Friday Fun

The Soyuz MS-05 rocket is launched with Expedition 52 flight engineer Sergei Ryazanskiy of
Roscosmos, flight engineer Randy Bresnik of NASA, and flight engineer Paolo Nespoli of ESA (European Space Agency), Friday, July 28, 2017 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

MORNING LAUNCH: A little after 8:30 Friday morning, we watched three humans rocket off the planet.

Pre-launch coverage included biographies of the astronauts, including NASA's Randy Bresnik. We learned that Bresnik is a photographer who loves "capturing the beauty of the moment."

Photography runs in Bresnik's family. His grandfather was Amelia Earhart's personal photographer. In fact, it had been planned for him to go on her last, fateful flight with Earhart, but the weight of him and his equipment were deemed too much, and he didn't make the trip.

Bresnik is also a former Marine who has flown 82 different types of air and spacecraft.

We're looking forward to seeing Bresnik's photos from his long duration mission, when he'll have lots of opportunities to photograph the Earth from on high. We followed him on Facebook and Twitter today, @AstroKomrade

Bresnik recently posted this photo on Facebook. 

Taken by the current ISS commander, it's of the Soyuz capsule he was in approaching the space station. Neat-o!

MOLASSES IN JULY: A few days ago, Annabelle and I found ourselves contemplating molasses - its origin and history - while driving 'round Seattle.

Wikipedia user Badagnani https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Badagnani

Thanks to a cell phone, we were able to get answers right away. I'll let her share a bit about what we learned.

Last Friday, after buying some Molasses cookies to take to Teen Feed (as part of a dessert we were serving), my mom and I began wondering what molasses is made of and how it’s made.

It turns out that Molasses is actually a byproduct of making granulated sugar. When cane or beet sugar is pressed, it creates a juice. This juice is boiled, separating the crystals and the other liquid. This other liquid is what becomes Molasses! The type of molasses (Light, Dark, or Blackstrap) depends on how many times the juice is boiled before the crystals are separated (1, 2, and 3 times respectively).

Some molasses has sulfur added to it as a preservative, which makes it slightly less sweet. Molasses with sulfur was once believed to have medical benefits and was used as a laxative, a constipation inducer, and was fed to children to curb their appetite when food was not available (somehow being used for all 3 at the same time).

I learned a lot of cool new things about molasses!

THE OLD BALLGAME: Friday night, we headed to the Safeco Field, the four of us coming from three different places, meeting at one of our absolute favorite Seattle spots.

CJ caught a bus from Seattle Center. It just happened to be the same bus/route we would catch from our former home in Magnolia, so it was nice his first solo trip was on a familiar route.  

Annabelle and I walked about .75 of a mile downhill from our new place to a bus stop, where we caught the 101 which took us right to the shadow of Safeco. Annabelle and I went and met CJ at his bus stop, and we three went in and found Christian, who had ridden his bike to the stadium from his work. 

As always, we enjoyed the time at the park very much. We spent about an hour and a half down in the bullpen, watching pre-game activities. 

We eventually made our way up to our seats, where we watched the Mariners take kind of a long time to lose. After the game there was a fun fireworks show and sing-a-long.

All in all, a nice night, despite the Ms' defeat.