Friday

FLOWER POWER: Everything's blooming, it seems. Not sure what these pretties are. Any ideas anyone?

PARK PRESSER: One of the parks that makes a lot of appearances on this blog is Smith Cove Park, near the the Port of Seattle's Terminal 91.

We go down there all the time to check out the rocky beach, check out the marina, sea life, and cruise ships in the summertime.

We went there today because last night I read there would be a press conference in the park at 1:30 on Friday to announce big improvements there for the future, including the acquisition of 5 acres of additional land adjacent to the strip of grass along Elliott Bay.  

We arrived a couple minutes early and made our way to the park. Usually we're the only ones there when we visit, but today, it was full of a bunch of people in suits and skirts. We were just three of a handful of people there who didn't represent some government agency or a news bureau.

I pointed out a few of the politicos to the kids, including Mayor Mike McGinn, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and King County Council member Larry Phillips.

Phillips led off the speeches, and we learned a little bit about the history of the park, and that the land acquisition had been 20 years in the making. That's a long time.

The kids were hoping all of the improvements would be made today, but it's going to take years. We didn't stay for all of the speeches, but it was it fun to be there on the day of the big announcement, and we look forward to watching the park change and grow.

The fireboat Leschi was even on had for today's whoop-ti-do.

BRONY: CJ was rockin' the pony look today in a big way thanks to his new My Little Pony Rainbow Dash socks.

Dressing

DRESSING ROOM: Today our living room was converted into a sewing room so that we could tackle a project Annabelle's been hankering to get done: sewing a dress for her.

She picked out the fabric this past weekend, and we cut the pieces out last night. Today, we tackled the "easy" sew pattern. Actually, it was easy, once I decided not to let the instructions get in our way. ...

Of course, even before we could start sewing, Annabelle had to learn how to get the machine ready. Naturally, that included learning how to thread the bobbin.

We also had to have a lesson about how you really shouldn't have your hands all that close to the needle when you have the pedal to the metal. ... 

It wouldn't be a sewing project without a couple of mistakes. Here, Annabelle learns the joys of ripping out a seam.

We overcame the pattern's sometimes bad-and-or-weird instructions, and managed to git 'er done today. She was VERY proud of the final result and wore it out to dinner tonight.

TEAMWORK: Today, the kids quizzed each other for their upcoming end of trimester test covering pulleys, levers, and simple machines.

It was time (mostly) constructively and productively spent. :)

NOW I'VE HEARD EVERYTHING: In between watching the University of Washington Huskies softball team win this morning in extra innings (WOOF!) and seeing Felix Hernandez return to form and the Mariners offense hit a total of five dingers, we listened to the semi-finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee today.

My hats are off to those competitors. That's a gut wrenching competition - tougher than any sport involving a ball, I'd venture to say.

Imagine our surprise and delight today when a My Little Pony reference popped up during one of the spelling bee's official explanations. ...

A contestant was asked to spell the word parvanimity (the state or quality of having a little or ignoble mind). The contestant asked to hear it used in a sentence. Paraphrasing, the moderator said something like "John accused his brother of parvanimity, at which his brother accused him of being a Brony, which was true, as his brother took his Fluttershy everywhere."  I about fell out of my chair. The contestant laughed, and proceeded to spell parvanimity correctly.

Getting Started

CUT IT OUT: We haven't started sewing yet, but we did get started on Annabelle's new dress. We talked about first you have to figure out which pieces you need by reading the directions. Once you have found all those pieces, you read the directions to know how to lay them out and cut them out. 

It was Annabelle's first time pinning a pattern piece to a fabric and it didn't take her long to stick herself. In fact, on the very first pin she poked her index finger.  Poor girl.

But in pretty short order we got all the pieces cut out. Tomorrow, the real fun starts - sewing!

CONNECTING THE DOTS: We enjoyed a couple more Einstein lessons today. One of them was all about that famous formula E=MC². Our ears perked up when the professor started off by talking about kinetic energy and its equation, 1/2mv², and moved on to rotational invariance and the conservation of angular momentum. We remembered that from our "How Things Work" physic class of a couple of months ago! 

