Treasure Hunting

RELICS: Today we took a field trip to Second Use, just south of the stadiums in the Sodo (South of Downtown) part of Seattle.

We were looking for flooring for the office of Rick's place. We found what we needed (at a great price!) but we also had fun perusing the store's eclectic selection of non-building material relics. For instance, they had a Sanborn Viso-Cardiette 1940s electrocardiograph. Housed in wooden box, it has dials and a window through which you view the cardiograph tape. Cool!!!

Nearby was a centrifuge, complete with original glass test tubes! Obviously, that's something you'd expect to find at a recycled building materials store!

A sign on it said it apparently used to be used to swirl bear blood. Neat-o!

We also ogled this century-plus old drill press. 

And I had fun giving the kids clues regarding what the machine pictured below is. ... 

They didn't guess it was a movie (projecting) camera. 

Speaking of cameras, I had lots of fun explaining this relic to the kids.

I LOVED it, as it conjured up fond memories of hours and hours I spent in the darkroom in decades gone by. I explained to the kids how once upon a time you had to take your film, develop it, take these things called negatives from that, and use an enlarger (like above) to project light through the negatives onto light sensitive paper for the exact right amount of time. Then, you'd take that special paper and put it into a chemical developer bath, followed by a wash and a fixer. A little different than the digital photos they knew exclusively in their lives. 

We did finally make our way to the building materials. As we walked down an aisle of doors doors doors, I laughed out loud when I saw this graffiti on one ...

I'll bet Grumpy Cat wouldn't agree with that sentiment. 

TIDE IS TURNING: We took some time out this morning to watch a 5-minute presser with Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway. Probably not something that would typically be in our curriculum, but he was announcing his decision not to defend Kentucky's ban on marriage equality in court. 

His words were oh-so-carefully chosen as he explained, "As attorney general of Kentucky, I must draw the line when it comes to discrimination." He said the issue is "larger than any single person," and his decision was about "placing people over politics." In conclusion, he said he hoped "we all find ways to work together to build a more perfect union."  Amen to that.  And in that same vein, the Dalai Lama announced his support of gay marriage today. The tide has turned, I'd say. 

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SUN: Learned today that my favorite Seattle weatherman of days gone by has moved on to permanently sunny skies, zero chance of rain. Harry Wapler was the weatherman during the Mariners' great runs in the late 1990s. Ironically, baseball was being played under a dome in those days, but still, he was part of the KIRO Seattle newscasts during that golden era, and I'll remember him fondly for that roever. Love this old clip of him and Seattle icon JP Patches.

MUSICAL: We're still working through our Beatles class, and this evening, I thought I'd introduce one of George Harrison's post-Beatles projects to the kids. The Traveling Willburys, featuring Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Harrison was remarkable. It's both fun and frustrating to think about how much more great music they would have produced had not Orbison died. Their first album was recorded over a 10-day period in May of 1988.

Frights and Sights

 

IN THE PINK: It poured last night, and early this morning, too. But starting at about 9:30, we managed to squeeze in a fairly dry, one-hour walk. We were pleased to see the trees lining the main east-west drag in our neighborhood are all in bloom. They stretch on for a few blocks - pretty! 
       
SPRING COMES CLOSER: Today, we made a positive step forward toward the next season. We now have in our possession tickets to the Mariners' home opener on April 8. Yesssssss!  Below is a Throwback Thursday photo to commemorate the event!
                
We also got tickets for the Mariners' 2014 Open House today. On March 31, the first day of the MLB season, the Mariners are on the road, but Safeco Field will be open to the public for a viewing party. We went last year, the first time they held such an event, and it was a BLAST.

OUTSIDE THE BOX: We watched a video today about a prototype for a very nontraditional NASA rover. Called "Super Bot Ball," it's revolutionary design would allow it to traverse terrain in a way completely different than all of NASA's past rovers. It's hard to describe a collapsible rover with no wheels. Just check out the video here to see it for yourself: http://news.yahoo.com/video/nasas-latest-robot-100545676.html

TABLED: This afternoon we headed to West Seattle. I forgot to mention last week that the kids have started a 6-week yoga class and 'social studio' there. It's led by the kids' longtime, wonderful yoga teacher Nicole, and for this session she's partnering with another wonderful professional, Ann. 

Since we had to be in West Seattle any way, we combined the trip with going to pick up an item I found for Rick's house on Craigslist. The piece of furniture was at a lovely waterfront home on West Seattle's Beach Drive. As we went to find the place, we discovered a new-to-us park, Lowman Beach. 

It's a downright disaster now, all muddy, fenced off, with heavy equipment everywhere thanks to a renovation and MAJOR sewage treatment construction. But we'll definitely be back to the beachfront property. It's secluded and will be a gorgeous park once work there is done. 

