Wednesday

FAMILIAR FOOTSTEPS: For our morning stroll we headed to the hilltop to our east, Queen Anne. We parked on the crown at the south end, and ogled old Queen Anne High School's architecture for a bit.

We also relived some very-not-fond memories of CJ's kindergarten year at John Hay Elementary back in the day. I was surprised to see the playground there is still so prison yard like, given the relative wealth of their PTA.

We walked the neighborhood, and of course had to walk past my paternal grandparents family home of many decades. The old home looks wonderful. I'd love to walk around its halls again some day. 

We enjoyed the neighborhood's views of Seattle Center, and admired all of the flowers in bloom.

We stared up at the huge radio towers, too. 

SIZING IT UP: Today we got to pondering how big (or small) our sun would look if you were standing on Pluto.  We ended up finding a great "Bad Astronomy" article all about that topic. Turns out that our sun would just be a bright point of light in the sky, somewhat like stars appear to us here on Earth. However, it would be considerably brighter than the stars in our sky. In fact, according to yet another informative "Bad Astronomy" article, the sun would look more than 250 times brighter than the full Moon does from Earth

That led us to wonder about the difference, if any, of daytime and nighttime skies on Pluto. 

We found a cool artist's concept sketch from the European Southern Observatory of what the view from the Plutonian surface might look like. Here, the bright spot in the sky on the right is the sun, and Pluto's moon (or satellite) Charon is shown on the left. 

Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, ranging from 4.4 billion km to just over 7.3 billion km from the Sun. However, the average distance is 5.9 billion kilometers, which means it's about 39 times the Earth’s distance from the sun we share. Interestingly enough, though Pluto's so far away from ol Sol, it would still look 250 times brighter than a full moon looks on Earth. 

STORYBOARDING: We finally started putting down on paper a picture book idea we've been talking about for well over a year. We have a draft of the first few pages, and Annabelle has completed Page 1's artwork. It will have to remain under wraps for awhile though. Stay tuned.

FROZEN: The kids have been having fun with the Rocket Pop molds this summer. Here, they hold a lovely concoction consisting of Diet Mountain Dew and gummy Smurfs. A delicacy, I'd say. 

EYE CANDY: The Facebook feed produced a link to a lovely tribute to Seattle's beauty. Called "Seattle Dream Pt. II, the video was made by F-Stop Seattle using over 50,000 photos and 51 time lapsed photo shoots. 
Seattle Dream Pt. II from F-Stop Seattle on Vimeo.