Spring in Our Step

Throwback Thursday, CJ circa spring 2004

SPRINGING INTO SPRING: Helloooooooo, spring! 

Today marked the vernal equinox, that special moment the sun crosses Earth's equator from south to north. That's right, we're in spring and inching toward summer now. Yahoo!

Today's equinox came at 10:57 a.m. our time. I told the kids they would literally be springing into spring and dragged the mini trampoline out into the front  yard. They thought I was a little crazy, but the good kind of crazy, I think.Te

The ground was so wet from recent rains, by the time they both got their spring on, the trampoline was darn near flush with the ground. I had to dig it out with a shovel and hose it off. Oh well. Worth it. :)

We each read a really great article "Everything you need to know: Vernal or spring equinox 2014,' by EarthSky, wonderful Web site I get daily email updates from. 

After the jumping and reading, I asked the kids to each write a cinquain poem about spring. (Scholastic's Poetry Idea Engine helped remind me that the form is:

Line 1 = 2 syllables telling the subject of the poem.
Line 2 = 4 syllables describing the subject.
Line 3 = 6 syllables telling about the subject.
Line 4 = 8 syllables about the subject.

Here's what they came up with:

This afternoon, we went for a nice long walk along the waterfront, from our 'secret' parking lot south into Belltown.

 We started in about the grain terminal. Annabelle noted a different ship was there today than during our last visit. The Aspasia Luck was flying under a Liberian flag. We looked it up on Marine Traffic, a really cool Web site where you can find the specs and whereabouts for ships all over the world.

Meanwhile, out on the bay, this ship awaited a port, we presumed.

We stopped to do a bit of ferry spotting.

And we saw a lone sailboat drift by.

We visited The Best Health Club in all of Seattle. What a view - and membership is free!

We checked out the salmon net pens in the bay. It's a transitional home for hatchery salmon. They just arrived and will hang out here, getting bigger and stronger, before being released for their journey home. 

Our turnaround point was an art installation made up of a trio of superbig boulders.

 The kids had no trouble scaling the largest one. They've grown since our visit last summer. :)

A BETTER BREAKFAST: I decided the kids wouldn't start the day off with breakfast, er, a bowl of sugary cereal, this morning, our fourth day of Hunger Action Week, where we're living off the 'basic food' allotment, $21 a day for our family of four.

Breakfast today was an apple apiece and one ounce of cheese. Cost: . Christian had yogurt and a Cutie for a total of 87 cents. The kids each had an apple (.42 times two) and one ounce of cheese (.16 each, for .32). Plus, our standard pot of coffee (.41). Breakfast total: $4.88

Lunch, Christian had already expensed home-made chicken nuggets and green beans. Sweet! The kids had what has become the standard mac-and-cheese - .56 cents. I had pepperoni, .25. Lunch total = 81 cents.

Dinner was kale (1.68 ) cooked with a bit of bacon (1.60) and non-bacon pork (2.35). Regarding the pork, I had a cheap Winco pork loin-ish roast which I cut into thin cutlets, dredged them in brown sugar and mustard (.20) and fried them up. They were a hit!

I took CJ, coupon in hand, to the store tonight after dinner to buy dessert. We got a great deal on ice cream, so they each enjoyed 5 ounces of Umpqua for a total of 52 cents.

Daily damage: $12.04 for food. Pretty frugal! Good thing, because when we were at the store this afternoon, the kids asked if they could have a soda. I asked them if they were willing to skip lunch for it.  The looks on their faces were priceless. Good news is, they didn't have to skip lunch. Bad news is, that was a $2.80 hit. So for the day, we're down to a $9.24 surplus. Still, not too shabby.

Don't Lose Your Head

Planarian Schmidtea mediterranea - photo by Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado 
TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: In science class this afternoon, the kids learned lots about planaria, masters of regeneration. Their teacher had found some planaria in the creek near her home and brought them in for the kids to see.

Cut the head off a planaria, and it grows a new one! Cut its tail off, and it grows a new tail, and the tail sectio you cut off grows a new head. Cut its head AND its tail off, and it regrows both, and those cut off sections grow a new head or tail. Crazy! Planaria can also grow two heads, and can regenerate an entire half of their body if you cut them head to tail down the middle. Fascinating!

This evening, we watched a video about planaria via the Exploratorium's Web site. Planaria expert Alajandro Sanchez Alvarado narrated it. Scientists are very interested in animals who can regenerate body parts, because that regeneration is fueled by stem cells, and if it works in other animals, perhaps it can be true of human parts, too. 

