Freeloaders

SUMMER FREEBIE FUN:  We started summer off with a bang, for no bucks!

Saturday morning, we hopped a bus to Pacific Science Center.  Before entering, we stopped to admire the sculpture to the east of the science center, "Sonic Bloom." Powered by the sun, these over sized flowers sing!

What prompted our visit to PacSci on Saturday was a free screening of a movie they're considering for a run on one of their IMAX screens. I received a members-only invite a few days back, and jumped at the chance right away.

The movie was called "Watermelon Magic" and the trailer (below) I watched on its Web site looked really cool. The whole film was made by stitching over 200,000 high resolution stop motion images together. It's visually stunning, without a doubt.
"Watermelon Magic" Trailer from Spring Garden Pictures on Vimeo.
However, our party was split on our overall impressions of the film, with Annabelle and Christian liking it more than CJ and I did (we didn't care for the magic wand element to the story).
After the film, we tore outside and toward the open lawn at the Center near the International Fountain. That's where there were a couple of (free!) concerts being staged. The concerts were for Seattle Marathon finishers, but staged in the open air on public ground, there were plenty of interlopers, like us. ;)

First up were The Presidents of the United States of America. I've been a fan of theirs for 20 years now, and the kids know and love their music, too.

 Lead singer Chris Ballew always looks like he's having big fun when performing, and it's infectious.

 We loved drummer Jason Finn's old school Mariners drum kit!

It was a great set, and we had no trouble getting right up to the stage (we were fresher than those poor marathon runners, ha ha).

After the Presidents, we went and splashed around in the International Fountain for about a half hour. While there, we noticed a solar halo. Maybe the sun's way of saying, 'Hello, summer!' (at least for those of us above the equator!).

Before too long, it was time to head back to the stage, because Seattle rap icon Sir Mix-A-Lot was up.

 He was wonderfully entertaining, a storyteller with great rhythm and rhyme.

What a fun start to summer - and today, the freebies just kept coming! For the second time in about a month, we scored a free pizza thanks to Domino's "DomiNoNo" promotion, which involved them giving away 20,000 free pizzas each time a Major League pitcher threw a no hitter for up to two no hitters this season. To win one, you had to log into their (very busy) Web site at the appointed time and hope for the best.

I was lucky and scored a free one when Dodgers pitcher Josh Beckett pitched a no-hitter back at the end of May, and last week another Dodgers' pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, pitched a no-no, and this time Christian scored a free pizza.

Too bad they're only doing the promotion twice this year!

SOME SCHOOLIN': We're not only about fun and games and food, of course.  This weekend we did manage to finish watching the lectures for weeks 5 and 6 our our history of rock class, and took the Week 5/6 exam. We've just got one week left in this session, and will have to take the final by this weekend.