Crafts and Cards

FUN WITH FOAM: Each month, we post a bulletin board at a local school. Its purpose is to feature students' birthdays for the month, and each month, we try to come up with something a little different

It's now officially winter, but instead of hitting upon the obvious snowy theme, we thought it would be fun to picture what some critters usually pictured in snow would be doing, given their druthers. And so, the idea for "Penguin Vacation" was hatched.

The penguins and many of the elements (surf boards, a shark, and such) are made from craft foam. The rest is mixed media, everything from paper bags to printed card stock to produce netting, paper towels to Popsicle sticks.

We had fun thinking about penguins building sand castles, surfing, playing beach volleball, tanning (or burning) and even bellying up to a tiki bar.

In our case, it was a smelt smoothies bar (forgive the blurry, bad cell phone photo. Sorry!)
I loved Annabelle's little tinfoil smelt tails coming out of foam cups!

GAMERS: We've been playing a lot of card and board games lately thanks, in part, to Christmas gifts received.

One game new to us is CardLine Dinosuars.

The challenge is to take the cards you're dealt and take turns playing them according to what you guess their weight or size to be.

It's fun and educational.

Tonight, we revisited an old favorite, Hanabi. 

    Photo: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43516906

MEANWHILE ON JUPITER: My social media feeds were full of this astounding photo of Jupiter's surface.

Taken by the space probe Juno  on Dec. 16, 2017 at 9:43 a.m. PST  the image of colorful, dynamic clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. It was photographed 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometers) above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees.

It's worth noting the spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles per pixel (9.3 kilometers/pixel). Take a minute to think about that. Jupiter is enormous.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager."

If you want to see more, JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam        

Marvelous Moon

Jamie Kinney via West Seattle Blog

SUPER START: The year 2018 started in dramatic fashion, with the year's biggest Super Moon.

"Super moons" occur when a full moon coincides with the moon's perigee, or the point at which its  orbit is closest to Earth. When that happens, the moon appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a normal full moon - pretty dramatic!

We noticed the Super Moon when we were driving about on January 2. From our vantage point it looked like what I call an Apollo moon - very black and white. Not a hit of harvest gold or any other color.

For the record, it also happened to be a "Wolf Moon," because it was the first new moon of the year. It's named after the howling of wolves during a full moon.

BACK IN THE DAY: It was on this day (Jan. 3) in 1962 that the newly-announced Mercury Mark II project was renamed Project Gemini. 

Check out this cool artist's concept of a two-person Gemini spacecraft in flight, complete with a cutaway view. 

Image Credit: NASA

Per a NASA press release, "Gemini paved the way for Apollo, and had four main goals: to test an astronaut's ability to fly long-duration missions (up to two weeks in space); to understand how spacecraft could rendezvous and dock in orbit around the Earth and the Moon; to perfect re-entry and landing methods; and to further understand the effects of longer space flights on astronauts."

Winter Break

HOLIDAZE: It won't surprise anyone to read that we went missing as we got caught up in the swirl of holiday season activities.

It felt like it was a sprint from about Dec. 20 to Dec. 31. One event after another, gatherings here and there, and stuff to gather everywhere.

We ended up having some Christmas Eve snow - about four inches at our place. It was lovely to look at, but not so lovely given that we had to be at the airport at about 5:30 on Christmas morning. 

We had reserved an Uber for 5 a.m. Dec. 25, but when we upped on that day, nary an Uber was to be found. There was one lone car roving all of south Seattle, from about Boeing Field to Seatac. 

Fortunately, I had anticipated this scenario, so Christian had chained our Honda CR-V up the night before, and we carefully made our way down our steep hill and toward the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, and Seatac was a ghost town. The TSA agents were waiting on US for a change. 

Though the flight from Seattle to Bend, Oregon, was short (just under an hour), getting there was a bit of a drawn out process. Once we boarded the plane we first had to wait for well over an hour to get the plane de-iced (well worth the wait, of course), and then we had to wait many, many more minutes for a runway. Eventually, we took off about 1.75 hours after the prescribed time. It was a bit of a bumpy flight, but we made our way to Bend safely, which is what counts.

Along the way, we spied this lovely mountain outside a western-facing window.

 Check out that dramatic valley stretching out north of Mt. Hood.

Once in Bend, we appreciated sunny skies, the different vistas that high desert living provided, and wonderful hospitality.

We also got to see some of the city. Our first stop was a cool, old-school arcade, Vector Volcano. The place had a wonderful collection of old school video and pinball games. 

We also got to visit Bend's beautiful, outdoor ice skating arena, The Pavilion.

 CJ and I were spectators, but Annabelle (in a Team Unicorn hoodie) took a few spins.

 She was solo at first, but after a bit Christian decided to join her.

I spied these stones (below) just outside of the rink. I had to tell CJ they were for the sport curling.

Bend is a hot spot for micro breweries. We checked out McMenamins St. Francis, Crux Fermentation Project, Boneyard, and Worthy Brewing. 

The kids visited Santa Keg outside of super busy Crux.

Worthy even has a Hopservatory! We hope to visit again some day when it's open for some stargazing! 

It's also open for solar gazing (through a telescope with a filter) from time to time.

In checking out their website, it turns out that Worthy's Hopservatory is actually operated as a separate 501c3 non profit. 

We headed back to Seattle on Dec. 28 via the lovely little Redmond, Oregon, airport. We couldn't help but chuckle at its "Charlie Brown" type tree on the mezzanine. 

It seemed a symbol that Christmas was, in fact, over.

All in all, a whirlwind couple of weeks! 

And now, we're right back in the thick of things in Seattle. 

Welcome, 2018!