Friday Report

       
BLOCKHEAD: Been meaning to post this for awhile now. Above is one of Annabelle's cardboard creations. She makes a cute blockhead, don't you think?

We spent hours and hours and hours today talking about and working on a books idea we have. I'm not going to post specifics here yet, other than it's a children's book, and it has a space theme.

We started some character design today, and Annabelle and I were having ALL sorts of trouble with Photoshop, and then Illustrator on my computer.

While I was swearing at the computer, Annabelle was expressing her frustration on paper.

Methinks a fair amount of our trouble had its genesis in the fact that the Photoshop and Illustrator versions I have are about 12 years old. We loaded Adobe Illustrator CS2 on Annabelle's laptop and found that wasn't quite as frustrating, so we're going to try to work with that.

FREELOADERS: A couple of days ago  I noticed a banner for a new-ish establishment just south of Safeco Field called Henry's Tavern - American Bar & Grill.  Curious, I checked out their reviews on Yelp on Wednesday evening and noticed that they were giving away free bacon cheeseburgers between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. through Saturday. Did they say free? Count us in!

Christian went and checked out the place during his lunch on Thursday and reported that it was free, and it was good, so the family went there today for lunch.

The first thing I thought when they brought the plate was, "I'm gonna need a bigger mouth." Yikes. All five of us (Rick was with us) got these big honking bacon cheeseburgers for nothing but the cost of our drinks.

The place was packed, not surprisingly, and I was impressed with how quickly they were getting the orders out. The staff was friendly and professional, and the restaurant itself was a cool space. As often as we're in that part of town for games, we'll definitely be back, even if they're not giving away food! :)

LOOKING UP: On our way home this afternoon, I heard a plane overhead as I always do, because you just never know what you're going to see in this town.

This particular bird (pictured below) happened to be something spectacular - the B-17 named "Nine-O-Nine."

                          source: USGOV-MILITARY-AIR FORCE.via Wikipedia
Immediately, I knew the "Flying Fortress" was winging into town as part of the Collings Foundation's Wings of Freedom Tour, which is at Boeing Field and The Museum of Flight this weekend.

We found a neat interactive about the Boeing B-17G ('Nine-O-Nine') we saw flying online here: http://i-ota.net/B-17Nine-O-Nine/  Reportedly it flew 140 combat missions during WWII, without ever losing a crew member.

OFF TO EQUESTRIA: Tomorrow we're taking a field trip to Wenatchee, Washington, about 180 miles east of here. It's the apple capital of the state, and we'll probably pick up some produce while we're there, but our primary reason for heading over the mountains has nothing to do with produce. Rather, it has to do with ponies. Specifically My Little Ponies, and their new money grab, er, I mean, movie, "Equestria Girls."

Since CJ and Annabelle are two of the Biggest Pony Fans Ever, we feel compelled to go to said movie. The incredibly unfortunate part is that it's only showing at two theaters in the state, neither of which is anywhere near Seattle. Our choices are Wenatchee or Vancouver, and since the Vancouver theater showing it doesn't pre-sell tickets, we weren't willing to risk driving that far to get skunked. Instead, we bought our tickets online ahead of time for the Wenatchee show. Good thing we did. When I was double checking the theater's Web site Web site last night, every single showing of "Equestria Girls" was sold out. Crazy Pony fans.

On the surface, it would appear to be a vehicle for launching a new line of toys and videos, perhaps. Maybe I'll feel differently after I see it (sure, it could happen).

DESTINATION STATION DOCUMENTED: A week ago Monday, we were at Pacific Science Center, visiting with an astronaut and getting a sneak peek at the new exhibit about the International Space Station. While we were there, there was a Seattle P.I. reporter asking lots of questions, taking lots of notes and photos. I looked for the story online for a couple of days after the event but never found it. Last night, I thought to look again, and finally did track it down. There are multiple lots of photos of CJ & Annabelle and they're in the story, as well. Here's a link:
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/boeing/article/Learn-what-it-s-like-to-live-in-space-and-what-4591305.php#photo-4765168

Rocket Fire

TANGY:  Yesterday, in a super weak-and-nostalgic moment, I actually bought a container of Tang. That's right. Tang. The powdery, sugary orange substance that spacemen love (or hate, especially if you're Buzz Aldrin).

