Friday Update

           Image: SpaceX
GETTING READY:  Today, SpaceX shared this lovely photo on social media of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule undergoing prep in Florida in advance of a planned April 13 launch to the International Space Station. 

Look at that shiny rocket. Its engine bells are absolutely sparkling!  Falcon 9 has nine Merlin engines on its first stage.  We sure hope they are able to land the first stage on the barge after the launch - that would be a remarkable accomplishment and a big step forward in making launches more affordable.

More about the mission on this NASA page: http://blogs.nasa.gov/spacex/, and check out an awesome graphic of Falcon 9 on SpaceX's Web site: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9

ECLIPSED: A Facebook post by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO) alerted us to the fact that very early tomorrow (Saturday, April 4) morning, we'll have an opportunity to see the shortest lunar eclipse of the century. 

At 4:58 Pacific Daylight Time, the eclipse will start, and 4.5 minutes later it will be over. Per NASA, portions of the eclipse will be visible from much of North America, observers in the western third of the continent have the best view. The moon will be low, on the western horizon during the event. 

During the eclipse,the moon will turn red, because Earth’s atmosphere acts as a filter and a prism of the sunlight. There's a good article about the event on the Sun's Web site: http://bit.ly/1asRmE9

And here's a short video about it. 


PONYPALOOZA: Tomorrow morning is a Big Darn Deal in the household, as it marks the premiere of Season 5 of "My Little Pony Friendship is Magic." CJ and Annabelle spent a little time today getting the television room ready. :)

Foolin' Around

TRICKSTERS:  April 1 only rolls around once a year, and we were ready right out of the gate this morning. Annabelle beat CJ out of bed, which meant she had time to cover the bottom of his computer mouse with a piece of paper, so that it wouldn't work properly. 

I got their little hopes up when I told them they were going to get brownies for breakfast.

They were more than a little disappointed when they wound up being letters made from brown construction paper. Ha ha!

Together, CJ and Annabelle flipped the display on Christian's computer screen with just a few clicks of the mouse. They also changed his Internet Browser homepage to that of a Havanese puppy breeder, ha ha. With two Havanese in the home, another one of those is about the *last* thing we need. 

I told the kids about a great hoax a newspaper pulled way back in 1825. (I learned about it from a Library of Congress education resources email I received a couple of days ago.)

Called "The Great Moon Hoax," in August of 1825, the New York newspaper The Sun published a six-part series (!) all about how life was found on the moon.. The author was supposedly Dr. Andrew Grant, who was purportedly a protege of renowned astronomer John Herschel. 

According to the Library of Congress account, the articles told "about goat-like creatures with horns and beards frolicking about on green turf," the moon's many water birds and animals, and even "a spherical amphibious creature that rolled along the moon beach."

But it didn't stop there! There was also news of upright, humanoid beings about four-feet tall, covered in short, glossy copper hair, except for on their faces. They also had wings "composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves of the legs.” 

Here is an artist's rendition that ran in the paper. Pretty far out!

The stories captured the fancy of an untold number of readers. However, when it was revealed that the "author" Grant was actually journalist Richard Adams Locke, the hoax was over (and I bet a whole lot of people were disappointed). 

We talked about how it would be virtually impossible to perpetuate such a hoax today, because there are so many other avenues for information beyond the daily newspaper these days.

A LITTLE SLIP:  Last night, via a NASA post on Facebook, we learned the launch date for the SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station has been pushed forward a couple of days. Ruh roh! That meant some scrambling (and extra expense) today, to rebook Christian's flights, lodging, etc. so that he can attend the NASA Social and launch.  The new launch date is Monday, April 13, with the NASA Social set to take place on Sunday the 12th through Monday the 13th.

Launches 'slip' all the time, for any number of reasons (weather, technical difficulties, people violating the safe range, you name it). 

EDITH'S HOUSE: Part of our scenery on a near daily basis is a squatty, tiny, unremarkable looking residence just north of the Ballard Bridge.

The humble abode, however, became famous a few years back when its resident, Edith Macefield, refused to sell out to developers, even for $1 million.

             photo via Wikipedia, from Ben Tesch
And so, the developers built around her. 

Never married and with no children, Edith lived much of her life alone, though she did spend years taking care of her mother, who died in the home. It was Edith's wish that she, too, would get to live out her life in the place.

During the construction, the project manager, Barry Martin, befriended Edith. He began taking her to appointments, making her meals, and paying visits on weekends. Their friendship seemed genuine, not opportunistic. 

When Edith died at age 86 in 2008, she left Martin the home. 

