We Oughta be in Pictures

 
FAMILY PORTRAITS:  The last couple of days Annabelle has started drawing cartoon-ish humans (instead of say ponies and penguins she so loves to draw).

Here are some pictures she came up with today, in addition to a couple of self portraits above. ...

Here's one of CJ and me ...

And one of Christian ...

He was (obviously) sporting his Seahawks jersey for tonight's preseason game. Go Hawks!

ROOT, ROOT, ROOT FOR THE HOME TEAM:  At noon, our attention turned to the Little League World Series play.  The team from Sammamish (where we recreated last weekend) was playing for a shot in the finals.

My oh my, what a game it was.  Back and forth, up and down, Washington vs. a team from Connecticut.  In extra innings, Connecticut ended up coming up with one run more.  CJ was beside himself for about 60 seconds, but he quickly shifted his focus elsewhere.

We learned things watching the game, of course.  One crazy play had a Connecticut runner traveling from second to third base running into the shortstop.  The Sammamish shortstop was focused on the play at the plate, and threw the kid out there, however, it wasn't (unfortunately) an out at home, as when the runner ran into the defensive player, that was interference, resulting in that runner being out and a dead ball (no more action on the field). So, the Connecticut runner got to go back to third base and he wound up being the winning run.

Naturally, I started thinking about scenarios when a team might use interference to their advantage. ...

TOILING:  I spent most of my day covered in powdered sugar, working on Jursassic Park-themed cookies and cake for Kennedy's birthday.  Today seemed like lots of "middle" work, with little finishing.  Annabelle reminded me I need to be done by tomorrow, Ken's birthday.

I'm on it Annabelle, and done I shall be!

JOLLY OLDE ENGLAND:  This afternoon, I pointed the kids in the direction of a Web site with a ton of information about early British kingdoms (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/arthur/index.html).  I told them they could read about whatever they wanted, and they each spent about a half hour poking around.  They each wound up on articles about Stonehenge, and Annabelle related a fable about Merlin supposedly building it.  The story stopped there.  I directed them to use other resources to find out exactly how Stonehenge was, in fact, built.

Music & More

PICKIN' AND GRINNING: I try to remember to have the kids practice guitar every day. I think I'm successful about 70 percent of the time.

Today's jam session included them dueting on Pink Floyd's "Breathe." They managed to sound somewhat like this.


CERTIFIED:  An email came this morning letting us know we could check Coursera to see if we passed our "Science of Gastronomy" class or not. Fortunately, we all earned certificates of completion.  CeeJ and Bee printed theirs out and stuck them in their portfolios. Here's CJ's slightly altered cert.

 As I was cleaning up today, I found some of Annabelle's notes from the lecture about gluten.

STICKY SITUATION:  We spent a lot of the day working on sugary stuff, specifically a cake and cookies for Kennedy's birthday.  He's opted for a Jurassic Park theme which has proven to be a challenge.  It's not easy sculpting a hatchling velociraptor out of gum paste.

I think the kids' favorite part of the endeavor so far is licking the beaters.

This afternoon we had to go to Bartell drugstore to buy some candy as an ingredient for part of the project. There, the kids got excited when they spied some Razzles.  We saw a video about their history and how they're made on "Unwrapped" a few weeks back, and the kids have been curious to try them ever since.

So, we bought a pack. I remember them from when I was a kid.  They haven't changed. They have a nearly flavorless candy coating which dissolves and the stuff turns into gum, which is completely flavorless, just like when I was a kid. Ah, memories. ;)

Facing Space

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA:  Today, NASA released a mosaic they created to commemorate their "Wave at Saturn" event from July 19.  On that day, the Cassini spacecraft, which is orbiting Saturn, took a photo of Earth.  NASA suggested Earthlings wave at the camera around 3:30 p.m. on that day, so their image could be captured.  Of course, every living thing on Earth was captured in the photo Cassini took that day, as we're all on this pale blue dot (above the white arrow below), to borrow a Sagan phrase.

Image: NASA, naturally

Pretty cool shot of our lil ol' planet, isn't it?

Fun and posterity, NASA also asked people to send in images they captured during their "Wave at Saturn" moment, and boy did people respond.  Earthlings from more than 40 countries and 30 U.S. states shared a total of more than 1,400 images, via  Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Google+ and email.

Here are the two we emailed in ... 

News that NASA's mosaic was complete hit the Interwebs around noon today, and as soon as I saw it, I wondered if I'd ever be able to spot our photos if, per chance, they were included.

I figured if they were included, it would be in the bright blue area of the mosaic, as we had blue skies that day and the sky figured largely in our compositions.  I decided I'd invest 5 minutes, no more, in trying to find us.

