about a dancing dog. Here's how that turned out. ...

Debby the dog LOVED to dance. He would dance just about any kind of dance you can imagine. Of course, this would make him popular. He would be featured in newspapers, magazines, books, television shows, talk shows, and countless other products.

One day, Debby was “asked” to go to White Co. slavery for dogs and humans. ( He really wasn't asked. He was kidnapped by the master.) After this, Debby was in agony. He tried to dance his way off of the wall, only to nearly get whipped.

But one day, Debby woke up in the middle of the night. He found a bomb that read: “USE THIS BOMB TO KILL SLAVES IN DEATH CAMP.” Debby found out that it would actually destroy the entire building. Debby woke up all the other slaves, and told them to get out of the building. After this, Debby set off the bomb, and got out. After that, the building exploded. And Debby went home, and led all the now former slaves home.
MORAL: If you become a slave, don't let your ruler get the best of you.

LOL. Way to think outside the box, CJ. I also love the fact that Debby is a he.

Here's Annabelle's story. She said it was about safety. 

Debbie the dog loved to dance. She would dance all day! Debbie always makes sure she has room though, otherwise she could hit her elbow! Debbie also never “dances” towards some glass really fast. Debbie also watches where she's dancing, or she might trip! Debbie, when she crosses the street, looks both ways before dancing across. If Debbie runs into someone while dancing, she always says “Excuse me!” and, if they dropped something, helps them pick it back up. Debbie always dances safe. You should too!

Words to live by. ALWAYS look both ways before dancing across the street. And that's our public service announcement for the day.

MURAL MISTAKES: Still working on the My Little Pony mural. (I know, big surprise, right?) And today, because 28 different colors isn't enough, we had to go buy more paint. 

We went over the bridge to Miller Paint in Ballard, because on a trip there a few months back, we learned about this wonderful resource called the mistints book. In it, you can find swatches of other people's mistakes for cents on the dollar. A quart of paint is only $1.25. A gallon = $5. We love a bargain, :)

So, we came home with one gallon of dark green and three quarts (dark red, bright blue, and something else that escapes me now). 

Speaking of mistakes, have I mentioned that Annabelle is a stern taskmaster on this project? This afternoon she summoned me into her room and let me know there were two mistakes she wanted to discuss with me regarding her pony. (Yes, HER pony. She custom designed a pony to be included in the mural of the standard My Little Pony characters.) I took the criticism pretty well, and assured her I was already aware of my deficits and had plans to rectify the situation. That seemed to appease her - for now.

More Mural

MY LITTLE ZOMBIES: We're still plugging away on the mural project. It's not exactly going quickly. So. Many. Ponies. And even after the ponies are painted, we have entire village scenes and landscaping to do. Ugh.

But we best hurry, as Annabelle is getting tired of creepy, pupil-less ponies staring at her when she's in bed. We have started to get some eyes on a few of them.

Annabelle helped paint some apples on a tree.

INTERVIEW REVIEW: During breakfast, we watched a couple of interviews with astros on the ISS - flight engineer Tom Marshburn, a medical doctor, and Kevin Ford, an Indiana native and Notre Dame alum who will watch the BCS championship game from low Earth orbit.

As we listened it, it struck me that I have heard EVERY SINGLE QUESTION the astros were asked. In fact, I'd heard each question multiple times before. (What do you eat? How do you go to the bathroom, .) And these weren't elementary school kids asking them, it was reporters. I mean, c'mon, you get to interview an astronaut live from space and all you can do is ask him about the friggin' bathroom? A question that's been asked 1,000x before, and one where the answers on the topic are so readily available via the Google, etc. To me, it just seemed like such lazy 'reporting.'

To the astronauts' credit, they took it all with a smile and were detailed and gracious in their responses.

OBTUSE: More protractor action today. Check out this exciting shot!

Today, the kids were trying to figure out how to measure angles that were over 180 degrees. A problem, since their pink plastic protractor is only 180 degrees.

After much consternation, they finally realized that the easiest way to figure it out would be to draw a circle around the large angle, and then figure out the measurement by measuring the smaller portion of the circle left. Once they measured the small angle, they could subtract it from 360, and get the size of the larger angle.

Hello, 2013!

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT:  The kids did manage to make it until midnight last night - and we didn't even have to pump them full of Mountain Dew!

Instead, they had dessert a little later than normal and then starting about 10 p.m. I had them get up and move around every 15 minutes. More specifically, I had them do 15 'crappy jacks,' which is what we'll forever call jumping jacks in our household. It stems from when CJ was a few years younger, and we'd try to get him to do jumping jacks and he was TERRIBLE at it. Just couldn't get the right parts moving the right ways at the right time. Thankfully, he's moved past that - but we still call 'em crappy jacks.

We loaded into the cold car at about 11:40 for the 12 p.m. fireworks. We drove first to tiny Ursula Judkins park, out on the southeast point of Magnolia overlooking the bay and offering a full view of the Space Needle, but the place was full already. So, we continued across the Magnolia (Garfield) Bridge, flipped a U-turn and went under the bridge, to Terminal 91, where cruise, fishing and cargo ships park. There were only two other cars there. Not a great view of the entire Needle, but we could see the top half of it, and that's where nearly all of the fireworks would be visible.

The show started at the stroke of midnight and lasted about 10 minutes. It was a nice way to ring in the new year.

Much to my surprise, during the show, as the fireworks were exploding, CJ and Annabelle started listing what ingredients were used to produce the different colors in the flares. For instance, copper is used to make blue, calcium is orange and lithium is used to produce red. Sweet! They DID learn something from the BrainPOP video about fireworks!

PONY PROGRESS: Lots of work going on in Annabelle's room over the last couple of days. It's finally starting to look like a My Little Pony-ville. Annabelle is helping me keep track of the umpteen different colors of paint I have to mix to get the Just Right colors for the job at hand.

DINO-MITE: Today, CJ broke out a educational packet all about dinosaurs  We've been sitting on the thing for months. He went through the whole thing himself, only asking for help when it came to some analogies comparing dino body parts with everyday modern day objects (the sheet on the left). It was a bit of an odd exercise.

NYE

NYE @ THE NEEDLE: At midnight, pyrotechnics will rocket from atop the Space Needle. Around 6 this evening, it was quiet and calm around Seattle's iconic landmark.

I was there to see the King Tut exhibit (finally). It leaves Seattle in 6 days. Amazing, amazing stuff there.

We're hoping the kids can stay up until midnight tonight, so they can see the fireworks shot from atop the Needle. Speaking of fireworks, this afternoon, we watched a BrainPOP video about how fireworks are made and used. Afterward, the kids took a comprehension quiz, which they struggled a bit with. Enough vacation here, time to get back into the schoolin' mode!

IT'S ALIVE!: Big news to report here. We finally got the Famicom game system CJ got for Christmas LAST year working.

For those of you to whom Famicom is an unfamiliar term, what it is is the Japanese equivalent of the ubiquitous Nintendo Entertainment System console which was so popular with US gamers in the late 1980s and beyond.

The Famicom debuted in 1983. We bought this unit from a seller in Japan. We made a couple of lame attempts last year to get it going, but ended up shelving it for a long, long time.

When we decided to try again, I remembered reading long ago that the TV had to be on some high numbered channel, and that old TVs work better than new ones. So, Christian and CJ hooked the machine up to an old tube TV we have, and I found an article online that said channel 95 was the magic number. After a couple of attempts, Christian got the TV to recognize the unit and CJ was off to the races, so to speak.

The first game he played was Yie Ar (pronounced "ee ar") Kung Fu, a Famicom classic.

Needless to say, he and Annabelle were pretty thrilled to get to experience game action on an imported, antique console. Good times.

THIS YEAR AT NASA: We turned on NASA TV this afternoon. Given that it's New Year's Eve, no surprise that one of the shows on was a retrospective, "This Year at NASA."

Afterward, I checked their Web site and found a really neat-o interactive NASA Year in Review 2012. You can find it here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/YIR12/