Happy Camper

IN THE FIELD:  Yesterday, CJ and I took a trip to the Kitsap Peninsula. Our mission was to pick Annabelle up from outdoor school at Camp Seymour, a YMCA facility, in Gig Harbor. Annabelle and her classmates were there Monday midday through Wednesday midday.

Below, she can tell you a bit about her first day there. ...

During my first day at YMCA Camp Seymour, my school group had a number of athletic-focused "classes" across the campsite. The first class we attended among arrival was a high ropes course featuring two wooden structures for campers to climb up with the help of a belay team holding their rope and securing their place in the air. The two climbing structures were Madrona Perch (an old Madrona tree stump that had a very small platform at the top) and Giant Jenga (hanging sets of wooden bars that resembled a massive Jenga tower if you took out every piece except the middle ones). My climbing team only managed to get about halfway on each structure, though I was still proud of myself for continuing even when the sway structures caught me off guard.
The second "class" we had was rather brief. We took a small hike to the campground's zipline, which was reportedly about the size of a small football field. I myself didn't go down the zipline as the large amount of slack in the cord intimidated me, but all of my classmates seemed to have plenty of fun. After returning to the camp and having lunch, we continued with a few smaller tours of camp and familiarizing ourselves with the facility. 

The final activity that day was after dinner, where we headed down to the dock for a canoeing session. This was rather low-key and calm, and even though the seats were a tad cold and wet from earlier rain the canoes were comfortable and easy to use. Since I was in a canoe of three people it was difficult to go in a straight line, though we still managed to go rather fast and devise systems for switching sides at the appropriate times to turn. Overall, the first day was very fun if a tad physically stressful.

Sounds like a fun - and busy - first day at camp.

During my short visit there, I didn't get to see the ropes course or the canoeing, but I did notice some cool light fixtures made using paddles. 

Here's a short video Camp Seymour has posted about their Challenge Course, which Annabelle described above.


And here's a link to a virtual tour: https://www.campseymour.org/about/virtual-tour/

FURTHER AFIELD: Looking for adventure. How about hopping on board a mission to Mars?

OK, so it's in name only, but hey, that's better that than nothing!

Right now, you can sign up to send your name on a microchip that will be Red Planet bound next year as part of the Mars 2020 mission.

The mission will have a new 2,300-pound Mars rover on board. It's scheduled to launch July 2020 at the earliest, with a touch down on Mars in February of 2021.

The rover will be looking for signs of past microbial life, as well as making observations about Mars'  climate and geology. It will collect samples return to Earth at a future date.

From now until Sept. 30, 2019, you can add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars here: https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Pass

Per NASA, "The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to etch the submitted names onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be inscribed on a single dime-sized microchip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover."

You can find out more about Mars 2020 here: https://www.nasa.gov/mars2020

Tuesday Musings

THRIFTY: Today, we popped into a suburban Goodwill for a short treasure hunt. As always, we checked out the vinyl records they had on hand.

It was the usual (STACKS of Glenn Miller, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond, and Barbra Streisand, to name a few 'regulars' in the record bins). I did find one "gem" that made me laugh out loud. ...

I immediately thought the album would make the "best" present for a White Elephant gift exchange at Christmastime. Surely anyone would be overjoyed upon opening it!

CJ found a semi-famous record that you don't usually find at Goodwill. I'll have him tell you more about it.

In 1973, Mike Oldfield, a then-19-year-old English man, composed and recorded Tubular Bells, an album composed of two (mostly) instrumental songs (each of which take up one side each of the album). After a part of Tubular Bells was sampled in the 1973 film The Exorcist, sales of the album skyrocketed, and it hit #1 on the UK album chart.

Today, I got the album at a nearby thrift store, for $1.99. Though it had some scratches, I was able to play it in its entirety.

Musically, Tubular Bells is rather dated to the 1970s. This is probably a consequence of prog-rock falling out of fashion in the wake of more commercial genres such as new wave, as well as less commercial genres such as punk rock. The album features a wide array of instrumentation, nearly all performed by Mike Oldfield. I enjoyed Tubular Bells, but parts of it felt "empty" compositionally, for lack of a better word.

Here's a photo of the album's back, where the instruments are listed.

AWAY: It's a littler quieter than usual around here. Annabelle is away for a couple of days, attending eighth grade camp, at Camp Seymour, near Gig Harbor on the Kitsap Peninsula.

Monday morning, she caught a ride to camp with one of the chaperones. Her schedule for yesterday was as follows: 

Out in the outback for Sack Lunch followed by an afternoon of High Ropes and Dual-Zip
4:45 Walk back in to camp, and move-in to cabins.
5:30 Everyone line up outside the dining hall and take the "FOOD WASTE CHALLENGE!!!"
5:45 DINNER/CHECK IN
7:15 Evening Canoeing led by a Seymour Naturalist
8:30 Return to cabins for Skit practice & cabin time supervised by the Cabin Leaders
Skit practice, camp flags, camp games
10:00 LIGHTS OUT!!! GOOD NIGHT!!!

Here was her schedule for today (Tuesday) ...