The science teacher also talked about  planaria eyes, which are really just primitive photo receptors or pigment cups. It tied in nicely with what last Sunday night's Cosmos was all about!

FEAR NOT: This afternoon we watched a captivating TED talk by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. 

Some of the content was similar to what we heard when we were fortunate enough to see him in Seattle at a Town Hall presentation. He talked about the process of launching, and how beautiful Earth is from space, likening it to "a self propelled art gallery." 

Photo: NASA

Hadfield also spoke of how coming back to Earth in a Soyuz is like "riding a meteorite."  

The astronaut had a very specific message in this talk, much of which was about "changing caveman reactions" to fear.  The title of the talk is  "Chris Hadfield: What I learned from going blind in space."
It's definitely worth 15 minutes of your time. http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_hadfield_what_i_learned_from_going_blind_in_space

SPOILER ALERT: I would encourage you to watch Hadfield's talk (link above) *before* you read CJ and Annabelle's reflections on his talk. Here's what CJ had to say ...

Chris Hadfield talked about how it was being blind in space, which, of course, is not good. Chris said that while he was spacewalking, some anti-fog (which was composed of oil and soap) got into one of Chris' eyes, blinding him in his left eye. This gave the eye pain, and tears from the left eye came into the right eye, completely blinding him. This made it so that Chris could not see anything, which is pretty bad when you're in space.

However, Hadfield didn't panic, and he eventually got back in the ISS. A fellow astronaut of Chris' wiped out some crust from Chris' eye with a rag, and that situation was over. Something from that that I am able to apply to my life is that Hadfield decided *not* to panic, and that made sure that he made it back in alive. That basically says: "Don't panic and you'll be fine."

P.S: Chris Hadfield said that now they use Johnson's No More Tears instead of anti-fog.

And Annabelle's perspective ...  

Commander Hadfield was out for a spacewalk, when suddenly his left eye snapped closed and hurt. He went blind in his left eye. What did he do? He jokingly wondered if that's why we have two eyes and continued working like it was nothing. No panic, no "OMG GUYS I NEED HELP!!!" He just kept working. Now, you see, in space your tears don't fall. So Chris' crying blinded eye had a huge ball of tears and whatever irritated the eye. Soon, the ball got big enough to go break surface tension, letting the tear-irritant mix to go over the bridge of his nose and into the other eye.  Chris Hadfield was blind.

He had to get help from his fellow astronauts and they found out it was just anti-fog (a mix of soap and oil) in his eye. Now they use Johnson's No More Tears instead of anti-fog.

What I learned from Chris Hadfield is that it can take awhile for childhood dreams to come true, and that you should never panic when you walk into a spiderweb. Also, use Johnson's No More Tears.

GOING FOR BROKE: Huger Action Week continues, and today's the halfway point. The kids had their usual cereal breakfast (.91), while Christian and I had our usual, coffee (.41 for the pot), totaling $1.32. Today was the monthly "Pizza Wednesday" at the kids' Shoreline school. We skipped that, because it would have been $2.50 apiece for a single slice of pizza (plus a pop and salad if they wanted). Instead, we bought a whole Little Caseser's pizza for $5.41, including tax. A splurge really, but a way for the kids to have a 'pizza Wednesday' and conform to our budget. The good news was, that $5 was pizza enough for their lunch AND dinner, bonus! I had a stick of pepperoni for lunch (.25), and Christian had leftover chicken nuggets from last night, which had already been expensed in yesterday's budget. That brought today's total to $6.99 with no dinner for me or Christian leaving $14.01 to go. We were $5.22 under Tuesday, and $6.68 under on Monday - that meant we were $25.92 ahead so far. My thoughts turned to happy hour ... The cheapest place in town we know of is Norm's in Fremont. Dare we do it?

We did. During happy hour their 'bottomless' sodas are $2, and any microbrew on the menu is $3. We ordered a (enormous) bowl of their house made potato chips for $4.99. When all was said and done (two sodas, four beers and plenty of chips for all), the damage was $21 and change. Yee haw. So going close to the bone Monday and Tuesday meant we could actually go out on Wednesday, and we're still a tad under. 

Back to prison rations tomorrow, LOL.

But seriously, as usual, we've had a number of really great conversations this week about why we're doing what we're doing. For instance, today at work, Christian told some co-workers about how educational it was figuring out the cost of each meal, and eye opening it is about how to stick to a strict budget. When one co-worker started grousing about people on food assistance driving Escalades, Christian had a constructive conversation with the person about the reality for the vast majority of people on basic assistance, many of whom are children with absolutely no say in how the adults in their lives spend their money. 

