Fruitful Friday

PRODUCING:  Fruit and vegetables continue to grow all around us . We have an enormous old grape vine in our yard. Its trunk is several inches around and its vines span probably 40 lineal feet. We've never done anything with the grapes. They're white and pretty tart and would require a ton of sugar to make them more palatable in any form. But if anyone has any ideas, feel free to send them our way!

DOG DAYS: As much as we love 'organic' learning, flowing from one teachable moment to the next, lately I've been missing having an ongoing, more structured class as part of our day. So, last night I started perusing Coursera.org looking for classes the kids might enjoy.

I found a dozen plus I'd love to enroll them in, but the one I knew they'd get the biggest boot out of: Dog Emotion and Cognition, offered by Duke University, no less!

According to its intro page on Coursera, the class will introduce us "to the exciting new study of dog psychology, what the latest discoveries tell us about how dogs think and feel about us, and how we can use this new knowledge to further strengthen our relationship with our best friends."

We have two canines, both Havanese. We liked Kirby, 6, so much as a young dog, three years ago we thought getting a second Havanese would be a great idea, enter Laika, 3.

Laika and Kirby have some commonalities (four legs, fur, breed, some common ancestors), but they are quite different in many ways.  Laika was the runt of her litter and, to borrow the words of a vet, she's a bit of a 'poor specimen.' 

She seems to have some, um, organic cognitive challenges, shall we say. But she's our poor specimen, so we continue to try to find ways to work together to make things better for all involved. Maybe this Coursera class will help us understand more about our four legged, furry friends. It's taught by Brian Hare, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, and author of "The Genius of Dogs," a New York Times Bestseller.

We'll see if Professor Hare can help us tap into Laika's (alleged) genius. ... Stay tuned.

We watched the first couple of course lectures in our open air classroom, with Laika looking on, of course.

IN CIRCLES: We continue to plug away in the Singapore 6B math workbook. Today, the kids learned how to calculate the area of a square thanks to YouTube user Nathan Shields, a man with a love of artful pancakes and, apparently, math.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7WEkuTS7s

MEANWHILE, NEAR SATURN: NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its final close approach to Saturn's moon Dione this week. Check out a photo from that fly by ...

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI Released: August 20, 2015 (PIA 17201)

See the line behind the moon? It's Saturn's rings (with Saturn being all of the dark gray you see behind Dione). How cool is that? You can read more about it on a mission page. http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/222/Cassinis-Final-Close-Views-of-Dione

Just Another Wednesday

WOODSY:  Today's high was expected to be 95, and our dogs have certain expectations of us, and those expectations include a walk, so we went early and in the shade. We're lucky Discovery Park is close to home. 

We were but two blocks from home when the kids started screaming about a spider. But it wasn't the usual spider screams you'd imagine. Rather, they were worried about a spider who had built a web on our car, including on the passenger side rear view mirror. 

Fortunately, he managed to hang on from our house to the park, and at that point we 'rehomed' him to the nature preserve. May he or she live long and prosper.

We went for a good long hike in the park, purposely taking forks in the road unfamiliar.

But at this point, we know the general geography of the park enough to never get too far off track. 

We made this "treepee" one of our last stops in the park.

MEANWHILE, OUT THERE: Weeks have passed since the awesome and historic pass of NASA's New Horizons out Pluto's way. While that event has come and gone, the data continues to pour in. This wonderful video, from the PBS Digital Studios' "It's Okay to Be Smart," highlights some of the things we've learned since the encounter. 

https://youtu.be/WwRvWMRUhKE

Today, we also took a couple of minutes today to watch the latest trailer for "The Martian," a movie that's set to arrive in theaters on October 2.

Plenty of people at NASA are geeked about the novel and movie, and today the agency issued a press release featuring Nine Real NASA Technologies in 'The Martian.'

The release noted, " 'The Martian' merges the fictional and factual narratives about Mars, building upon the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and moving it forward into the 2030s, when NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface to explore. Although the action takes place 20 years in the future, NASA is already developing many of the technologies that appear in the film"  

You should read the full story (here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nine-real-nasa-technologies-in-the-martian), but in a nutshell, parallels include NASA crews training for long-duration deep space missions in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA); Veggie, a deployable fresh-food production system
 Aboard the International Space Station; oxygen generation and water recovery systems; spacesuit innovations; solar arrays and  ion propulsion for space travel; rovers for travel on planet; and using Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators(RTGs) to provide electrical power for two dozen space missions.

Beach Bums

BEACHY KEEN: We have spent a fair amount of the past two afternoons at four different beaches along the shores of Puget Sound. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, to be sure.

A Groupon for an hour rental of a four-person surrey (pedal car) prompted us to go to Alki Beach in West Seattle on Monday, midday.

It was a lot of fun pedaling along the waterfront. The weather was perfect and the views were spectacular.

 What a gorgeous place to live! Below, you can see the Eagle (red object in lower left) statue at the Olympic Sculpture Park, the Pacific Science Center arches (white), and the Space Needle (obviously!) 

 Meanwhile, one of the Washington State Ferries motored by.

Here's a short video of our cruise.

Today, we got together with an art class friend of Annabelle's and checked out a trio of 'secret' parks.

First stop was the end-of-the-road park in Magnolia, at the foot of 32nd Ave West, and then we headed to the Fourmile Rock beach, a bit further west.

 Then, we headed over to Ballard and took a path to a pocket beach between Anthony's restaurant and the Ballard Elk's Lodge. It's nice because it has sand (as opposed to the rocks covering most Seattle beaches). However, today, most of the sand was covered in (rather stinky seaweed).

