Friday, March 11, 2016

Spirit Animal

NEW MASCOT:  So, the green guy above. He's ours. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to make him ours when I saw an eBay auction from Seattle Goodwill. I put in the minimum bid, and (believe it or not!) no one else bid on him. Shocking, I know (ha ha).

What will we do with a suit like that? I really don't know. We think he might make appearances at friends of MPA's schools. We know many a teacher here at MPA. :) 

We also feel compelled to quickly learn how to do a backflip. And slam dunk off a trampoline. Or at the very least, as least muster a decent cartwheel. ... So we need to add gymnastics to our curriculum. Stay tuned. ;)

GOT HIS FILL: Today it was announced that astronaut Scott Kelly, who just came home from a nearly one year mission on the International Space Station, will be hanging up his spacesuit for good.
   Photo of Scott Kelly on an EVA/space walk: NASA

Kelly announced his retirement effective April 1, after 20 years with NASA. 

As of now he holds the record for the American with the most time in space (consecutive and non consecutive). And who knows, maybe someday he'll go back as a space tourist. 

RAILROAD TYCOONS:  We recently acquired a new-to-us game. Railroad Tycoon is an 'empire building' type game, based around railroad lines of the 1800s. 

We haven't played it yet (it's pretty intense/complicated), but we kicked the tires today. The cool thing is, we already learned a little history by reading some of the railroad baron cards. 
For instance, we learned about Daniel Drew. We'd never heard of him before, but it turns out the businessman had almost a lifetime of success, followed by "utter failure and hopeless bankruptcy" per one biographer.

In fact, apparently Drew is the dude who is responsible for introducing the concept of 'watered stock' to Wall Street, which resulted in a dilution of ownership. Not the best legacy.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Trials

TEST KITCHEN:  So, the kids each have their hearts set on entering a cooking contest for those their age.  If you're a regular reader, you know we spend a fair amount of time kicking 'round the kitchen, playing with our food. It's one thing cooking for yourself. It's another, submitting an original recipe to a national competition. 

I'm going to get to specific as to the specs here so as not to tip the kids' hands to the competition too much. ;) That said, CJ decided he wanted to make a meat cake. Because meat. And cake. What's not to love?!

It involved meat ... Specifically, two ground pounds. 
and chopping lots of fruit and vegetables to exacting standards ... 




The hardest part of today's challenge was not winging it. We cook so much, we know what we like and what tastes good and have a "feel" for proportions. But "feelings" don't fly well when one's submitting a recipe to a national competition. It requires exacting measurements. Sometimes that involved accidentally dumping half a tin of white pepper onto a spoon. And sometimes that was followed by dumping a half a bottle of garlic salt onto same said half teaspoon. But I digress. ... 

Eventually the meat 'cakes' were done ...
And the 'icing (sweet and Yukon gold potatoes and other secret ingredients, including a half pound of white pepper) were mashed and ready to apply.
The layers were stacked with potato 'icing' in between, and then it was time for a crumb coat.
 
Then it was time to pretty it up a bit (not too much this go 'round, as this was a rough version mostly for proportion and tasting purposes). Next, CJ practiced his piping skills.  
He did pretty well. 
And it tasted pretty good. We talked about tweaks that need to be made and CJ has good notes for the next go 'round. It will be a little lighter on the white pepper, hopefully.

CLARA: Thanks to the Google Doodle, we learned that today is the (105th) birthday of the virtuoso of Theremin players, Clara Rockmore.  Here's a super short primer of her accomplishments; 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/08/clara-rockmore-the-story-of-the-theremin-virtuoso-who-inspired-l/

OMG LOOK AT THAT: So, that eclipse visible mostly only in Indonesia yesterday? Turns out you could also see it from an Alaska Airlines flight. You really should watch this. Worth enduring it until the end. :)
https://youtu.be/YBoa81xEvNA


Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Beaming

SPRING STROLL:  The rain stayed at bay most of today, so we squeezed a short walk in this afternoon.

We couldn't help but admire signs of spring popping up all over. There were too many daffodils to count, and sweet little flowers from other bulbs were everywhere.
We also stopped to admire this little lending library, cleverly crafted out of an old dollhouse!

MEANWHILE, HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD: This afternoon I read aloud that there was a total solar eclipse, visible in Indonesia.

Annabelle only heard the first part and started scurrying around to find our sun-safe viewing glasses, until I repeated the "Indonesia" part loudly.

Here, from ScienceAtNASA, is a short video about the event.

https://youtu.be/MQjPFwcjh9c 

And here's what it looked like - if you were in Indonesia.
    photo: NASA TV

LEFTOVERS: I rather lamely managed to miss including CJ's review of Polar Science Weekend at Pacific Science Center in yesterday's post. Here it is, without further ado. 
For every year since 2005, the Pacific Science Center has held the Polar Science Weekend event, where several UW researchers and a couple Coasties (Coast Guard members) run booths relating to their research and scientific discoveries at both the North and South poles. Although there are booths that are there every year, with every year, there are also new and interesting ones. One example of a new booth was a section dedicated to research of fishes' diets, what the food chain looks like, and stomachs. On a tray with different fish carcasses, we got to see what a small fish looked like at different stages of digestion, and we learned that some sea-snails could survive when they would be digested by staying in their shell. In a jar, we also got to see what a large (and rather disgusting) fish stomach looked like. As usual, we took the Salinity Taste Test, where we would taste-test different sources of water, with salt contents equivalent to different fluids. One had salt equivalent to human blood, another to the world average salt amount for oceans, and the saltiest by far was equivalent to the Red Sea.
This year's Polar Science Weekend was very fun, and I look forward to seeing what is at the next Polar Science Weekend.
OVERHEARD: CJ and Annabelle were struggling with a math problem about converting Earth weight vs. the same weight on Mars. After a couple of starts and stutters, I heard Annabelle say, "Let's see if we can figure out a way to reverse engineer this."

Fortunately, they succeeded.


Monday, March 7, 2016

Polarizing

ICE, ICE, BABY:  This weekend marked what has become an annual event for us: Polar Science Weekend at Seattle Center.

It was rainy and chilly upon our arrival. A pod of (concrete) orcas was spotted in the pond outside the science center. 
Once inside, the Coast Guard had a state-of-the-art coat to help one warm up.
Our insurance company, Pemco, had a green screen opp. Here's the before ...
and here's the after ...
Here's a shot of Annabelle handling a 300-ish year old ice core.
The salinity taste test is always entertaining!
At the Ocean Watchdogs booth, we visited with a scientist who told us all about extracting samples at the North Pole. 

 The kids made origami penguins.
 They also relived narwhal experiences for not sure how many years running.
This photo makes it look like it might be CJ's last narwhal rodeo, ha ha