Per the city of Seattle's Web site, the park dated back to 1909, when the Yesler Logging Company gifted it to the city. It's named after James D. Lowman, who was a teacher when he arrived in Seattle in 1887, but later became a wharf master for Henry Yesler, and later a bookstore and printing business owner and eventual city parks commissioner. 

While Lowman Beach Park isn't much to look at right now, there's a house next door to the park that is a sight to behold.

 I've never seen the house before, but from what I can gather online, some of the decorations seem to be a rather in your face protest to the adjacent construction. 

From what I can glean on the Internet, the home is owned by a doctor of psychiatry, who used to have some kind of diorama of ducks in the front yard. Now, there's a placard at the top of his house that reads "The Duckies are Gone! Long live the sewage tank!"

We live in such an interesting world ... 

We found the house with the furniture, and got it transported to Rick's just fine ...except when I backed in his driveway and put the ol  CR-V into 'park,' clouds of something started billowing from below my hood in a big, BAD way. "My car's on fire!" I cried. 

Fortunately, it was 'just' steam, caused by a blown hose. Christian quickly spotted it, pulled it off, walked one block to an auto repair place, bought another hose for $1.90 and had it fixed within 10 minutes. It was a miracle, really. The best kind of car trouble ever. Had that happened to me on, say, the Viaduct or freeway, yikes, I don't even want to think about it! But the timing was as good as one could hope for, and the repair fast and easy, so we can't complain. 

And after all the drama, the table looks super ... :)

Getting Centered

ZEN RETREAT: Know a really lovely way to spend a lunch hour? Go to a garden center! That's what we did between the kids' math and science classes today. During our pleasant perusing, we spied a number of yoga frogs. The pair above  was adjacent to a concrete bench, so I had to have the kids attempt to recreate the scene.

Yesterday's mail brought "junior gardener" newsletters from Sky Nursery. It's right by the school the kids attend in Shoreline on Wednesdays, so we visited the nursery today. The newsletter included a coupon good for a free pack of poppy seeds in March, and so we went to pick those up (noting, at the time, it's IMPOSSIBLE to think the word 'poppies' without hearing the Wicked Witch of the West's voice. ...

Hopefully CJ and Annabelle's poppies will be of the friendly, non-narcotic variety. ;)

Today, they test drove a variety of expensive outdoor furniture. ... 

 
We stopped by the Jr. Gardeners' desk. 

Annabelle spent some time coloring.

Meanwhile, CJ and I checked out the nearby groundcoverings, including many "Stepables."  We agreed that we really didn't like the name of this one ... 

it conjures up creepy images of babies crying when you step on the plants. Ewwww.

FLY BY: After the nursery, we hustled back to school so we had a few minutes to check in on an asteroid in the neighborhood. Specifically, asteroid 2014 DX110. 

We checked coverage on both live.slooh.com and space.com.  It was fun watching the 100-foot rock hurtling through not-too-distant space.  In fact, the asteroid was closer to Earth than is our own moon!

We told the kids' science teacher about it, and as class started, she put the traveling asteroid up on the big white board, and led a discussion about what types of material it might be made up of, which was very apropos, given the kids just finished a unit about geology last week. 

While we were watching, it made its closest approach to Earth, about 217,000 miles (350,000 kilometers) away. 

Short Stuff

Image credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA; http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140302.html 

RED SUNSET: Imagine, what it would be like, standing on another planet in our solar system, and watching our oh-so-familiar sun set. If you were on Mars, it would look like what's pictured above.

As part of its Mars mission, robotic rover Spirit, deployed in 2005, was programmed to park and watch our sun sink below the Red Planet's Gusev crater.

The photo isn't too far off what our human eyes would see, as fine particles suspended in the thin Martian atmosphere tint the sky a reddish color. The dust also scatters blue light forward, creating the bluish glow near setting Sol. 

The sun is less bright on Mars, as compared to Earth, because it's farther away there, of course, and it only appears to be about two thirds of the diameter it appears from Earth. 

PUBLISHED POETS: Today's mail brought the quarterly Junior Gardeners' newsletter from Sky Nursery. As I opened the newsletter, I recalled the kids had submitted gardening related haikus for consideration, per a call in the previous newsletter.

Lo and behold, on the very first page inside the newsletter, there they were. The kids were very excited.

"They spelled my first name wrong and didn't include my last name, but oh well," Annabelle said, good naturedly, and genuinely pleased. :)

NORWEGIAN MORNING: I spent most of the morning working on a report with a today deadline. The kids spent the morning enjoying lectures about and listening to The Beatles. One of the song "close ups" they heard today was about "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," a song written about John. Such a pretty ditty, with lyrics that aren't quite as sweet (especially the end, where he burns his love's house down).  The song was the first of The Beatles' that employed use of the sitar, played by George.

