Almost Tourney Time

BIRTHDAY BOYS: Today is Christian's bday, and Annabelle, bless her heart, wasn't satisfied with settling for a normal wrap job on her dad's new coffee maker. Amazing how much more fun three balloons, a little glue and some pipe cleaners makes the present look!

Annabelle also had a cone shaped birthday hat from a stuffed animal she wanted to try to get Kirby to wear. This blurry shot shows it was a no-go.

Nov. 20 is also the birthday of Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edwin Hubble (now of space telescope fame).

POSTERIZED: I made yesterday's wrong right by snapping a quick pic of the hunger awareness poster CJ made yesterday. 

 And here's part of Bee's project.  Under her drawings, readers can lift up the flaps and read about what their options might mean in the real world. 

And here's a pic of the poster CJ made about the kids' Empire Writes Back participation.

TOURNAMENT TIME: Tomorrow, we're heading down south a bit so that CJ and brother Kennedy can compete in a video game tournament, hosted at Highline Community College.

They'll be playing the (now) retro game Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Gamecube. If one can believe the schedule posted to the event Web site, you might even be  able to watch online.

The event Website is this: http://northwestmajors.com/. The schedule is here: http://northwestmajors.com/schedule-2 and if you look at it, there's apparently going to be live action online.

It should be fun no matter what. You know there will be a report come Monday. :)

Poster Children

LARGE SCALE: It seems like this week has been one poster project after another. This morning, CJ and I worked on a poster about the kids' "Empire Writes Back" winning projects for an upcoming academic showcase, and CJ and Annabelle both worked on posters related to raising awareness about hunger. Earlier this week, we spent hours working on a poster for an upcoming fundraising event to benefit hungry and homeless. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of any of that!

This afternoon, Annabelle worked on a large painting for an Egyptian-themed project for one of her art classes. 

IT'S A WINNER: This afternoon, we took a few minutes to watch a great video explaining some of Einstein's postulates. It was made by 18-year-old Ryan Chester, who won a quarter million dollar scholarship for his efforts!

He entered it in the inaugural Breakthrough Junior Challenge, an international competition that aims to inspire the next generation of scientists and science communicators.

https://youtu.be/CYv5GsXEf1o

MUST SEE: We need to get ourselves back down to The Museum of Flight, ASAP!
Today, the museum unveiled some new artifacts in their collection thanks to the efforts of Jeff Bezos. A spaceflight fan, the Amazon.com founder funded the Bezos Expeditions voyage that recovered hundreds of Apollo era artifacts from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (some 14,000 feet down!)

Bezos was even on the ship when the mangled 40-year-old parts were brought up from the deep in 2013.

Here's a video Bezos Expeditions made about their recovery efforts

https://d287s5u9clc12b.cloudfront.net/Video2-v4.mp4

The shrink-wrapped pieces that were brought out for today’s media event included an injector plate, oxidizer dome and thrust chamber from one of the F-1 engines on Apollo 12’s Saturn V. Museum workers also opened the lid on a crate containing a heat exchanger from an F-1 used for Apollo 16.

The parts were unveiled on the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 12 moon landing. 

It's All Greek

GOING SLIGHTLY MAD:  This afternoon we played a vintage board game scored from Goodwill. Made in 1979, it seemed to have been unplayed since then (if ever!). It was kind of a riff on Monopoly, but the idea was to lose all of your money. Math + logic + merriment = much fun!

TEST KITCHEN: We spent three hours this afternoon at the home of another (awesome!) family, test driving incarnations of spanakopita to go along with a play CJ and many other kids have a role in. For concessions, Greek food will be offered. I've been making spanakopita for years, and offered up the super delicious Moosewood recipe as a possibility, However, that recipe is served lasagna style. Today, we experimented with 'to go' versions of it, putting the filling in everything from triangles to mini muffin pops.

The bottom line was that in any way shape or form, butter, feta, spinach, basil, garlic, and oregano are delicious!