The fact of the matter is, rates of food insecurity are higher in households with children. According to the AntiHunger & Nutrition Coalition, nationally, nearly 16 million children live in households that experience food insecurity. That's 21.6 percent of all children. The Children’s Alliance estimates that up to 400,000 children in Washington live in food insecure households. 

Unfortunately, Washington ranks 15th among the states in hunger, one spot higher than  it did in 2011.

Seeds 'n' Stuff

POTTED: We're on Day 2 of UWKC's "Hunger Action Week," and I'm pretty sure thinking about food security and hunger is what prompted the kids and I to sow some seeds today, with hopes of a bountiful garden in the months to come. 

We headed across the Ballard Bridge to Fred Meyer, where we found all of their seeds on sale at half off. "Does this count toward our food today?" Annabelle asked while perusing the packets. I told her it didn't and she replied, "Good!" with enthusiasm. I let the kids each pick three or so packets of what they wanted to grow. Here's what we wound up with.

Once home we promptly got them into some soil. And now, there's a garden in waiting on our kitchen counter. :)

We also planted a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper plant today. It's the hottest pepper on the Scoville scale. 

I'm not sure if a) It will actually grow or b) anyone in this household would eat it, but it will be fun seeing what happens.

We also took time to refill the hummingbird feeder today. Those hummers are hungry things - we have to fill it about every other week.

OVER OUR HEADS:  At some point yesterday, we were caught on camera by Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata on board the ISS. 

He posted it to Twitter, commenting, "Flying over Seattle, WA. SEA-TAC is a big airport."  I highlighted some places on the map for people who aren't able to easily pick them out. 

NUMBER CRUNCHING:  We watched our food budget again today, of course, just two days into a 5-day Hunger Action challenge. 

Breakfast came to $2.77 (60 cents worth of Cocoa Puffs, a half cup of milk [.18], a pot of coffee [41 cents], two eggs for me [.24], and yogurt with an apple, banana and some almonds for Christian [$1.34]). 

Just before lunch, the kids and I went to the store. I have to admit, they were hoping mightily for a free sample in the bakery, but there was nothing there today, darn it. I made them mac and cheese again as soon as we got home, for a total of 48 cents. They also each had a Cutie, which meant another 40 cents. Three of us had a pepperoni stick, for .75. So lunch and snacks totaled $1.63.

Dinner was expensive :0 - 10.70 - YIKES!  We had oven baked, home made chicken 'nuggets' (chicken breast [5.98], eggs [.24], and corn flakes [1.25] to coat them), and fresh green beans [2.71]. The kids also had a couple of cans of Shasta, .52.  The good news is, we have LOTS of chicken left over for tomorrow, and it will be 'free' then.

So we were at $15.10 when the kids started chirping about dessert. Back to popcorn it was, 66 cents' worth. Daily total: $15.78, or $5.22 under budget. Phew. 

BACK TO THE BEATLES: Today we finished up the week 5 lectures for our "The Music of The Beatles" class. One of the lectures was about John's songs on The White Album, including 

"Revolution 9," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," and "Julia." 

When the professor told us Julia was about John's mother, I recalled a famous quote of Lennon's. He once said in an interview, "When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

I always loved that quote.

John had an interesting relationship with his mother. He spent most of his life living with his aunt, Julia's older sister, but he was very close with his musical, free-spirited mother. He visited her often, and she taught him how to play guitar, banjo, and accordion (whereas his aunt wouldn't even allow a record player in her house). 

Julia was struck by a car and killed at age 44, when John was a teen. He was devastated. His firstborn son, Julian, was named after her. 

Oddly, Julia's grave in the Allerton Cemetery in Merseyside, England, went unmarked for decades - it was just #805 with a plain, wooden cross. Not until 2010, 52 years after she was killed, did a headstone go up. It's inscribed: Mummy, John, Victoria, Julia, Jackie.

After the lectures, we took the week 5 quiz, and each scored 100 percent, keeping our 'perfect' streak alive. This coming week will be the last quiz and the final. 

BRONIES UNITE: One of the things that was trending in the newsfeed today was a story about a 9-year-old boy in North Carolina, Grayson Bruce.  Like CJ and Annabelle, Grayson is a big fan of "My Little Ponies Friendship is Magic." He has a Rainbow Dash backpack he carries to school, and a MLP lunch bag. Some bullies at school started giving him crap about that, including some physical attacks. The school's response? They sent a letter to Grayson's family telling him to leave his pony stuff at home because it's a "trigger" for bullies. In other words, blame the victim. 