If you were alive and around a television in the '70s, you have to remember this ...

We thought it would be fitting to make some Tang rocket pops (using molds made by a Seattle company, BTW).

Four cups was more than enough for 5 rockets, so the kids drank the leftovers.

By my recollection, the 'best' part of a glass of Tang was the layer of neon orange sludge that had settled on the bottom of your glass. Mmm, the best.

I had to throw one more Tang commercial in. It's retro-riffic - especially the soundtrack!

EINSTEIN SUSPECT?: We were surprised to read a report today that the cargo vessel we watched launch by the European Space Agency to the ISS back on June 5, was eyed as potentially hazardous.

                                                        Image credit: NASA
Named Albert Einstein, the vessel docked with the ISS on Saturday, June 15, but a concern about the possibility of mold on board it delayed astronauts on board the station from opening its hatch.
                           
The "Albert Einstein" approaches the International Space Station's Zvezda service module. Credit: NASA TV

In reading the story, it seems the true nature of the problem might have been more a matter of paperwork and documentation than anything, but still, it was disconcerting, especially knowing the crew was eager to get its hands on the cargo, which included personal clothing and food.                          

Image credit: ESA

FYI, Einstein is scheduled to depart the ISS in late October. By then, it will have been stuffed with trash. It will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and meet a fiery end over the Pacific Ocean.

As I was looking for photos of Einstein (the cargo ship, not the physicist) on NASA's Web site, I came across many other images and stories, including an article with the attention grabbing headline:
 I'm reading up on Einstein. Came across a story on the NASA Web site today with this attention grabbing headline:  "Was Einstein a Space Alien?" 

You had to know I was going to read THAT. Actually, we all listened to it. (You, too, can listen here: http://science1.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2005/03/24/23mar_spacealien_resources/story.mp3

SPOILER ALERT: The conclusion of the story was that Einstein as not an alien, but it was a fun point to ponder, nonetheless. And I absolutely loved a quote of Einstein's from the end of the story: "The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE: This afternoon I was sitting at my computer and I glanced up and out the window to the east. I saw a puff of whitish smoke. I didn't think much of it initially, as there are railroad tracks at the bottom of our hill, and once in awhile a train will belch out a cloud.

However, this cloud wasn't a belch, it was a billow, and getting bigger. And soon the white changed to gray, and as I studied the gray, I could start to see pieces of debris in it. I have seen a house fire before, and that's what that looks like. And then the explosions started. I grabbed my phone, called 911 and watched the gray turn into a big ol' black tower of smoke. Yikes!

The distant sirens started wailing (from multiple directions), and as they approached a news chopper swooped in. Mercifully, the firefighters knocked the fire down very quickly - within a couple of minutes of arrival, really. The firefighters have it knocked down now, but it was WILD and scary.

And, it was arson - allegedly. A 12 year old was arrested this afternoon in connection with the case. :( The photos in the story linked preceding show you how hard and fast the fire burned.

VOTING IS OPEN: One of CJ's hobbies is thinking and talking about the annual World's Ugliest Dog. It just amuses him to no end. He can debate the comparative ugly factors of past winners Sam, Mugly and so on. This marks the 25th anniversary of the competition, and a celebration is being held in Petaluma, California.

Imagine CJ's delight when I informed him this morning he could actually VOTE this go round. He promptly set about doing so, and carefully weighed the candidates' degrees of, well, ugliness.