In case you're wondering, Norwegian wood, per Paul is "pine, really cheap pine."  The song, by all accounts (John, Paul, and friends) is about John's indiscretions while married to Cynthia, his first wife.

Another song talked about was "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." While the title of this tune might make one think it's about John's further indiscretions, it's actually a song about the band's manager, Brian Epstein.

Epstein was gay, which was actually a crime at the time in England. So Lennon wrote about Epstein and others who had to, basically, 'hide their love' in order to conform to society's norms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz7IjXu0DfQ
LOVE this video of The Beatles performing the song, from their movie "Help!"

We are now halfway done with our Beatles class, and the kids are jazzed they have scored 100 percent on all their quizzes so far.

DOWN SOUTH: This blog post is short on content because we spent most of the afternoon in West Seattle (MPA South at this point!). I actually made a full fledged dinner in his kitchen for the first time, complete with multiple appetizers. Nice to know his kitchen works, it certainly got the biggest workout of the "Rick Era" so far, LOL. We were there because his 'contractors' came over for a meeting at their behest. Silly us, we thought they would want to discuss all of their misdeeds and shortcomings and fibs to date. Hahaha. Nope, they were there all about trying to upsell/add on work. Lame sauce. 

Flying High

UP AND AWAY: This afternoon we paid a visit to one of the kids' favorite places in the world - iFLY, for some indoor skydiving action.

The kids have both 'flown' in the wind tunnel a couple/three times before, but it's been months and months since we've gone. They were so darn excited on the way there.

After all of the 'pre-flight' activity (watching an instructional video, getting suited up and such), they made their way to the tunnel.

I'll let them tell you about their experience. Here's Annabelle's video she filmed at the facility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Iz89Sr_xI0M


And here's CJ's take (tho his video seems a little off, I must say http://youtu.be/uwoMpsjYEQQ#aid=P9rK0aUg6kI

But that's OK, because Christian captured some video with his cell phone.
Ceej flight 1: http://youtu.be/ntoh0CHLr_A

Ceej flight 2: http://youtu.be/uwW4aSrsgqM

Bee flight 1: http://youtu.be/SozhiqkHQo8

Bee flight 2: http://youtu.be/CwnmflICYvs

The second flights are when they shoot up the tunnel at the end

And I love the end of Annabelle's second flight, where the instructor purposely parks her short of the door. The result is just like the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where poor Dorothy is trying to get into the storm cellar with the twister approaching.

Naturally, their favorite part was flying toward the top of the wind tunnel!

MOVIE MINDED: Sunday seemed like it would up being all about movies. Just after noon, we headed to Southcenter to see the new LEGO movie. It was terrific!

Well written, visually engaging, good voice acting, fun music, tons of humor and plenty of sentimentality, too. We gave it eight thumbs up.

Upon arriving home, we checked out the LEGO movie Web site. There, we had fun creating ourselves in LEGO form.   Here's CJ's 'self portrait.'

And here's me!
                                       
If you want a challenge, I double dog dare you to listen to this song, "Everything is Awesome" and try NOT to sing it for the rest of the day. It's an 'earworm' of the first order.


On Sunday evening, we watched the Oscars. For a chance we'd actually seen some of the movies which were nominated for awards, including "Gravity," which was up for best picture.

It was fun watching various NASA accounts' Facebook feeds during the show. They were picking up on the "Gravity" theme and posting all sorts of great off-planet, microgravity shots, like this awesome one from 1999 of Astronaut Steven L. Smith retrieving a power tool while standing on the mobile foot restraint at the end of the remote manipulator system on board the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA

And of course there had to be shots of Bruce McCandless II's adventure wearing the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). Here, McCandless was photographed further away from the safety of his ship (space shuttle Challenger) than any previous astronaut has ever been. Hard to believe this photo, taken on Feb. 12, 1984, is over 30 years old now. Wow.

The MMU was a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. In this free fly (which definitely reminds me of the movie "Gravity," McCandless was 320 feet away from the Orbiter. Talk about trusting your equipment!
Image credit: NASA

SONG CLOSE UPS: We are still enjoying our class "The Music of The Beatles." We're in Week 3 of six, and this week (so far) is focusing on 1965, and the release of the albums "Help!" and "Rubber Soul."
From time to time, the professor will focus more closely on certain titles. Today, he talked about "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." A John Lennon song, it has a distinctly Dylan-esque sound not only in the music, but it's almost as if John is trying to sound like Bob Dylan. The song was written and recorded not too long after Dylan met The Beatles and encouraged them to write more serious and less pop music.

We also learned more about "Yesterday," penned by Paul McCartney. We were lucky enough to get to see him perform it in an encore last summer at Safeco Field. Here's someone in the crowd's video. As you'll hear, it was basically a sing along. http://youtu.be/lNkc2oaMhj4

Speaking of song close ups, here's a closeup of CJ playing a song. :)