Check out the short story by CBS news at the following link. It gives you a glimpse of Edit, and inside the home, as she left it:. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-homeowner-who-wouldnt-sell-part-ii/

In 2009, Martin sold the home to Greg Pinneo, a guy who was going to use the structure to run a real estate "coaching firm" called Reach Returns. Rather ironically, the house is now in foreclosure, and set to be auctioned off. This has put the home back in the news, and that has prompted some to begin a balloon wall memorial to Macefield (a nod to the fact that the promoters of the movie "Up" hoisted a huge cloud of helium filled balloons over the place as a promotional stunt).  

The kids each blew up a balloon at home, wrote a message on it, and affixed it to Edith's fence (during a wild thunder and lightning storm, might I add).

However, it was neat to see that someone has put balloons, scissors, a marker and ribbon in the fence so that anyone who is so moved can add to the tribute.

There's an interesting twist to the sale of Macefield's former home. Broker Paul Thomas has told the local media that there's no set asking price, and that the highest offer isn't guarantee he keys. Rather, potential buyers have to guarantee that either the home or something will remain to honor Macefield.  It will be interesting to see what becomes of the place.  Stripped down to the studs, siding peeled off, and subject to weathering, it sure isn't a fitting memorial to Macefield in its present state.

ALIEN PLANETS REVEALED: This evening, we gathered 'round the telly and watched an episode of NOVA all about the hunt for and discovery of 'alien' planets. The hour-long program focused largely on NASA's Kepler mission, which has identified over 3,500 potential planets orbiting stars beyond our sun.

A fair amount of time was spent talking about Kepler-22b, which might have the right combination of elements to harbor life. 

You can watch the whole show on the NOVA Web site, here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/alien-planets-revealed.html

Marching Out

TRANSFERRED:  The zucchini are growing like gangbusters. We absolutely had to re-pot them today, and we hope they like their new, larger, temporary homes.

SPIN TEST:  Midday, we watched a live broadcast from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory having to do with the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project.  Today, the LDSD vehicle underwent a spin table test, which involved rotating the 15-foot wide, 7,000 pound test vehicle was spun at speeds up to 30 RPM to check its balance.  

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Soon, it will be packed up and shipped over to Hawaii, and come June, during an experimental flight test, a balloon will carry it to an altitude of about 120,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. It will be dropped, and then a booster rocket is supposed to kick in, which will carry it an additional 60,000 feet aloft. There, an 'inflatable' doughnut device will deploy, increasing the vehicle's drag, slowing it to Mach 2.5, when a supersonic parachute will deploy. After about a 45 minute descent, the saucer is supposed to make a controlled landing in the Pacific. 

All of this is to simulate landing on Mars, where the atmosphere is thinner than here on Earth, making controlled landings a challenge. 

An archived copy of today's LDSD Ustream telecast is available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/60585512.

EGGSTATIC:  While driving to a class this morning, we got to talking about how we'd like to make some sort of decorative eggs (tis the season), but we are bored with the dyed, hard-boiled variety.  Enter Pinterest. 

It didn't take me but a few minutes of poking around before I found an 'easy' project: Stuffing balloons with a candy, wrapping the balloon with glue-infused yarn, which should dry and then assume the shape of the balloon, which you then pop and, Presto! a candy in a yarn 'egg.' 

Everything was going fine until the first step - trying to stuff chocolates into tiny, tight balloon necks. 

Let's just say MANY a chocolate bunny was harmed in the making. 

We finally switched to chocolate eggs (after a run to the store), but frankly that wasn't easy, either.  Then came time to immerse yarn in watered down glue and wrap the egg. If you have any tactile sensitive types in the mix, (like, say, me and CJ), they will *not* like doing this, ha ha. 

We managed to get the 'eggs' wrapped, somehow. Stay tuned for what they look like if/when/after they dry... For some reason, I'm skeptical that they'll set up properly. 

FRIENDLY:  The kids keep plugging away at guitar. Today's new-to-them song was "We're Going to be Friends," a sweet little ditty by Jack White of the White Stripes. 
We found a great tutorial on YouTube by MartyZSongs, and the kids can already mostly make their way through it.


GAME ON:  Good news from Google Maps today. Now, you can play Pac Man in your neighborhood. Seriously. 

You can read the Google tutorial about how to make it happen (on your computer or even mobile device), but the short take is, go to Google Maps and click on the PacMan button in the lower lefthand corner. 

I gave it a go in a map of our neighborhood. It was fun chasing the ghosts down our street!