Regardless, we were glad to have discovered the spot, and will be back to starfish hunt another day.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: We here at MPA are already rolling around the Red Planet on Curiosity, but today, NASA announced another opportunity for us to travel to Mars. 

Space enthusiasts around the world can participate in NASA’s journey to Mars by adding their names to a silicon microchip headed to the Red Planet aboard NASA's InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch next year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

"Our next step in the journey to Mars is another fantastic mission to the surface," said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a NASA press release. "By participating in this opportunity to send your name aboard InSight to the Red Planet, you're showing that you're part of that journey and the future of space exploration."

Submissions will be accepted until Sept. 8. To send your name to Mars aboard InSight, go to: http://go.usa.gov/3Aj3G

We got our boarding passes this afternoon!

Whirlwind Weekend

GAME ON: Saturday morning we headed to the Sodo neighborhood for an event we've been looking forward to for weeks. It was the Living Computer Museum's "Free Play," an annual event where the museum is open to the public for free, and they have a number of special attractions in addition to their usual (amazing) collection.

Even before we entered the facility, we encountered balloon artists and a face painter.  

        Photo: LCM 
Usually at festivals we talk Annabelle out of getting her face painted because lines are too long. On this occasion, we were there early enough to avoid lines. Ironically, the only girl ahead of us was a child who was in the kids' Gustafer Yellowgold singing/songwriting workshop a couple of weeks back. Small world. 

The first step made Annabelle look like she had a terrible bruise ... 

 But bit by bit it was transformed into a beautiful butterfly. 

But onto the games. :)

The kids got their Donkey Kong on ...

as well as Moon Patrol, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and a number of other arcade favorites.

 

One of the features at the event was a big screen, which Annabelle took to like a fish in water.

There was also a room dedicated to retro console games, which made CJ especially happy. :) (In fact, the LCM will host the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo this September. We have been to the SRGE a couple of times before but didn't go the last couple of years because we weren't so thrilled with the 'organization' of the event. However, now that it's going to be at LCM, we're optimistic that it will be legit. Our experience Saturday was great, so we're all in this year.)

I'd like to go on the record to say that I completely and entirely kicked his arse at the Tengen two-player Tetris game. I feel like my retro game street cred just climbed a notch or two. Go me. :)

Here is what Annabelle has to say about the event: 

On August 15, I went to the Living Computer Museum for “Free play”, an event that involved many arcade games and pinball games all set to free play mode, so you could play all you wanted without paying. They also had carnival games like a ring toss and games for consoles like the NES. The game I liked the most was probably the arcade game “Moon Patrol”, a game about shooting aliens and jumping over pits while surviving for as long as you can. Outside the museum, we saw people making balloons and face painting. I got a fish on a fishing rod balloon, and butterfly face paint. Overall It was fun and I would definitely go again.

As Annabelle mentioned, there were a couple of carnival games, which seemed like an odd one-off to all else that was going on, but the kids enjoyed it.

Here's what CJ had to say ... 

On August 15th, 2015, I went to the Living Computer Museum to their Free Play event, where there were several retro video games on display that we could play. In the arcade room, there were multiple arcade games, including Space Invaders (which I failed pretty terribly at), Moon Patrol, Galaga, and Pac-Man. Another game that was availible in the arcade room was Vs. Super Mario Bros, a somewhat obscure version of the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. There was another room that was filled with several retro video game consoles, including the NES, SNES, Atari 2600, and the Dreamcast. On the Atari 2600, I played E.T. and the port of Pac-Man, just as bad as ever. We were able to rent NES games from one counter, and we rented the Tengen version of Tetris. On it, I played co-op mode with my mom, which is pretty much screwing your partner (and sometimes yourself) over.

Overall, I had a very fun time at Free Play.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH:  We spent a bit of time trying to be good neighbors this weekend. For instance, in our walks and drives, I've noticed a number of shopping carts that have been stolen from the local QFC. We decided our Sunday walk would involve rounding up a few of them and returning them. We started with one thrown into the blackberry bushes at the end of our alley. From there, we walked several blocks down to Thorndyke and picked up a couple that were stashed next to an abandoned auto repair shop. We had three in possession as we walked toward QFC across the railroad bridge.

We found one more at the north end of the bridge, so in all, we had four as we returned to QFC. That's gotta be at least $400 worth of QFC merch. We just put them in the collector in the parking lot, and walked home. 

Monday, we used the city of Seattle app to report what I believe almost *has* to be a stolen car (it has recent front end damage and has been awkwardly parked/abandoned since last Thursday, at least) near our nearest park.

While in the park today walking, we were looking for a hidden geocache. Instead, we found the remains of a stolen purse. Bummer. We reported that with the app, too.      
   

EXIT THE DRAGON: On our way home from the Living Computer Museum on Saturday, we swung by expansive Volunteer Park.  We weren't there long, but we saw some lovely flowers ... 

and checked out a really cool playground ... 

But our number one reason for stopping was to finally visit the grave of Bruce Lee, of martial arts and "Enter the Dragon" fame. He's buried, alongside his son Brandon, at Lake View Cemetery, next to Volunteer Park.

A testament to Lee's popularity and staying power, on a random Saturday afternoon, 42 years after his death, there were six groups of people paying their respects, plus some leaving and others coming. I

Tonight we read the account of how Brandon Lee died on the set of "The Crow." Wow. Terrible. I had read accounts right after it happened, but now that all the evidence is in ... unforgivable, really. Such negligence, it's hard to believe people didn't go to jail for it. He was shot dead, at close range, by what was supposed to be a prop gun. Terrible.