So, I opened the 30 MB version of the mosaic in Photoshop, hit CTRL + a couple of times (to zoom in), and I'll be darned if I didn't see our photos immediately!

What fun to be a part of this piece of art!

It was a hectic day when we took those photos - we were headed to the Seattle Center at the appointed 'wave at Saturn' time because we had to participate in one of our feedback sessions at the Pacific Science Center that afternoon, and later that night it was the Paul McCartney concert. All in all, a very memorable day!

A little background info on Cassini, the spacecraft which took this photo. ... It launched on my birthday in 1997, and reached Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004.  The craft included a Saturn orbiter (that's what took the photo back toward Earth), as well as a lander for Saturn's moon Titan, called Huygens.  Huygens landed on Titan in 2005.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT: We certainly enjoyed the bright, full "blue" moon hanging over Seattle (and the rest of the world) last night.

I was happy I actually managed to take a photo of it that looked like the moon (with craters and all) instead of just a bright white orb in the sky. It's grainy, because my 'big' lens isn't that big, but it's a start.

I need to learn how to do long exposure photography with my Nikon. ...

Christian managed to cue up a nice view of the moon in our telescope, too. We took turns looking at it over and over. And then at 9:08, we were back upstairs for an ISS flyover. Good times.

BIG BOAT: As we've driven across the Magnolia/Garfield bridge the last couple of days, we couldn't help but notice this little boat docked at Terminal 90, which is at the foot of our hill.

"That's the biggest yacht I've ever seen!" I marveled the first time I spied it.

Christian snapped this photo of it using his cell phone, on his way to work this morning.  (He even managed to capture the Blue Moon in the photo!)

However, the photo doesn't do the ship justice, because you can't judge the scale of this monster in it.

Turns out the lil' ship is named Serene.  It's the 440-foot personal yacht of a Russian (Stoli) vodka titan Yuri Scheffle.   Sources say it's the ninth largest yacht in the word, with seven decks and nearly 50,000 square feet of interior space. It employs a 52-person crew, and features a large saltwater pool, two helicopter landing platforms (clearly one is not enough) and there's a storage spot for a submarine which can dive to 300 feet (dinghys are so bourgeois).  The ship, built in Italy, was launched in 2011. It has 24 state rooms, numerous lounges, as you'd expect, and a room with a glass floor called the "Nemo Room." There's also reportedly a "snow room" for kids to play in the powdery stuff if the blue skies and sunshine become to boring.

The Seattle Times has some lovely photos of it here: http://seattletimes.com/html/picturethis/2021651774_theserenevisitsseattle.html

Moon Tunes & More

Altered (by me) moon image from MrMac04 via Morguefile

BLUE MOON:  The kids often start their days by reading news headlines on the Internet, and today, they each discovered that tonight's full moon would be a Blue Moon.  

I quickly told them that it didn't mean the moon would be blue.  In this instance, it refers to the third of four full moons in the season.  There are usually only three full moons in a season, so this one is a bonus. :)

After we talked about blue moons, of course I had to play the song for the kids.  Many have recorded it, but I went with The Marcels, vintage 1961 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7giOrKYIwpQ, the version that was featured in the classic movie "American Graffiti." 

And though we're nowhere near the Bluegrass State, I thought I should play Blue Moon of Kentucky for them, too. Oddly enough, there were a couple versions of Paul McCartney performing it.  We went with this one.

TWO IF BY SEA:   This afternoon, I turned "Animaniacs" on, as much for me as the kids. I love that cartoon, which premiered when Rick and Kennedy were kids, and today I was reminded why.  One of the shorts this afternoon was a mash up of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the "Noah's Ark" fable, called "Noah's Lark." It was so wonderfully strange and silly. Noah was played by a cartoon dude that was clearly modeled (for whatever bizarre reason) after comedian Richard Lewis. 

We all enjoyed the cartoon, but afterward skeptical CJ had some questions. For instance, "I don't believe it's the true story, but I do believe it has some inspiration from the Bible," he weighed in. 

"Do you know what makes me have suspicion about the story of Noah's ark from the Bible?" he continued. "How could there even possibly get two of each animal, one male and one female? There are thousands and thousands and thousands of species on Earth. Howe could he possibly get two of each of them on the ark?"

Noah's Ark'' by Edward Hicks.via Wikipedia

"Well, I suppose that would depend on how big the ark was," I conjectured. 

So then, our cartoon watching turned into a math problem. :)  Per the Bible, Noah's ark had three decks and internal compartments, and it measured 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

Naturally, our first order of business was finding out what the heck a cubit is. Turns out it's an archaic unit of measurement from the crook of the elbow to the tip of your middle finger. If you're CJ, that's 14 inches. 