LIGHTS OUT:  We forgot to post this, from Saturday night, during Earth Hour, an annual event to raise awareness about the need for action on the climate change front. After turning off all the electronics in our house, we went to nearby Ursula Judkins Park to get a view of the Space Needle, which was set to go dark at 8:30, when Earth Hour commenced. 

History and Heritage

ROOTED:  On Sunday, we paid a visit to the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard. Our group included G&G who came down from Mukilteo for the afternoon. Our families have Norwegian and Danish heritage, and so the museum was a place to learn more about our forefathers (and mothers).  

The museum is housed in a gorgeous old school in northwest Ballard, and features three floors full of artifacts and artwork.

I'll let the kids tell you a bit more about it, starting with CJ: 

On March 29th, I went so see the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard, occupying a former school building. The museum's countries documented include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. While inside the museum, I learned about the process in which immigrants coming from a Scandinavian country had to go through to get to Seattle, with the process being the following: Take a steamboat from your country to Ellis Island, get checked for trachoma (don't look that up), and take a train from New York to Seattle. I learned that Scandinavian immigrants my age who had to farm would often live in these unclean-looking goat sheds that didn't even have a clean bed, and later on in the museum, that some Scandinavian families had to live in these crappy "houses" known as "slums," which were typically infested with rodents and weak, creaky stairs. On the second floor, we saw the exhibit "Finland: Designed Environments", which detailed Finnish culture and art in the last 15 years.

And here's what Annabelle had to say ... 

On the 29th of March, I went to the Nordic Heritage Museum. The museum used to be a school, and it had a lot of exhibit room as a result. The main exhibit was about how Nordic people arrived in America, more specifically Ballard. Most of the emigrants that arrived in Ballard were Scandinavian. It details how the maritime industry came to popularity, and how Ballard grew as more emigrants came. The other exhibits upstairs included different rooms for the many different cultures in the Nordic group. There was also a room about Scandinavian design, which included stuff like a really cool light-up swing and a necklace made out of a book. Another side room was about folk art and it featured things like ceramics, music, outfits, and others. The museum was, overall, very cool to look at. The only downside is that some of the mannequins in the cultural rooms freaked me out. Otherwise I really liked it.

There was so much to see and learn about. Following are a few highlights. Outside the museum, there was a replica of an old Finnish sauna.

We read many a story about emigrants' journeys to the United States. We learned about where they came from, why they came, where they settled ... 

and we learned about when they came (often in waves).

They couldn't bring much with them. Often, they had to pare their worldly possessions down to one trunk. 

One display showed a list of what immigrants would bring back then, contrasted with a list of what teenagers today say they'd want to bring with them should they have to emigrate.

We read about their new lives in the new-to-them country, and learned about how they worked to earn a living in the new country. We saw more than a couple amazing old devices for making weavings and lace.

One of the more interesting things we learned about on Sunday was the sinking of the Vasa, a Swedish warship built in Stockholm between 1626 and 1628. The grand ship, complete with bronze cannons, sailed a whopping 1,300 meters (1,400 yards) on her maiden voyage before foundering and sinking due to insufficient ballast.

               Photo by Peter Isotalo via Wikipedia

The ship rested in a watery grave for nearly 300 years, until 1961, when it was successfully recovered.

Today, the Vasa serves as a one-of-a-kind museum, and one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions.

Photo: Holger.Ellgaard, Wikimedia Commons

In addition to antiques, there were more contemporary items in the collection, including some troll-themed items from amazing August Werner, like the chair pictured below. 
                               

Born in Bergen, Norway, in 1893, Werner, a renowned vocalist, emigrated to the U.S. He eventually became a professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington from 1931 to 1965. Also an artist working in many media, Werner was a sculptor and painter. Werner was decorated by the King of Norway with the Order of St. Olav and as a Knight of St. Olav by the King of Sweden. 

There were a number of lovely old pieces of furniture on display. Had to love this convertible, space-saving bed dating back to pre-IKEA, ha ha.                                                                                  And check out this cool side saddle!                                                                                                     

The grounds around the museum were in full bloom. 

And we found a really cool sundial in the park next door. Too bad the sun wasn't out!

SAUCER SHOW:  Tuesday morning, NASA will test its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator spacecraft, more commonly known as NASA's flying saucer, due to its appearance. 

   Art from NASA

Tuesday's exercise will be a "spin table test," conducted at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. You can watch online from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Livestream in a live, interactive broadcast from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Here's the link: http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL2

The inflatable craft is 15-feet across, and uses drag to decelerate, which would come in handy for a soft landing on the Martian surface. 

MEANWHILE, IN THE ISS:  Love this graphic NASA released today about the #YearInSpace mission. It really puts it into perspective.