Season Opener

ANEW: Thursday night, there was nowhere on Earth we'd rather be than sitting in Safeco Field for the Mariners' home opener. 

It has been a long winter, and baseball resoundingly signals the start to a new season.

We arrived at the field a couple hours pre-first pitch. We took that time to soak up the sights and sounds of the stadium.

After checking out the bullpen and walking the main concourse for a bit, eventually, we headed out to the fan zone on the third level, in the stadium's southwest corner.

 There, the kids checked out Nelson Cruz's "boomstick" and had fun with a bucket of Gatorade.

They posed next to a Felix photo. The King was last night's starter - an honor he's had now for 10 years running. That's the longest opening day starting streak in Major League Baseball.

After awhile, we moseyed on up to our seats of choice - the very top row of the stadium, on the Puget Sound side. We LOVE it there. We have a great view of the whole park, the scoreboard, the cityscape and the Sound. What's not to love?

We watched workers ready the field for the inaugural game.

The guy did a nice job on the "8," I thought.

Naturally, Home Plate had to be perfect, too.

They rolled out the red carpet for Opening Night. Below, "King" Felix Hernandez made a long, lonely walk from the dugout to the bullpen in centerfield.

The visitors on opening day were the Cleveland Indians. Their squad was announced first.

And then, it was time for the Mariners! Some of the guys were so excited, they jumped for joy coming out of the gate.

There were fireworks, of course. 

The loudest cheers were reserved for one Mr. Ichiro Suzuki. The future Hall of Famer is a beloved former Mariner, now back with the team.

 Suzuki is still going strong at 44.

 He looked stoked to be on the squad.

Pre-game festivities included a fly-over of a U.S. Air Force C-17 from the 4th Airlift Squadron at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. We turned and looked out the window behind our seats and saw it coming!

 It's a big bird!

 With a big belly!

The Mariners posted this photo of the flyover on their social media today.

Below is the obligatory first pitch photo (taken from the last row of the stadium).

Fans had to wait until the ninth spot in the batting order to see a favorite son return on offense.

All eyes were on him, even in the on deck circle.

 No mistaking his pre-bat stretching routine!

And it doesn't get any more iconic than this pose.

The kids will tell you a little bit more about the evening. CJ is up first. ... 

Yesterday, I went to the opening night of the Seattle Mariners' 2018 season at Safeco Field. The Mariners played against the Cleveland Indians, and won by a score of 2-1. Here is my description my experience at the game:
For much (if not most) of the game, I sat in one of the seats at the top of the seating areas. The Massive MarinersVision screen regularly displayed the portraits of whoever was at the bat, as well as the number of runs each team had. Early in the game, the Mariners scored both of their runs in the same inning, while the Indians' only run came much later in the game.
While walking through the stadium, I smelled several different food stands, staples at Safeco Field. For example, while near Fair Territory, I could smell the stand's fried pastries. At one point in the crowd, there was a short-lived attempt at a "wave," which never reached our area.

Toward the end of the game, my family moved from our high-up seats to an area just behind home plate. This meant that I got to see Edwin Diaz throw the final pitch of the game, immediately followed up by the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Fire (a song played after Mariners home victories).

Annabelle paints this picture of Opening Day. ...

Opening Day at Safeco is surrounded by people, yelling and cheering as they wait for the game. The crowd pushes through the concourse as the food stands begin to open, filling the air with the scent of kettle corn, salty and sweet. On the outer sides of the stadium, the wind blows against layers of hats and coats, protecting us from the trademark Seattle weather. Once the event really starts, the booming of the fireworks and the announcer’s voice fills the air, just as it has on opening day for years. The crowd cheers loudly during the opening ceremony as the players are introduced. The first inning brings down a blanket of silence, where between every pitch, every connection with the bat, the crowd sits completely still. During the second inning, the stadium erupts with cheers as a 2-run homer is hit, diving deep into center field. The following innings are mostly quiet, with the crowd bundled up as the night gets darker. No more home runs- a few disappointing pitches, foul balls, and a walk in the ninth- but the game is largely over. The fans rush through the gates, pushing past a sea of people as they cheer and converse, celebrating the new beginning of another baseball season.

The Mariners shared this short video of Opening Day highlights. 

All in all, it was a joyous occasion. 
Welcome back baseball, welcome back.

Playing Catch Up

DINNER IS SERVED: Last Saturday night was the fourth Saturday of the month, and that 
usually means you can find us in the University District, serving up 50 or so dinners to homeless and hungry youth. 