7:55  Everyone line up outside the dining hall
8:00 BREAKFAST 9:05 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
9:10 CLASS 3: Sustainable Systems
10:30 CLASS 4: Ornithology 
11:45 Everyone walk together to the ball court. 
11:50 Wash hands for lunch with your cabin groups in the dining hall or shower house
12:00 Line up outside the dining hall
12:05 LUNCH 
1:10 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
1:15 CLASS 5: Beach Ecology
2:35 CLASS 6: Skit Planning in cabins supervised by the Cabin Leaders and Teachers
Self portrait
3:50 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
4:00  Class 7: Orienteering
5:15 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall to regroup. Once cabin leaders have all of their campers, return to cabins to wash hands for dinner.
5:40 Everyone line up outside the dining hall
5:45 DINNER/CHECK IN     
7:15 Skit Night Campfire led by the School Adults
8:00 Archery led by a Seymour Naturalist
9:00 Return to cabins. Start packing up for tomorrow’s departure!
Camp bracelets, camp t-shirts, camp games
10:00 LIGHTS OUT!!

So it looks like they keep them plenty busy. Too bad the weather isn't a little nicer. At least she won't come home sunburned, though! 

Here's a video about the camp.

IT'S A WRAP: This morning, CJ and I headed over to Birthday Dreams' headquarters. We usually have a cake on board when we do that, but this time, we were answering a call for volunteers to wrap presents.

Neither CJ nor I consider ourselves particularly gifted at wrapping presents, so I was kind of relieved when we were given a stack of gifts for a 1 year old's birthday. I figured a 1 year old would be pretty forgiving about the quality of the wrap job. ;)

Birthday Dreams had lots of cute paper to choose from, and we spent about a half hour wrapping, until there were no more presents to wrap (because a bunch of volunteers answered the call for help). 

Sporty

GIRL ON THE RUN: Sunday morning, Annabelle and I headed down the hill to Renton Stadium. It was the starting point for the Girls on the Run 5K event. Annabelle and others have been training for about 10 weeks for the event. 

I dropped her off at about 8:30 for a start time of 10 a.m. Then, I went home and rousted Christian and CJ, and the three of us went down to a hillside just west of the Renton Municipal Airport, as racers would be passing by on both sides of our lookout spot.

CJ was the first one to spy Annabelle. We waved and shouted encouragement as they headed north up the road running along the west side of the airport. 

Once they had passed, we switched our attention to the opposite direction, as the runners would be looping back by, this time running on the sidewalk and street (which was cordoned off). 

FINALE: On Saturday afternoon, Annabelle played her last Ultimate (Frisbee) game of the season. She got to be one of the team captains and go out for the coin toss before the game. 

The other team was really fun to watch - great passers and catchers, really good at moving the disc down the field. 

I think Annabelle and her teammates finished at a little below .500 for the year. That's actually pretty darn good for them, considering the first year, this group had exactly zero victories. Last year they had a couple, and this year they definitely were competitive most of the time. 

CHECKING IN: Sunday afternoon, it was time to check on the health of the hive. 

The bees have been busy, of course. There's even propolis (that waxy looking stuff) on the top grid of the hive now.

We have two beekeepers' suits. Bee and CJ take turns donning them. This week was Annabelle's turn. CJ and I kept a close watch. Below, Annabelle removes one of the racks from the top portion of the hive. The bees really haven't done anything with that part of the hive yet. They're still filling out the bottom racks. 

 Can you see the honey glistening in the combs?

 These little plugs are mostly future drones.

 We caught a glimpse of our queen. 

Check out this corner chock full o' honey! CJ stuck a finger in and sampled some! He said it tasted like honey. :)  So that's good news. 

DIRTY WORK: This morning we tackled a nasty project. Probably my least favorite housekeeping job. But I was tired of swearing every time I opened the fridge. 

That's right. It was refrigerator cleaning day.

CJ was *super* helpful in the endeavor. He's actually a really excellent cleaner overall. I always tell him that he has the cleanest room of any teenager I've ever known.

Anyway, here are a few of his tips for cleaning out your fridge. 

Cleaning refrigerators is important because it is important to organize one's consumable products in an easy-to-find manner. Often times, if a refrigerator goes long enough without undergoing a cleaning or examination, the contents can become disorganized. Disorganization makes it easy for food to rot unnoticed. Needless to say, it is wrong for food to rot when it can be consumed instead - leaving perfectly good food to rot constitutes a waste.

In order to clean a fridge, a large number of the fridge's contents need to be brought outside of the fridge, and determined whether or not they are still good (this is usually determined by checking the "Best By" date printed on the package). Food that is past its "Best By" date should usually be composted, and containers of food that is still good can be combined into the container of the older product (for example: Two cans of Vegenaise were combined into one during our recent fridge-clean, with all the Vegenaise being put into the older container).

Lastly, it is important that food be organized by category (examples: Dairy, beverages, "pickly stuff", et cetera).

Here's hoping we can stick to our new-and-improved refrigerator process.  

I honestly think there could be a successful business model for a company that just cleans fridges.