Empire Builders

A LONG TIME AGO: People used video cassette recorders (VCRs) to watch movies at home. Tonight, we are those people. 

We scored a set of the original Star Wars trilogy for free off our much beloved Buy Nothing neighborhood group awhile ago. On Monday, we went to Goodwill and bought an old, much used VCR for $6 or so, and last night we watched the 1977 Star Wars movie on the big screen at home and loved every minute of it. OK, so the video wasn't HD, but the sound was actually pretty amazing. And the movie - well it's a classic.

Tonight's feature is "The Empire Strikes Back."

Can I just say, "The Empire Strikes Back" is masterful, on any media. I remember attending it on opening day, during a Mt. St. Helens eruption. People in line had dust masks on and ash rained down from the sky. We thought it worth the risk. It was.

We want to make sure we have all six "Star Wars" films fresh in our minds before December 18, when we'll be watching the latest, long-awaited installment.

This trailer has over 61 million views on YouTube, by the way. Apparently we're not the only ones a little excited about the new movie.


MEANWHILE, IN (REAL) OUTER SPACE: We got caught up on the latest Pluto news today. Images beamed to Earth by NASA's New Horizons probe continues to amaze!

Check out psychedelic Pluto!

Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

OK, so, no, this isn't Pluto's true colors. But isn't it gorgeous? The false color image was made by New Horizons scientists using a technique called principal component analysis.  They did so because they wanted to highlight the many subtle color differences between the dwarf planet's distinct regions.

Per NASA, data used in the image was collected by New Horizon's Ralph/MVIC color camera on July 14 at 11:11 AM UTC, from a range of 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers). 

Down South

WEDDING BELLS: We had a marathon day Saturday, heading down southwest of Portland for a wedding.

It was a wet and wild drive south from nine to noon, but we made good time. In addition to the lovely wedding (in McMenamin's Octagonal Barn), we also got to see CeeJ and Bee's  cousins' great new place in Vancouver. Big bonus!

MUMMIFIED:  A few nights ago, watched a fascinating NOVA show on PBS about ancient Egypt. Specifically, it was all about the mummification of animals and insects, big and small. 

I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about it.

The PBS documentary “Animal Mummies” is about, well, exactlywhat you think it would be about. In ancient Egypt, the act of mummifyinganimals was done to make requests of the gods. They were also used assacrifices to the gods. Some of these animal mummies have just recently beenexamined using CAT scans to show how much the bones are actually remaining. 

A crocodile skeleton has been found that contains at least 8 crocodile skeletonsinside. They also found that many mummies from a certain time period appearedto be animals killed on purpose, or they barely had any bones in them at all.This was because when explorers came to Egypt, they were sold animal mummies and this lead to the mummies being a booming business. The mummies have been found in colonies of almost 8,000,000 underground where they have not been disturbed for many years. Mummies are very interesting and I encourage people to learn more about them!

And here's a trailer about the show: https://youtu.be/5ESrXuVOi6A

You can watch the entire episode on the PBS Web site at this link: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365593168/?Utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=nova_2015%22

IN TRAINING: As of late, CJ has been spending a fair amount of time getting ready for a tournament he'll be competing in this coming weekend. I'll let him tell you a bit more about it.  

Northwest Majors: Drop Zone is a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament that will be held in the Highline Community College in Des Moines, Washington. Super Smash Bros. Melee is a fighting game released in 2001, known for its large competitive scene and fast-paced gameplay between several different fighters. I will be going to the tournament in doubles* on Saturday, alongside my brother Ken. I intend to use Captain Falcon as my primary character, while Ken intends to use Jigglypuff as his primary character. Out team name will be "Top Gun", named after the famous 1986 action movie of the same name, and in the team, my name will be "Iceman", while Ken will be "Maverick".

*which means "two versus two"
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, no pun intended. You can expect a full report from CJ next Monday.