I was the feed lead again this month, and on the menu was a burrito buffet. We had plate-sized tortillas, and filled them full of home made rice, beans and meat. Then the diners could choose from four kinds of hot sauce, onions, olives, jalapenos, sour cream, chips and more for toppings. 

At the end of the line we had a custom cupcake station. We had four kinds of cupcakes (carrot, chocolate, white and yellow), and three kinds of soda pop-inspired icing to choose from (orange Fanta, Mountain Dew and root beer). The diners really had fun making choices. Root beer wound up being the most popular, if you were wondering.

Not only did we get to feed dozens of hungry people, the effort paid off for an other non-profit. Through the Points of Light/All for Good project, we were able to earn 10 park hopper passes to Disneyland to raffle off to earn money. So it was a huge win-win for all involved.

By the way, the poster pictured up top was one Annabelle made. 

GAME DAY: On Saturday, CJ, Annabelle, and Kennedy spent some time at the Skyway library, just a couple of blocks from our house, for their monthly game day. 

Annabelle will tell you more about it. ...

The Skyway Public Library holds a small event every month for board and card game developers to playtest their games. Anyone who wants to can come in between 12:00 and 5:00 to try out any of the games they like. This month’s theme was “dexterity games”, where all the games available challenged you in more ways than just dice rolls.

One of the first games we decided to try was A La Carte, which we’ve played before. In A La Carte, you are a chef in a very high-class restaurant, racing to compete some of the gross dishes the restaurant serves before your opponents do! When you play, you have a small oven with a real metal pan and a dial. In the middle of the table are the dishes, printed on small cardboard tokens with the “recipe”, or directions, on the back. 4 small plastic “spice jars” contain irregular pieces of plastic in 4 colors: yellow (lemon zest), red (bell pepper), black (pepper), and green (herbs). The spice jars also contain clear “salt” pieces that can ruin a perfect dish. The game uses dice to determine how you adjust the heating on the stove, and if you aren’t careful, it’s very easy to lose by over-seasoning or burning your dishes!

Another game, one that was open for playtesting, was T.A.G: That Acronym Game. The game includes small square cards with instructions, a 4-sided die (to determine the amount of letters in the acronym) and a 30-sided alphabet die with 4 “wild” judge’s choice spots. The cards are either standard cards (acronyms for anything) or a certain type of acronym. For example, the “Newsflash!” card requires you to make a news headline out of the letters provided. Examples include “Terrifying Attack Gorilla!” for the letters T, A, and G. It’s played somewhat like apples to apples where the winner receives the card, and the first to 10 cards wins.

The two other games available were somewhat simple. Fishing Hole, which the developer says will soon be re-themed into something more fantasy oriented, involved using “bait” cards and tossing them across the table to land on fish. You could collect certain kinds of fish depending on size, and getting a set of 3 would give you an extra point bonus. The one very specific rule about “throwing out your line” (tossing a card) is that you have to be standing somewhere around the table and your hand cannot go past the edge. You are allowed to walk around the table and experiment to see how much the specific table makes the cards glide, meaning each game is slightly different than the last.

Wok on Fire was the last game we played, where you use a spatula card to flip face down ingredient cards in the circular “wok” pool, and create combinations and meals that grant you the most points. The point values and abilities for certain ingredients seemed kind of random, such as the fact that when there’s chicken face-up in the wok, you MUST take all available chicken, but it only counts as one move. The game was already fully developed and released, it was just there for fun as part of the “dexterity” theme. Next month is supposedly focused on cooperative games, so I’m expecting to find some good family games to try!

FACTORING IN: CJ and Annabelle seem ready for some new challenges, so I'm looking at getting them enrolled in college sooner rather than later. In our state, high school students in grades 11 and 12 can participate in Running Start, earning college credits for nearly free.

However, on paper, CJ's just in 9th grade now, and Annabelle's in 7th, and I don't really think they need to wait that long to get started, so we're looking at pathways to earlier enrollment.

One thing is for certain: They'd have to pass entrance exams. CJ has been experimenting on the ACCUPLACER website with online practice tests. He totally smokes the reading/language arts related ones, which is great. So far, he's not done as well on algebra. He passes the tests, but it would be nice to go into it knowing you have a pretty good chance of nailing it.

So, we're working on concepts and challenges that our sorta Swiss cheese approach hasn't covered yet (or, we covered it so long ago, it has kind of been forgotten. One of those instances was absolute values, which he now has a handle on after being reminded. 