Today we also learned about what Einstein called his "happiest thought." He had always been bothered by the fact that his special theory of relativity applied to things of constant velocity motion and it didn't address gravitational issues. However, in 1907, two years after he published his special theory paper, Einstein had a thought experiment (or gedankenexperiment, in German) involving an elevator. He realized that if a person falls freely, they won't feel their own weight. It's like gravity doesn't exist. That led to his 'happiest thought,' that a gravitational field is equal to an accelerated frame of reference, which, in effected opened things up for him, allowing him to bring in the accelerated frame of reference and tie in gravity, as well, leading to his general theory of relativity.

It was interesting learning that a clock at the bottom of an elevator runs slower than a clock on top of an elevator thanks to gravitational time dilation. Who knew?! :)

PRIME TIME SCIENCE: This evening we watched an interesting hour-long show on the Discovery Channel called "Outrageous Acts of Science." The show is a countdown format, showing its top 20 clips of people doing extraordinary things. Tonight's theme was human guinea pigs.  It featured a series of video shorts, most pulled right from YouTube fame. Like, a BMX rider on a treadmill. Apparently riding the bike isn't the problem, it's trying to stop that is tricky. ... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XknEvdUN6lE

Physicists, mathematicians and other experts were interviewed, describing the science between what was seen in the shorts, like this video of a man in Bangledesh managing to stack 22 bricks on his head. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8HyTyTbS5A

The fact that he was tossing the bricks in a parabolic arc was key to his success.

We also learned about the sport of 'blobbing' (looks like fun!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2b8s4VxD60

Rockets, Real & Imagined

        Photo: Bill Ingalls, NASA

ROCKET WATCHERS: We had our eyes on NASA TV most of the day, as  we do on any manned launch day.

Today's event was the launch of a Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station. On board were Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA and Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.

In the NASA photo above, you can see the vehicle on the launch pad, with an airplane shaped wind vane in the foreground. By the time the rocket shot off, it was 1:31 p.m. our time, but the wee small hours (2:31 a.m.) in Kazakhstan, so the lift off lit up the night sky.

                       Photo: Bill Ingalls, NASA

The trio who took off today will be on board the ISS until mid-November. Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano will remain aboard the station until mid-November. Pre-launch coverage on NASA TV included taped interviews with each of the astronauts. 

We learned that Parmitano, a major in the Italian Air Force, will be the first Italian to live aboard the International Space Station. We figure he must be very proud to hold that distinction.

NASA's Nyberg grew up in Vining, Minnesota, a town of just 100 people. She was the fifth of six children, so her family made up a significant part of the town's population! Nyberg has a PhD in mechanical engineering, is married to astronaut Doug Hurley, and has a three year old son. It's her second spaceflight, but her first long duration mission. She hopes to do some drawing while on the ISS.

Today's launch was notable because it's just the second time the Soyuz took the rapid approach to the ISS. Instead of taking days to get there, it made a six-hour run. We watched the docking after dinner, and everything appeared 'nominal,' our favorite word on launch days.

HARSH REALITY:  We started watching the final lectures for our "Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity" class today.  One of the lectures today dealt with the harsh realities involved when it comes to being able to travel at the speed of light.

For instance, let's say Alice wants to fly to the center of the universe, which is 30,000 light years away from Bob, who's waiting back on Earth. The good news is, Alice has technology which allows her to fly at .99999999777778 of the speed of light, so she takes off, and it takes her 2 years to reach the center of the universe, and two years to fly back home.

However, when she gets back, Bob is nowhere to be found. That's because to Bob, the center of the universe was always 30,000 light years away, and Bob's loooong gone, as is Bob Jr., Bob III and so on. It's hundreds of generations later, if there are still Bobs on Earth at all. In Annabelle's illustration above, you can see Alice returns to find some Bobs with their eyes Xed out, which means they're toast.

Another interesting thing we learned today is that if Alice was able to go warp speed, like Star Trek, or into hyperdrive, like Star Wars' Millennium Falcon, she wouldn't see the stars become streaks, passing her ship. Rather, when traveling very near the speed of light, the starlight would be shifted from visible wavelengths to X-ray wavelengths. Also, as she was looking in the direction of travel, she'd see a fuzzy glow from the cosmic microwave background radiation (a remnant of the Big Bang) shifted into the visible spectrum due to her speed.