How LAME and LAZY is that? So either the administration agrees and is one of the bullies, or they themselves were bullied by the bullies or their parents. In either case, it's clearly not acceptable. 

"My heart has just been broken," CJ said, reading the story.  I challenged the kids to find out more facts than the short story we initially saw provided. Soon, they'd found a Change.org petition in support of Grayson, and they both signed it. 

They also found out the name of Grayson's school (Candler, where Stephen Chandler is principal), and school district (Buncombe County Schools).  I did a couple of minutes of poking around on the district's page and under their "Safe Schools" tab on their front page, I found a link that said "Bullying." Ironically, on their bullying page it says, "Buncombe County Schools strives to foster a climate of respect and personal responsibility among students, and does not tolerate bullying in any form." Well, clearly that's not true, now isn't it?

Further, they say, "Anyone with knowledge of a situation involving bullying can either report the incident to school officials, or if preferred, may report the situation anonymously by either going to the school's homepage to complete an online form (Click on Report Bullying) or by calling our Anti-Bullying Hotline at 225-5292 to leave a message."

Hmm. Guess what we'll be doing tomorrow! :)  Won't be surprised if we find out their 'hotline' message mailbox is full. Bet Principal Chandler's email inbox is bursting at the seams, too (stephen.chandler@bcsemail.org). The very first sentence on his Web page makes me want to 
barf a little. It reads, "As principal, my job is to ensure that the children of Candler Elementary receive quality academic instruction in a safe and nurturing environment." Methinks someone needs to stay after school and write a nice, long essay on what 'nurturing environment' means.

At this point, I almost pity the misguided people who created this which has now gone absolutely VIRAL. It's trending in the top of all news stories in the U.S., right there with the missing Malaysian airliner and the news helicopter crash here in Seattle today. Heck, my favorite story about it so far was by a woman in Australia - her summation of the situation is spot on, IMHO. Read it here: http://www.mamamia.com.au/rogue/my-little-pony-backpack-banned/

CJ and Annabelle found Grayson's family's official Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/SupportForGrayson . It had over 36,000 likes as of this afternoon. Annabelle created a pony especially for Grayson. She made its body gray, for his name, and used a mane and tail similar to Rainbow Dash, since that's what Grayson's backpack is. She gave the pony a backpack 'cutie mark' as a show of solidarity. Annabelle sent it in a message to the page admin. They wrote back within a half hour, telling her they loved it. :)

I read in another article tonight that Grayson was pulled out of that stupid school situation and is being homeschooled at the present. I'm glad that he's not subjected to that treatment any more, and I don't blame his parents for pulling him out. When you realize that the administration/adults in charge are so wrong headed and are absolutely not going to protect your child, that's about all there is to do, especially in the short term. (I been there, done that!) One report said Grayson's mom is meeting with the district superintendent on Thursday in hopes of helping get things to a place where other kids in the future won't have to experience what her child did.  I hope she's successful. If nothing else, the dolts in that district *have* to have learned by now you DON'T MESS WITH PONIES AND BRONIES. 

Here We Go Again

TOP O' THE MORNING: It's that time of the year again for MPA - Hunger Action Week.  We've been participating in this social awareness experience for FIVE years now. The challenge is to live for one week (Monday-Friday) on a 'food stamps' budget.  For us, that means $21 a day for our family of four.   

Trying to get over a cold, I was last out of the gate this morning. When I came downstairs, I croaked, "I sure hope nobody's had anything to eat yet!" ha ha. 

Since today's St. Patrick's Day, the kid just *had* to have Lucky Charms for breakfast. And not just any Lucky Charms, but LIMITED EDITION ones where all the marshmallows are green clovers. Fortunately, the crap, er, I mean cereal, was on sale big time at Winco last week. 

We checked our receipt and figured out they were 17 cents an ounce. The kids each had 2.25 ounces. CJ always eats his cereal dry. This morning Annabelle proposed going without milk to save money. Sweet of her to offer, but I told her she could have a little milk. 

Of course, if you're going to have something as awful, er, I mean delicious, as Lucky Charms for breakfast, you have to have certified organic milk to balance it out, right? We calculated that a cup of it costs 37 cents, and then poured half that much on her cereal. 