Another question involved factoring. We reviewed simple factoring of a single number, but then watched this video from Khan Academy about factoring a polynomial with two variables. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MZl6Mna0leQ


Unfortunately/interestingly, the problem on the test was super different from the examples in the video above. However, CJ knew enough about how one would factor the equation that he was able to correctly deduce which answer was mostly likely to be correct out of four choices.

I took the opportunity to point out to him that's a good example of not just learning to do the math, but also learning how to effectively take a test.

FREE FALLING: You might want to wear a hardhat this weekend, depending on where you're living. The sky is falling!

Well, not the sky, but a big ol' Chinese space station. Named Tiangong-1, (which translates to "Heavenly Palace-1"), it was launched without anyone aboard on Sept. 29, 2011. For a few years, it maintained an orbit about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth, which is just a little lower than the International Space Station (which averages an altitude of about 250 miles, or 400 km).

Reportedly, Tiangong-1 was designed to keep operating for just a couple of years, and China put its first space station into "sleep mode" shortly thereafter the Shenzhou-10 visit. The original plan was to have Tiangong-1 de-orbit in a controlled fashion, using the craft's thrusters to guide it down into Earth's atmosphere. However, in March of 2016, China announced the space station had stopped sending data back to control, and that a controlled re-entry was no longer an option. So, the station is being pulled down to Earth by atmospheric drag.

Scientists are tracking Tiangong-1's descent. While hopefully the vast majority of the station will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, and any remains will just land in the ocean, there's a chance parts may make it back down to Terra Firma. 

Here's a graphic showing where debris is most likely to hit.

Stay safe out there! :)

For the Record

WEEKEND REWIND: We spent most of our weekend working around the abode, purging, organizing, cleaning, and then purging and organizing some more.

There was some time for fun, however. On Saturday, the kids spent 3-plus hours at the monthly game day at our neighborhood library. I will have Annabelle write up a review of that tomorrow. 

On Sunday, CJ, a fledgling collector of vinyl records, was dead set on attending The Northwest Record Show at Seattle Center. 

Here's what he had to say about the experience.  

The Northwest Record Show is a biannual event held at the Pavilion Building in Seattle Center. At the Northwest Record Show, dozens of record dealers come with thousands of vinyl records, compact discs, 8-tracks, and cassettes, selling to eager buyers like me. The Northwest Record Show has been an event at Seattle Center for over 30 years.

Yesterday, my dad and I attended 2018's first Northwest Record Show. I went from stand to stand, and ended up buying four different records.

The first two records were Pink Floyd's A Collection of Great Dance Songs (ACGDS) and The Alan Parsons Project's Pyramid. ACGDS is a compilation from the early 1980s. The version of the iconic song Money on ACGDS was a different recording than the original, due to copyright laws concerning the record labels. Notably, my copy of ACGDS was a promotional record intended for CBS (SALE IS UNLAWFUL, it reads in letters on the back). I bought Pyramid because it was the Alan Parsons Project's next album after I Robot (which I had got from a thrift store in Kent).

The third record, Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds, was the band's last album before The Dark Side of the Moon. Obscured by Clouds was a soundtrack album for the obscure French film La Vallée. Pink Floyd fans often refer to Obscured by Clouds as un underrated album, overshadowed by both the band's preceding and following albums (Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon, respectively).

The last record I got, Nirvana's Nevermind, was an original pressing. While Nevermind reached the top of the Billboard 200, the original vinyl pressing is sought-after, as when Nevermind came out (1991), vinyl was fading in relevance, being replaced by compact discs. The sleeve, insert, and the record itself are in pristine condition.

Obviously, CJ was quite pleased with his purchases. He has been listening to them ever since, and we've all enjoyed his acquisitions. 

2K: Over the weekend, Mars Science Laboratory marked its 2,00th Sol (or Martian) day on the Red Planet.

To mark the occasion, NASA released a mosaic photo that is a preview of what the rugged rover will be investigating next.

The image below was assembled from dozens of images taken by the Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Sol 1931, in January of this year. On the right side of the frame is Mount Sharp, the central peak in the Gale Crater where Curiosity landed back in 2012. 

Since September of 2014, the rover has been mountain climbing, all the while collecting drill samples to get a better understanding of Mars’ geological history.

Image of the mosaic taken by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover in January of 2018 (Sol 1931). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS