Fun and Games

SO GROSS:  On Saturday, we headed to Pacific Science Center for the chance to see the special exhibit "Grossology," as well as meet Sylvia Branzei, the creator of the popular body-function-centric Grossolgy books and more of the same name. 

Above, CJ and Annabelle work together to make this big guy belch.  Wonder if that's a can of Mountain Dew CJ's standing by!

We entered the exhibit through this wide open mouth.

 Here, CJ takes skin crawling quite literally. 

Naturally, the display showing the mechanical process behind barfing was a big hit.

 CJ took advantage of the opportunity to craw through an ear tube.

 There was a neat-o pinball machine that was all about how gas is formed in our bodies.

 Talk about a toothy grin on the pig atop the pinball machine!

After we toured the exhibit, we were lucky enough to get to meet "Her Grossness" who was there for a special lecture for which I scored tickets.

We got there early and sat in the front row. CJ was lucky enough to be called up to assist with the first experiment, making edible barf. (All together now ... Ewwwwwwwwww!)

 Here he is, taking a bow after his successful assistant gig.

And here's what the end result looked like. ...

After the lecture, we bought one of Branzie's Grossology books, and had the author sign it!

In other PSC news, I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about the Grossology experience. 

On September  19, I went to a presentation at the Pacific Science Ccenter about “Grossology”, a best-selling book by Sylvia Branzei. Before the presentation, we went through the exhibit briefly. It included a lot of facts about “gross” things. It also included a lot of interactive things such as a mechanism you could use to simulate vomiting (which used colored water, a pump, and a tube representing and esophagus). During the presentation, We learned how to make fake edible barf (using Jell-O, candied fruit pieces, and other things), fake wounds (using petroleum jelly, food coloring, parchment paper, and cocoa powder), and more facts about gross things like that. Did you know that cows eat grass, then throw it up later to fully chew it? This is so they can make a quick getaway if a predator interrupts them while they’re feeding. The presentation was interesting and I’d like to learn more. I would suggest both the exhibit and presentation to anyone who doesn’t mind talking about the “gross” parts of life.

In other Pacific Science Center news, when we arrived on Saturday, we were happily surprised to see the high ride bike was still open.  I guess it *is* still technically summer!

Annabelle is happy she's tall enough to ride it this year. 

 At this point, CJ is a grizzled old veteran of the ride. 

We were happy to see this informational sign alongside the attraction, explaining the laws of physics behind it.

GAME ON: Sunday, we spent part of our day at the Living Computer Museum, which was host to the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo. 

Here's a short recap of the event from CJ. 

On September 20th, 2015, we went to the annual Seattle Retro Gaming Expo in the Living Computer Museum, a frequent location we visit. The primary theme of the expo was retro video games, which usually means games made prior to the sixth generation of consoles, which included the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, and Dreamcast.

At SRGE, there were thousands of different games, including these things known as "reproduction carts". Reproduction carts are cartridges with a customized ROM on them, usually a rom hack of a game made available on the internet. One particularly interesting game was Steel Battalion for the Xbox, which had several large controllers and took up a lot of space.

There was also a station where you could rent a game from the person running the stand, and bring it into one of the two rooms with multiple consoles in them to play it. Lastly, there was a marketplace, where you could buy retro games and bring them home.

Overall, I had a good time at SRGE 2015.