Feverish

HOT STUFF: It's summer, so no surprise it's warm out. But here in Seattle, it's way toastier than usual. I can't remember the last time it rained. 

Have I mentioned we live in Seattle?

Right now, we're under an EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING per all the weather updates I checked  out (by the way, the all caps are all theirs). 

And as I look ahead this month  (forecasts for all of August), there's no precipitation to be seen. 

In the meantime, while out and about today, we passed a little spray park in Tukwila. 

It wasn't a place to get big fun wet, but the kids did manage to get damp. :)

STIMULATING THE ECONOMY: If you know me, you know I despise shopping. Well, at least in the traditional sense. I love an estate or garage sale, and shopping salvage and thrift stores. What I despise is the standard American shopping model ... places like Wal-Mart and any mall. That said, sometimes  you gotta do what you gotta do.

Yesterday, we needed to hit up a store at the mall to get special hangers that reduce the space taken up in our closets. Since we were in the mall, Annabelle, who has freshly pierced ears, wanted to visit Claires. 

While she went there, I became *that person* who sat on a couch in the mall for whatever reason. Yup, I was the Mall Couch Waiter Person.

Can you see the kids hustling back my way?

Trekking

DAY OF THE DOVE:  Sunday afternoon we checked out one of our absolute favorite Seattle summertime traditions, Outdoor Trek. It's staged by a theater group who stages wonderfully creative productions of original Star Trek series episodes.

We got to the park where it's staged early, to secure good seats. We were sitting right next to this sign (below).

Sure enough, the spots right next to us got lots of action. Below, Captain Kirk (right), Spock, and crew contemplate during the play.

The space just above it was occupied by a pair of malevolent aliens at one point. Though this pair (played by Helen Thorsen and Mary Cutrera) had no speaking lines whatsoever, I could hardly take my eyes off their antics throughout.

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about the play. ... 

For multiple years in a row, my family has gone to the Outdoor Trek events at Blanche Lavizzo park, which are plays based on episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS). Outdoor Trek is done by Hello Earth Productions.
This Outdoor Trek performance was based off of "Day of the Dove", a TOS episode originally aired on 1 November 1968. The plot of the episode is described as follows by Memory Alpha (a popular Wiki about Star Trek):
 The episode was chosen because Hello Earth believed it to be relevant to current events. In certain ways, the play deviated from the original episode (such as having an interlude with "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield).
At the end of the show, the cast alluded to doing a version of A New Hope (the first Star Wars film) for the next Hello Earth production, I look forward to future Hello Earth productions, as I did with previous ones.

An extremely powerful non-corporeal being brings the Enterprise and a Klingon ship in direct conflict with one another.

The episode was chosen because Hello Earth believed it to be relevant to current events. In certain ways, the play deviated from the original episode (such as having an interlude with "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield).

At the end of the show, the cast alluded to doing a version of A New Hope (the first Star Wars film) for the next Hello Earth production, I look forward to future Hello Earth productions, as I did with previous ones.

And here's what Annabelle had to say about it all.

Hello Earth, a nonprofit in Seattle, is mostly known for their “Outdoor Trek” (also known as Trek in the Park), which are versions of classic Star Trek episodes performed as plays in a local city park. One of the best things about Outdoor Trek is that the cast is very diverse, which represents Seattle as a whole.

The episode that Outdoor Trek performed this time was “The Day of the Dove”. At the beginning of “The Day of the Dove” the Enterprise crew receives a distress signal from a nearby planet. When they go to investigate, they find that the planet is empty. Suddenly, a group of Klingon soldiers arrive and accuse the crew of destroying their ship. Before our heroes can explain, the Klingons demand to be taken to the Enterprise and claim it as consolation.

The Klingons are taken prisoner on the Enterprise while Captain Kirk and the other try to find out what happened. Before long, it seems as though many crew members are getting more and more hostile towards the Klingons and each other, too. The strangest thing is that whenever someone is fatally wounded in a fight, something keeps bringing them back.

After a computer scan, the Enterprise crew finds out that an alien being has been feeding off of the hate generated by the fighting! To make matters worse, the Klingon prisoners are trying to shut down the ship’s life support and make Captain Kirk surrender control. When the crew leaves in a group to confront the Klingons in the engineering block, a huge fight begins. Before anyone gets extremely hurt, through the power of friendship (and an added song) they drive the alien away and celebrate!

Hello Earth always does an amazing job at adapting the script into a live performance and their actors are always spot on. It excites me to know that next year, Hello Earth is going to do a Star Wars themed series of performances!

It really is something not to be missed.  We love everything about it, including their wonderfully cheezy props (see the 'transporters' below).

The cast was bigger this year than we've seen in years past, as a whole crew of Klingons were involved.

And it's totally worth noting the opening act, Vixy & Tony, was wonderful. We bought their CD (it's important to support local art!)

One of the songs they did (masterfully, might I add), was "Lust on the Bridge." to the tune of "Dust in the Wind." So funny!

SMOKE AND FIRE: Not the most pleasant of days, weather wise, in our pretty city. 

It was witheringly hot, and we had a haze that turned into downright smoky. 

Social media (and NASA) let us know the 'haze' was actually smoke from wildfires in British Columbia.

The view A(above) from space (NASA MODIS satellite) shows smoke as it continues to pour into Western Washington from the wildfires burning in British Columbia:

PARTING SHOTS: I was going through some old files on my old Sony camera today and found a few from the day we moved out of the house, including this one - their last time hanging out by the cathedral window upstairs.

And this one, taking one last look off the roofdeck, where we all enjoyed hanging out (not often enough, might I add!)

A little poignant, looking back, but we're also looking forward, and are enjoying the new place.

One of the first things we did was remove a very large stained glass window over the staircase. It was nicely done and I'm sure it means a lot to the original owners (we are giving it to them, of course), but we wanted a brighter staircase, for safety's sake.

Below, Annabelle eats, while Christian ever-so-carefully removed the old stained glass.

What you can't see in this photo (because of clouds at that moment) is there is a lovely view of Mt. Rainier that was covered by the stained glass.
         
We have big plans for replacing the wrought iron railings, as well. 

Stay tuned!

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.