So then, CJ calculated an ark based on his cubit.  It would be 350 feet long, by 252 feet.  As a basis for comparison, we looked up the measurements of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.  Those are 1092 feet long (three ark lengths per CJ's cubits), by 252 feet (four times wider than an ark per CJ's cubits).  

After calculating the length, width and height of it, CJ asked, "Can we try and get the volume of it? Length, times width, times height?"  Music to my ears! :)  

"Of course!" I enthused.  

The ark was supposedly 30 cubits high, or 35 feet per CJ cubits. So its overall volume was 714.175 cubic feet.  That's really not that enormous, and it seems implausible that two of every living creature could fit in such an area, I have to agree with CJ.

CJ had another problem with the ark story. "Second of all, some animals are only female," so how would it be possible to put one male and one female of each specimen?  "So, uh oh, in ancient time is there gender changing technology?" he wondered.

"Good point," I had to agree.

So all in all, a five-minute cartoon turned into a pretty interesting math, science, literaturem and more lesson.

Head East

EAST SIDE: Saturday we took a field trip across Lake Washington to Redmond, Bellevue and Sammamish, all suburbs east of Seattle.

The draw was the Sammamish River, which Christian and our friend Glenn kayaked on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, the kids and I drove to Bellevue's relatively new Bellevue Brewing Company, to meet them for lunch.  There, CJ and Annabelle donned the Frisbees that served as their plates under their lunches. (My friend Glenn took this photo.)

After lunch, we drove to Redmond, to walk a waterfront trail along the Sammamish River.  We parked right by Redmond City Hall, which had a neat water feature and sculpture out front.

The kids walked around in the water for a bit.

The park by city hall also had a couple of art installations.  This dancer was one of my favorites.

From a distance, we spotted what we thought to be a playground in the park, adjacent to the senior center. Turns out, it was exercise equipment.  But the kids didn't know that, so they 'played' on a rowing machine, an elliptical, with a bench-press type weight lifting machine and even did some situps.

  Fitness is fun! :)

The Sammamish River isn't particularly wide, and you're not going to see anything much bigger than a kayak floating down it.  It's a tranquil ribbon of water, winding between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish.

Glenn and Christian paddled past this couple in a canoe a couple hours before they saw them again, while walking.

There are a number of bridges over the river, including an old railroad trestle that was torched at some point in the past.

That must have been one heckuva fire.

We found some art work along the waterfront trail, on the east side of the river, including these beavers ...

and a striking native American Indian-influenced wood carving.  . 

The kids jockeyed for position in the cutout of this stone sculpture.

We happened upon a wedding in a grassy expanse, just moments before the bride walked down the aisle.  May they live happily ever after.

We were all impressed by the number of public art pieces we encountered in our short walk.  Turns out the city of Redmond has a public art collection over over 100 works of various mediums. Good for them - and for art lovers visiting Redmond!

And speaking of Sammamish, we've been watching Little League World Series games for the past several days, and the Sammamish team is representing the Northwest in the series. They won their first game handily, but suffered a defeat in their second game, when their starting pitcher got knocked out of action by a line drive.  They played their third game tonight (Monday), and won, which means they're still in contention. They play again tomorrow (8?20) at 5 p.m. Pacific.

While on the topic of Sammamish, I should mention that Forbes named Sammamish number one on its list of "Friendliest Towns" for 2012.  I'd love to know their 'scientific' criteria when it comes to determining that award.

And speaking of Sammamish again, I was curious where the city's name came from.  According to a couple of sources I found, it's from a couple of native inhabitants words, "samma," which means 'the sound of the blue crane (or heron)' and 'mish,' which means 'river.'  Christian said he and Glenn startled a blue heron during their Saturday paddle.

OVERHEAD:  We've had the pleasure of watching International Space Station fly overs several times over the past few days.  I don't think it will ever get old.  If you haven't done so already, do yourself a favor and go to Spot the Station's Web site: http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/home.cfm, and with a few quick clicks you can find out when the ISS is flying over your place in the future.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: On Sunday, we completed our two last assignments for our "Science of Gastronomy" course.  One assignment involved us having to make six (!) different sauces using various combinations of water, cornstarch, salt and curry powder.  The point of the assignment was to demonstrate how different the intensity of the curry flavor was by adjusting the cornstarch, salt and curry.  It was surprising and dramatic in some instances.  And the experiment made our house smell delicious.  I was hungry for curried something for the rest of the day.

Another lecture we watched was all about how gluten is formed in dough.  Its corresponding assignment required us to make four different dough balls, varying the recipes slightly (adding oil to one, vinegar to another, etc.).

The kids' hands were tired after kneading the tough dough for five full minutes.