Christian and I split a pot of coffee for breakfast, at 41 cents for the pot of "Seattle's Best." We probably should have gone with the canned stuff to save money!

We had a late morning snack, one "Cutie" apiece.

Earlier, CJ had calculated those to be 20 cents apiece. 

Lunch for the kids was a Winco brand box of mac-and-cheese (can't afford the high falutin' Kraft dinner stuff!). The box of pasta was 33 cents, they used 9 cents worth of milk, and one tablespoon of butter, which we calculated out to cost 6 cents.

All totaled, lunch was 48 cents for the kids. Christian and I were still going on coffee and Cuties, ha ha.

Late afternoon, we each had a stick of pepperoni, which set the family back a dollar.

Dinner, we went with a traditional St. Patrick's day meal. Thankfully, Winco had corned beef on sale for $1.38 a pound last week, so we bought a small ($3.67 total) one of those. We also made baked potatoes (55 cents for the four of us), and carrots - 49 cents worth. The total for dinner was $4.71. Not bad.

The kids each had a soda with dinner, 52 cents for two cans of Shasta diet cola. 

All in all, we did quite well today. The grand total for breakfast, lunch and dinner was $8.86. Go us! That left plenty of room on our $21 budget to enjoy the $5 growler of MacTarnahans, scored as a St. Paddy's day special. And, the kids and Christian all had big bowls of air popped popcorn - 4 ounces of kernels set us back 28 cents for the popcorn, 18 cents for the butter, that's just 46 cents for a delicious dessert. 

Final score: $6.68 under budget. Not bad for a "holiday dinner" day. :)

As a side note, in looking back at the blog to the first year we participated, 2010, we got $22 a day for our family - more money, and groceries cost less five years ago, for sure.

GREEN, GREEN GRASS: Late morning, we headed down to West Seattle. We wanted to pick up a couple things we left at Rick's, and we lugged our lawn mower and weed lopper along, since he owns neither, but his grass isn't waiting on him to get them! 

Annabelle wanted to help, and I was more than happy to let her. (Meanwhile, CJ was busy thinking. It consumed all of his attention.)

The yard looked great when we were done. There's something very satisfying about mowing the lawn, isn't there?

1968: We watched three lectures for our "Music of The Beatles" class. We're on the White Album now, two LPs full of amazing music. Annabelle drew a number of cute ditties in her notes today. Obviously, at one point today, the professor told us when "Hey Jude" went to number one (after a couple of Beatles' singles 'only' cracked the Top 10), it was declared The Beatles had returned.

There was also talk today about The Beatles' trip to India to hang out with the Maharishi. Not sure which Beatle is doing a TM pose here ... 

Truth be told, the entirety of Annabelle's notes are doodling - little drawings all over the page..

The one showing George asking another Beatle to play with him references the fact that on some White Album tracks, The Beatles didn't perform on one anothers' songs, or in some cases, they played on them, but recorded their parts in different studios.  "Cry Baby Cry" and "Piggies" are titles of a couple of George's tunes on the album, and two of Paul's titles are at the bottom.

BIG BANG THEORY: This morning, my Facebook and Twitter feeds were alive with chatter about a BIG scientific announcement. People were predicting it was going to be a monumental discovery having to do with the Big Bang, and at 9 a.m. our time, that turned out to be true. 

I've read a number of articles about it, but what (to me) it seems to boil down to is that there is now direct evidence of gravitational waves rippling through our just born (as in fractions of a second) universe. These waves are proof of cosmic inflation theories (which the kids and I learned about in a wonderful astrobiology course from the University of Edinburgh through Coursera). 

As NASA explained in a press release today, "This is the strongest confirmation yet of cosmic inflation theories, which say the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times, in less than the blink of an eye."

Below is a photo (courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech) of the BICEP2 telescope.

Stationed at the South Pole, it uses novel technology developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It includes an array of devices that "use superconductivity to gather, filter, detect, and amplify polarized light from the cosmic microwave background -- relic radiation left over from the Big Bang that created our universe," per NASA.

One post I saw today featured Stanford Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprising Professor Andrei Linde with results from the BICEP2 experiment. Linde is one of the 'fathers' of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse.

BICEP2 showed, for the first time, gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang."

Stanford has posted it for sharing (under a Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license). 

SPEAKING OF STARS: We're all loving the new "Cosmos" series. Last night was the second installment. The kids were rapt, and still talking about it today. If you haven't yet, check it out! Full episodes can be seen here: http://www.fox.com/watch/183733315515