Unfortunately, the online voting is not binding and won't determine the actual winner of the title. Apparently you have to be some kind of pedigreed EXPERT to judge an ugly dog. However, I have to think that the Internet winner will at least get some kind of certificate for being the people's choice. ... (In case you're wondering, CJ voted for Squiggy. Personally, I felt Monkey was the clear 'winner.')

JUST DEW IT: Imagine how happy the kids were when a segment of "Unwrapped" was bout their favorite liquid garbage calories, er, I mean soft drink, Mountain Dew.

Specifically, it was about the 'special' blue Dew, called Voltage. The plant they showed pumps out 2 million bottles of said blue Dew every day. Ugh. We learned a 'secret liquid' gives voltage its color, and ginseng gives it a some 'zing.' They also add a 'secret formula' of some sort. Hmm, funny, they didn't mention the brominated vegetable oil Mountain Dew is famous for. The article on Snopes.com about this ingredient is interesting reading, to say the least. (Note to self: Don't drink 8 liters of pop a day.) 

Flights Not Fancy

AEROSPACE ENGINEERS: This afternoon, we continued to work through the pile of swag we brought home from the Seattle Science Festival Expo day. We decided today's focus would be aircraft construction.

First, the kids tackled a wooden glider. We've all seen lots of gliders like these before, but these were a tad bit different in that they were extraordinarily brittle.
Let's just day, CJ and Annbelle each ended up snapping the cockpits off and other such airline disasters. Be glad they don't work for Boeing.

The styrofoam shuttle-ish thingee went together better. Perhaps not surprisingly, it flew better, as well.

Here they are having a dogfight ... watch out, Laika! Annabelle's errant plane is headed your way!

STARGAZING:  Last week, thanks to a tip from a friend, I subscribed to the daily EarthSky.org email list. It has proved to be a great source of information. For instance, in yesterday's update, I learned that Saturn and Spica would be visible near the moon that night, just after dusk.

So, I waited impatiently for the sun to set (it takes awhile this time of year) and then ran outside about every three minutes to see what I could see.

I spotted Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, first.  The blue giant that's the 15th brightest star in our night sky was just right of the moon. (Today I learned that Spica is actually a close binary star, with its components so close, in fact, they can't be individually identified even through a powerful telescope. Spica's components orbit around each other every four days. Fascinating!)

Annabelle missed the action, but CJ was still awake and happy to get out of bed to do a little stargazing.

BILLIONAIRE:  We're still keeping tabs on Curiosity, of course. The Martian rover has been roaming around on the Red Planet for more than 10 months now. Today, NASA shared a composite image that was made from 900 photos MSL has taken on Mars. The photo is over a billion eye-popping pixels, Yowza!  The images used were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012.

The image may not look that compelling here, but what you need to do is view it online. It's available for perusal with pan and zoom tools at http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/.  Make sure you click on some of the thumbnails there, they're really interesting.

IKEA ENGINEERS: This afternoon, we FINALLY stopped by IKEA to get a much-needed bookcase for Annabelle's 'new' room. We settled on an EXPEDIT. It's been awhile since I've transformed an IKEA product from flat pack to furniture.  But the familiar confusion, sweating and swearing all came cascading back to me.

Happily, in the end, it went together, and it's holding a bazillion books in Annabelle's room already. I think we need another one.

PLUCKIN' AND STRUMMIN': During our regular 30-ish minute workout routine, we choose different playlists from YouTube to have as a soundtrack. Today, we went with Dan Zanes, a musician who has recorded a number of wonderful children's albums (though they're highly listenable for all ages, believe you me).

A lot of the time as we're going through our motions, we can't see the screen, and at one point today, it sounded like Dan was giving a guitar lesson. This picqued our curiosty, and it turns out he's recorded and posted a series of teaching videos called "Dan Zanes Family Band Workshop." The video we came across today was  for a catchy, call-and-answer gospel tune, "Up Above My Head."

We're definitely going to have to give that a go on the kids' guitars, and check out the other videos in that series.

