Empire Building

JEDI READY: Today was all about getting ready for tomorrow, tomorrow being the fourth international Star Wars Reads Day.

On Saturday, Oct. 10, bookstores, libraries, and retailers will host readings, signings, parties, and more. 

Here in Seattle, the biggest Star Wars Reads event is at The Museum of Flight. There, they're hosting Death Star Ground School (of course we're signed up!), Wookiee's Workshop activities, Storytime with Ewoks, a Star Wars trivia contest, and an Empire Writes Back fan fiction contest for elementary through middle school aged students. 

CJ and Annabelle each entered a story, and earlier this week we found out that they each won their age category. Cool! So they'll be reading their stories in costume in the museum's theater Saturday afternoon. 

They had already planned on being Star Wars characters for Halloween, but this event meant expediting the costumes' readiness.

Fortunately, we already had Annabelle's old school Princess Leia (with the cinnamon roll hair, ha ha) dialed in.

CJ is going to be the old school Luke. When we found out he was a contest winner, we started scrambling to get his costume together. We scored great boots and pants and a belt at thrift stores earlier this week, and we had a light saber in stock. The only piece left to get was his tunic. It occurred to me that Luke's shirt looked a *whole* lot like a karate uniform top, so we ordered one off Amazon. However, Luke lives on dusty Tatooine, and his shirt isn't pure white, for sure.

Like true Seattlites, we decided to antique the fabric using a couple of strong pots of coffee!

We pre-washed the garment, and then submerged it in a pot of coffee (plus a little hot water).

 We weren't quite happy with its color after one bath, so we gave it a second go, with a little stronger brew.

That did the trick! The garment looks Tatooine authentic!

We also printed out copies of the kids' stories on card stock, and pulled out an old comb-binding machine from the basement. They had fun punching holes in their books' pages ...

 and then binding them with the big plastic combs. 

Tomorrow should be big fun! 

STILL PRODUCE-ING: Our garden continues to provide. 

There are peppers aplenty. Today, we harvested our first Carolina Reapers, a mash up of a ghost pepper and a red habanero. The peppers average 1,569,300 on the Scoville scale, which is frightening. They are the second hottest peppers in the world (topped only by HP56, 'Death Strain'). Oh my. 

Beautiful little cherry tomatoes continue to ripen. I made some amazing spaghetti sauce a couple of days ago, slow cooking it for 10 hours just so we could enjoy that aroma all darn day. 

Near and Far

LIFELINE:  We spent our morning at the Food Lifeline warehouse, as part of a small group of students (and parents) in a community service project. 

Obviously, a few hours helping hungry neighbors is time well spent. 

Food Lifeline is a non profit organization in Shoreline, just north of Seattle city limits. It's not a food bank. It's a warehouse, where tons and tons of food collected, sorted and routed. 

Food Lifeline works with a network of 275 member food banks and meal programs. In doing so, it provides 82,000 meals every day across Western Washington. Awesome.

CJ and Annabelle attend a twice weekly class all about social issues, with the current emphasis being hunger. 

CJ shares a couple of food-related facts ...

1 in 4 calories intended for consumption is never actually eaten. Volunteers for organizations like Food Lifeline are some of the most important for making sure that the hungry are fed. Volunteering for organizations like Food Lifeline is not hard and helps thousands of people. I believe that campaigns need to be started to raise awareness for food waste.

Today, our task was taking hundreds and hundreds of individual cracker packs, affixing an ingredients label (since they were not originally intended for individual consumption/distribution) and repackaging them. 

I'm not gonna lie, a big part of me was disappointed that all we were doing was putting stickers on cracker packs that have almost zero nutritional value. That said, I realize that if you're hungry, crackers help. And they're tasty. And it's MUCH better that the thousands of packets our group's hands touched today are redirected to hungry people rather than having the food wind up in the landfill. 

CJ, Annabelle and I packaged 1560 cracker packs today. Not bad for a couple hours' worth of work. I would love to return to Food Lifeline and help out again. They seem like an extremely organized  operation and make volunteering easy. 

NEW HORIZONS NEWS: The science from #NASA's New Horizons' probe continues to come in. Today's big news? There are blue skies on Pluto! How 'bout that?!

More specifically, the first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes reveal that those hazes are blue.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado said in today's press release.

NASA science team researcher Carly Howett, said, “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”

Oh, and another kind of big deal: New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. 

                Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The discovery was made from data collected by the Ralph spectral composition mapper on New Horizons. 

Regions with exposed water ice are highlighted in blue in the composite image (above) from New Horizons' Ralph instrument.

Right now, New Horizons is around 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth and, per NASA, has all systems healthy and operating normally.

Something's Fishy

WATER WONDERS: Tuesday afternoon, we headed down to the waterfront to the Seattle Aquarium. We were lucky enough to score some free passes from the Seattle Public Library's museum pass program, saving us a whopping $77.80 in admission fees (yikes). Thank you, SPL!

 The main attraction upon entering is the wall of water. 

We made our way through the petting zoo, er aquarium, back to the tropical creatures, like this lion fish.

 I was a big fan of this black and white and yellow lovely. 

And the sea pens are always a hit. So pretty!

 We ogled sturgeon, sharks and more in the Underwater Dome. This guy (or gal) really wanted us to take its picture the most, it seemed.

The jellyfish were mesmerizing as always. 

In further proof #NASA is everywhere, there was a display at the aquarium explaining how NASA satellites track seals and other ocean life.

 NASA is so much more than 'just' space science!

In the Birds and Shores section of the aquarium, we appreciated the lovely beak on this black oystercatcher.

 The seals and otters always generate smiles. We watched this river otter play with rubber chew toys for several minutes.