We also learned that even if Alice could somehow travel at the speed of light, it would take a tremendous amount of energy to get her to accelerate up to that speed - energy that's beyond our capabilities of producing at the present and for the foreseeable future. Unless, of course, we can find some dilithium crystals, per Annabelle's picture.

SWIMMING IN THE RAIN: We spent the morning getting some homework and errands done, including applying for new passports for the kids for our trip to England this fall.  This afternoon, even though the weather wasn't particularly nice, I suggested Christian take the kids to the public pool. (In fact, when it's not nice is the time to go, as it keeps others away.)  The big pool has a 50-foot corkscrew slide and is heated to 85 degrees. The little pool is 94 degrees, and often full of parents and their toddlers and infants in swim diapers. Christian and the kids pop into that pool just often enough to get warm.

The trio had the place practically to themselves, and enjoyed 90 minutes of splashing around. The kids' swimming skills are making great strides this year.  

Memorial Day

MEMORIAL DAY: We rather selfishly opted to go to a Mariners' game on Memorial Day, and ended up having an amazing opportunity to recognize military members here and gone.

In a steady downpour, we heard a muffled PA speaker in the distance. I couldn't tell what was being said or where it came from, but eventually we happened upon an alley where the sound grew louder. I peered down it to find the 'backstage' scene to a Memorial Day program.

Once at Safeco, we settled into our cheap seats (the very top row of the stadium, above third base). The pre game festivities included an inspiring array of veterans, ranging from the Korean War to Afghanistan.

Before the national anthem, a single serviceman played a flawless version of Taps.

The gentleman providing the ball for the first pitch was a true American hero. Leroy Arthur Petry, a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army  is one of four recent living soldiers who has received the U.S. Armed Forces' highest combat decoration, the Medal of Honor.

                    Photo: U.S. Army
In 2008, during Operation Enduring Freedom, despite being wounded in both legs by gunfire, Petry continued to soldier on and give orders. When a grenade landed between him and two other servicemen, Petry picked it up and tried to throw it away when it exploded. His actions saved nearby soldiers, but cost him his right hand.

In 2011, Petry opted to reenlist, despite his wounds. Today, he assists wounded soldiers and their families, and he's the only Medal of Honor recipient from any branch of service still on active duty.

We had big fun at the ballpark. The Mariners won handily, and have extended their winning 'streak' to two games, LOL.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?: Ever since posting the photo of of the brick bottomed-rock last week, we've been hankering to get back down to the shore to take more photos in hopes of getting our resident geologist (hi, Dr. Haggart!) to more closely discern  what this weird rock/brick might be. Here are our more closeup shots, some with my lens cap in them to give some sense of scale.

First, the upper portion of the rock, and its many holes.

 Here's the thing in its entirety.

 Here's Annabelle's finger pointing to a rock in a rock.

 The rock became home to more than one life form.

 A close up view of the colors near the stone/'brick' line.

 Another look at something going on inside the rock.

 In other news, while we were there, it was one of the lowest tides of the year. Seriously, it seemed impossible these enormous cruise ships could dock in such shallow water.

The Seattle Times had an article about the low-low tides this weekend:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021065923_lowtidexml.html

ANOTHER ONE GONE: Last night we filed our Week 7 (of 8) homework and test for our Einstein class. And we passed both with flying colors! We are so hap- hap- happy and are looking forward to this final week of an amazing two months.

The kids both noticed this business' marquee on the way out of the Mariners' game.

WEEKEND REWIND: This weekend we hit the mall (ugh! how I despise that!!!!) but it was for a good cause. The sound/song chip inside Annabelle's Pinkie Pie quit working about three days after we bought it, weeks ago. So, we took it in to Build a Bear Workshop for a transplant.

While we were there, both CJ and Annabelle's ponies got a spa day. :)

After the pony tune up, we stopped by one of our favorite spots, Chuck's on 85th. We always get some good board game time in there. This go 'round we played some Scruples. It was fun, but many of the questions were dated, involving VHS tapes and pre-caller ID days. \

We also played chess which is, of course, a timeless classic.