Catching Up

WEEKEND REWIND: We were so busy this weekend, I couldn't fit it all into last night's post. 

Sunday and Monday were up on Cama Island, but Saturday we took a close to home field trip, to the Ballard Locks. Here's a mossy walled part of the Locks between Lake Union and Puget Sound.

Much to our pleasant surprise, when we arrived at the park, some Seattle Parks naturalists had a booth set up near the parking lot. They were pointing out a nearby osprey nest, and told us where to look for heron nests down the pathway.

The kids got to feel a heron's wing.

And they also held a no longer living kingfisher. Kingfishers love feeding and nesting along the Locks, too.

And once we knew where to look, it was easy to pick out the herons' nests.

Braving the crowds, we made our way to the East bank of the Locks. 

Over there, you can wander through the only garden maintained by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

There was live music starting at 2 p.m., which prompted me to check the summer weekend concert calendar when we got home. 

We walked in the shade of big trees ...

and, of course, the kids had to roll down the stepped hillside.

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: Do you remember where you were when this photo, "Pale Blue Dot" was taken? Perhaps you forgot to smile for the camera in 1990, when Voyager 1, 6 billion kilometers (or 4 billion miles) away from home, turned around and took a photo of Earth before leaving the Solar System. In the photo, our planet is just 12/100ths of a pixel in size, but it's striking nonetheless.

The Pale Blue Dot portrait was Carl Sagan's idea, BTW, and if you haven't heard his "Pale Blue Dot" narrative, you really should. It's poignant and awesome ...

So, if you weren't smiling for the 1990 portrait, maybe you were on board for the second ever deep space photo, when the Cassini space probe shot us all in 2006, 926 million miles (1.49 billion kilometers) from Earth. 

The second Earth from on far photo was Cassini's photo from 2006, at a distance of 926 million miles (1.49 billion kilometers) from Earth.

(Larger version, where you can see the dot better, here: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/162056main_PIA08329.jpg)

If you somehow missed that 2006 photo opp, as well, perhaps the third time will be the charm. On July 19, NASA is going to take another photo of Earth from space. It will be Cassini again, but now it should be about 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away at that point. 

Earthlings are encouraged to go outside and wave at the camera, between 2:27 and 2:42 p.m. PDT. NASA's asking people to look in the direction of Saturn while doing so, and then submit a photo of yourself waving. Photos can be shared on the special Wave at Saturn Flickr group, the Wave at Saturn Facebook event page or by tagging them on Twitter #waveatsaturn.

For more info on the Cassini photo op check out NASA's announcement: http://go.nasa.gov/14IecjL 

By the way, if you're wondering where Voyager is now, you can check out JPL's Web site, where real time stats are kept: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/. As I wrote this on the evening of 6/18/2013, Voyager 1 was 18.5+ billion (and yes, you have to say it 'beeelion' like Carl Sagan) kilometers from Earth.

MUSEUM: In September, we'll be taking a field trip to England, but I thought it might be nice to take a virtual trip there here and now, so today we pointed our Web browsers to the Science Museum (yes, that's its name) in London, England. Its Web site features online exhibits and articles and a bunch of fun games.  CJ enjoyed playing Rubbish, wherein you try to 'stop the rubbish from taking over your life.'  We'll play around with their site some more in the days to come.

SCHOOL KIDS: Even though their Shoreline school is out for the summer, CJ and I were up on campus today to help clean up the science room. We put in about 3 good hours of work. 

Meanwhile, down in Kent, Annabelle was playing Normal School Kid. She went to work with biggest brother Rick, who's a third grade teacher. She got to take a backpack and lunch, and sit at a desk. 

Not sure that Annabelle is super well suited for the daily Normal School Kid grind, as she was still IN BED when Rick pulled up to pick her up today. (Yes, I'd told her to get up before then.) 