If you want to visit the Seattle Aquarium virtually, check out one of their live cams. Links are here: http://www.seattleaquarium.org/live-cams

Outside of the aquarium, there are some signs along the seawall explaining the garbage floating in Puget Sound.

 Pretty sad to see a mylar Happy Birthday balloon among the floating trash. How many years do you think it will take for that to break down? 

Speaking of birthdays, today was Rick's #30. We took treats to his classroom - some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle apples. (A healthy alternative compared to cupcakes, cookies or cake!). They're just upside down Granny Smith apples, some edible candy eyes, all natural fruit roll ups for the ninja masks and a tiny bit of royal icing for the noses and mouths. 

I hope his students (third graders) enjoyed them. 

It's kind of funny still taking treats to school for Rick's class when he's 30, but at least he's the teacher now. :)

GeekWire Afterglow

We've posted about our field trip to the GeekWire Summit last week. The reason we had the great fortune to find ourselves there was based on an interview Annabelle had at GeekWire HQ a few weeks back, earning an invite to the conference.

At the summit, they showed some of the interview questions and answers, edited together in some pretty entertaining clips. Today, GeekWire posted some of those videos to their Web site. 

They're also on YouTube, and you can view them via the embeds below ...

Kids say the geekiest things

https://youtu.be/JriAyvxEXTI

Do you want to travel to space?

https://youtu.be/H3KMl0QMvwo

If you could invent anything, what would it be?

https://youtu.be/BIRx25PT4G4

STAR WARS STARS:  Super good news came MPA's way today - both CJ and Annabelle were selected as winners for their age group in The Museum of Flight's "Empire Writes Back" story contest. How 'bout that?!

The museum's contest is just part of a worldwide "Star Wars Reads" day by Disney Publishing Worldwide and its publishing partners. There will be over 2,000 Star Wars Reads Day events across North America, including one at the Museum.

CJ and Annabelle will be among those taking place in a ceremony at the museum this Saturday, Oct. 10, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., during which time they'll read their story to the audience.

SOCIAL IN SEATTLE: More than a couple of my space geek friends sent me links to some big NASA news today. Our favorite space agency is host a #NASASocial here in Seattle. w00t!

It offers an opportunity to tour NASA's Extreme Weather Research Work, which includes the first-time ever 3-D views of rain and snow. 

Up to 40 lucky social media users will get to go inside NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory Nov. 11 at the University of Washington in Seattle, to learn about the science behind NASA's 3-D views of hurricanes, storms, falling rain and snow. 

photo: NASA

On display will also be NASA's OLYMPEX campaign, which focuses on tracking precipitation over mountainous terrain that is difficult to measure, per today's press release.

Registration for the #NASASocial is open now through 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 13. Here's a link to toss your name into the ring! APPLY NOW

Fall Fun & Games

SOMETHING'S FISHY: Saturday brought one of our favorite annual events - Fishermen's Fall Festival, down at Fishermen's Terminal, at the north end of the hill we live on. 

While cruise ships and luxury boats are moored at the south end of our hill, Fishermen's Terminal is where the working boats are (including some of the "Deadliest Catch" boats). 

We look forward to the event every year. It's totally free, there are always lots of arts and crafts for the kids to partake in and they get to go fishing!

This year, an addition to the festivities was a free cruise on an Argosy boat. We made sure to get our tickets first thing, and boarded the Lady Mary a little after 11:30 a.m.

We cruised east toward Lake Union, and saw lots of working boats along the way, including this Port of Long Beach (CA) vessel.

 We saw a few modest house boats and sailboats - as well as smoke from an apartment fire in Ballard (so many sirens!),

There was a fairly large contingent of pirates on board our cruise. They commandeered the bow. 

Fortunately there was no robbing or pillaging. In fact, they passed out beads and cards (with their pictures and pirate stats or whatever) to kids.

We had nice vistas of the Fremont and Aurora Bridges ...

 and boated under the Ballard Bridge. We're usually one of the cars up top.

Back on land, the kids painted Frisbees, built wooden boats and painted shells.

And they each even had a chance to catch a real live fish!

Annabelle was a little frustrated at first. Not sure if her hook was dull or the bait wasn't properly seated, but she fed a number of fish before she got one on the line.

https://youtu.be/Gr7klm0m98U

Just look at the catch(es) o' the day!

 I turned the kids loose with the camera to capture the autopsy. Er, 'cleaning.'

 Annabelle and I threw together a dry rub for the trout. Or, "nice, big, fat, rainbow trout, delicious," as Christian called them.

ONE LAST TIME: Sunday we felt compelled to make one more march to Safeco Field, for the last home game of the Mariners' season.

The team was mathematically eliminated a week or so ago. They now hold the distinction of being the Major League Baseball team with the longest drought when it comes to going to the post season. We're #1!!!

Here is the post game celebration. I guess at this point, we're celebrating the fact the miserable season is over. :/

Here's the last pitch of 2015.

And just like that, it's over. 

There's always next year.

ROCKET MAN: Among the notable birthdays today is Robert Goddard. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1882, Dr. Goddard is considered the father of modern rocketry and a genius for his many inventions. 

Per a NASA post on social media today, "In 1914, (Goddard) received the first two of the 214 U.S. patents issued to him, one for a liquid-fueled rocket and the other for solid fuel. On March 16, 1926, Dr. Goddard successfully tested the first liquid fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts. On May 1, 1959, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was named in his honor."

The photo above shows Dr. Goddard pictured with his first successfully launched, liquid-fueled rocket. Awesome!
For more info about Dr. Goddard, check out: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/about/history/dr_goddard.html