Fortunately, I had everything all lined out, and all she had to do was pull on clothes and brush her teeth. They pulled out about 7:30 a.m. and were back home a little before 5. Long day. Annabelle didn't seem any worse for the wear, and Rick said the day wasn't typical, as it was field day (play day) and classroom time was spent tidying up and watching a movie. So Annabelle probably thinks that's what most school days are like now!

AMERICAN WOMAN: Today marks the 30th anniversary of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride (1951-2012). She lifted off from Cape Canaveral on June 18, 1983, as one of three mission specialists aboard Challenger for STS-7.

This short video is a great tribute to her. 

Cabin Fever

WOODSY: For Father's Day, instead of letting Christian take it easy, we decided to rough it - well, at least just a little.

We rented a cabin at Cama Beach State Park.  It's on the southwest shore of Camano Island facing Saratoga Passage. Per its Web site, "Cama Beach offers visitors a chance to step back in time to a 1930s-era Puget Sound fishing resort complete with waterfront cedar cabins and bungalows."

I can't vouch for its authenticity compared to a 1930s-era fishing resort, but it was a nice place to escape for a night. 

The woods were verdant, and the water was pretty. Here was our 'dining room' table on Sunday night. We ate steak, which the kids kinda sorta helped barbecue, and salad. We also played a miserable game of Pandemic. I think we were doomed within the first 10 minutes. 

We had a super fancy cabin, in that it had a bathroom and a microwave and a refrigerator. Pretty sure that's not 1930s fishing resort authentic. However, the compressor on the refrigerator  sounded like a 1930s steam-powered compression engine, and it kept me awake for most of the night. 

There is a Center for Wooden Boats at the park. We're familiar with their Seattle center, right down on Lake Union. They had boat rentals there, but we didn't partake due to a pretty hefty price tag. 

The center did have a cool table with a spotting mechanism that helped us figure out what was where from our vantage point.

This morning, Saratoga Passage was super calm. The beach isn't easy to stroll, as it's covered in fist-sized rocks, which are covered with barnacles and seaweed.  It's definitely a watch-your-step trek.

There wasn't much boat traffic in the area. Every boat we did see motor by looked to be a small crabbing vessel. There were lots of buoys out in the water, marking the crab pots below. Depths in Saratoga Passage range from about 600 feet at the southeastern entrance to about 90 feet near Crescent Harbor.

After we broke 'camp' this morning around 9 a.m., we headed to a park practically next door, Camano Island State Park.  A sprawling gem with lots of green space in its 134-acres ...

plus 6,700 feet of rocky shoreline, there are dozens of pretty campsites and we loved the beach there. The rocks were pebble sized and easy to walk. 

We hung out down by the boat launch for awhile. The weather was PERFECT and we had the place to ourselves.

ON THE WAY THERE: We love using the Internet to seek out interesting eateries on our adventures. On Sunday, Father's Day lunch ended up being at Leatherheads, a converted firehouse in Stanwood.

The staff was friendly, the ambiance was great, and the food was tasty and reasonable. It was a good stop.  

ON THE WAY HOME:  On the way back to town today, we hopped off I-5 at Everett, so we could take the more scenic route along the water for awhile.

As we were heading for the shoreline, I spotted a small sign with an arrow to our right pointing us toward Sen. Henry Jackson Park. Without hesitation, we headed that way. I figured the most famous/arguably greatest senator in state history had to have a frickin' awesome park, right?

Well, maybe notsomuch. ...

Yikes, right? In fairness, there was a ballfield there, but still. THIS is Scoop Jackson's park? Hmm. ... Maybe there's another Scoop Jackson park in another part of the state. ...

We also stopped at the gorgeous American Legion Memorial Park. It's situated in a bluff overlooking Port Gardner Bay. There's a great viewpoint for the largest  saltwater nesting osprey colony on the Pacific west coast. There are 26 nests in the area, including the one in the photo below. We could see one osprey hanging out in it. 

Meanwhile, another osprey put on a show for us overhead.

It was a fun 26 hours.