Looking Back

PLUGGING AWAY: The Great Archive Project continues here at the (very quiet) MPA campus. I have managed to catch up to mid-December of 2010. I hope to be to 2011 before retiring for the evening. Then I'll have "just" seven more months of work to catch up on.

Have I mentioned that I'm hating myself for not archiving all along? :/

The process of copying, pasting, formatting and PDFing (is that a word?) the blog is tedious, but I must say I am thoroughly enjoying revisiting all the photos and doing quick reviews of all the things we've covered in these almost-two years. We've traveled so many miles, and the kids have come such a long way in other ways as well. So in that sense, this project is very rewarding.

RADIO SILENCE: No report from the campers today. I'll just go with the "no news is good news" theory.

GET OUT THOSE GLASSES: Not that you took them from the theater on purpose, but if you do happen to have some of those 3D glasses round your home or office, get 'em on and check this out!
On his Flickr page, Nathanial Burton-Bradford of England offers views of the final space shuttle launch as well as a panorama of the shuttle docked to the International Space Station, and a view of Atlantis' descent to Earth.

PICTURE THIS: Found this drawing of Bee's while picking up around here today. I didn't see her draw it so I don't have a story to go with it. You'll have to make up your own. :)

Blogged Down

AND THEY'RE OFF: Today, CJ, Annabelle and Christian took off for what has become their annual camping trip - and my annual 3-day stretch to devote to a project.

We spent hours getting them ready earlier this week, last night and this morning. We gathered groceries, clothes, gear and a tent, of course. CJ and Annabelle helped Christian check out their temporary shelter here in our yard to make sure it was all in order.So far, I can only think of a couple of things they forgot, but nothing they can't live without, so that's good.

They took plenty of reading material with them.

And Christian reports he taught them how to encourage truckers to blow their horns, so that provided amusement along the way, too.

They are camping at Baker Bay Campground on Dorena Lake, which is just east of Cottage Grove, Oregon.

It took them around seven hours (ugh) to drive there. Christian called tonight to report their safe arrival and to tell me "CJ is having 10 times more fun than he had last year." That's good to hear.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT MPA: Last year when they left, I spent three days and nights down in the basement, cleaning it out. This year's special project is less physically taxing, but it is tedious. I'm archiving this blog into a PDF format. It's a rather painstakingly slow process in order to make it look acceptable (to me).

And so, I am reliving our past couple of years one day at a time. I have finally gotten the first year done. I have a whole additional year to go. As you might imagine, all the while I am cursing myself for not archiving it as I went along instead of trying to play catch up. :/

Ironically, I almost forgot to post a blog tonight because I'm so swamped in the archiving project. ...

Play Time

OH, THE DRAMA: This evening Annabelle announced to us she had a play to present upstairs. Naturally, we all trudged up there.

It was pretty funny, when we walked in the room she immediately ordered us to stop - telling us we were too close. I guess she needed a big performance area. And then she immediately recruited CJ, telling him, "You know this!" :)

And so we were treated to a 3-minute live action version of "I Can't Defeat Airman."

SUNK: A couple of nights ago I bought the kids a Battleship game on clearance at Target. I LOVED Battleship as a kid and they've played an online version, but we've not owned the game ourselves. Until now ...
I was especially happy to find a version that incorporated "build your own" and LEGO features. That had to be even better, right?

Yeah, well, notsomuch. It's really rather lame. For starters, the rules are different (and should be ignored in favor of the original games' rules). Second, and worse-ly (what's the right word here?), the little ships don't anchor into the playfield. They sit on a piece of cardboard atop the game board. So anytime any kid touches anything on the board, the ships move all over the board. Which doesn't work very well with that whole A-3, C-5, you sunk my battleship type stuff.

Wish I'd seen and bought an old school set. :( Look for this item at a Goodwill near you soon.

CAPITAL IDEA: CJ had heavy thoughts on his mind this morning. Not sure what got him to thinking about it, but just after breakfast he announced he had a plan "for extra super bad villains." Do tell, I encouraged. "They go into death traps instead of prison," he proposed.

"Oh," I said. "I just hope you make really Really REALLY sure they're guilty before they fall into death traps."

SUGAR SHACK: Rick's last day of teaching summer school is tomorrow and I volunteered MPA to make some treats for his kiddos. I decided on Rice Krispie Treat lollipops.

Annabelle was more than happy to help. She was chairman of the sugar polka dots.NO DOZE: CJ, a.k.a. the boy who barely sleeps, has been peppering us with questions about how long a person can go without sleep before they'd DIE. Is it days? Weeks? Months?

We've speculated, but we don't have a solid answer for him. And that bothers CJ. He wants answers, dammit!

Turning to Wikipedia, we learned that the longest (scientifically documented) period of time a human being has intentionally gone without sleep without using stimulants of any kind is 264 hours (11 days)

I told him. "I'll shatter that record to pieces! I'll shatter it to fractions of quarks!" CJ vowed.

Spoken like a true nerd. :)

DRAGGING IT OUT: Annabelle was dragging along slowly while getting ready for bed tonight. I called out to her in her bedroom, trying to prod her along. "I'm just hanging my cape up," she called back in a sing-songy voice.

Oh, that's right. Can't rush a superhero. :)

Tuesday Follies

ART GALLERY: So what do you do when every horizontal surface in your home is covered in one of a kind artistic creations?

I pride myself on making a nice cache of art supplies readily available to the kids and boy oh boy does Annabelle avail herself to the supplies - to the point that seriously every table, counter, cabinet top, etc. is covered with her creations.

It presents quite a quandary. What to do with all of them? We simply can't keep them all, our house is waaaay too small. So I talked to her today about how we will, of course, save extra special ones, but the rest we'll have to photograph and recycle.

Maybe I should just upgrade her art supplies and let her open an Etsy store.

FUNNY STUFF: Today, we took two huge bags of things to donate to Value Village. Of course, that meant we had to go in the store and BUY stuff to take its place. ;)

I found CJ admiring this at one point ..."It looks pixelated," he said.

Hahahaha. I told him it's called cross stitching. :)

One of the items we bought today was a riddle book, since the kids both love riddles. This afternoon Annabelle was peppering me with new material. Here's one gem:

Annabelle: How do librarians file melted marshmallows?
Me: I dunno, how DO librarians file melted marshmallows?
Annabelle: The gooey demical (sic) system? Get it? Get it?!?!

Ah yes, soooo funny. ;)

CJ'S NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS: Time travel is impossible, or so some Hong Kong scientists recently announced.

IN HAPPIER NEWS: It was a two-magazine day for CeeJ. His Nintendo Power came in the mail and he found a new MAD Magazine at Fred Meyer.MISSION COMPLETE: Today, the kids took their completed summer reading program certificates back to the library. On them, they'd each listed 10 books they've read this summer so far.

As a reward, they each got to choose a free book, enter their names in a drawing for a special "Breakfast of Champions" and post their name on the wall of the library.

This evening I was laying their goods out on the stereo top to photo them and Annabelle (pizza sauced face and all) worked her way into the frame.GRUMPY MOM: One of the kids' education-related Facebook groups I subscribe to posted a link to an article with the headline, "Lost something? Not my problem. Frumpy Mom rule: Never look for missing kids stuff."

That got my attention. As I read the author's diatribe, I felt my blood pressure rising. She started with, " ... I have a very firm rule in my house: I do not look for kid stuff. Period. Exclamation point. End of paragraph," and was basically downhill (at least for her poor kids, IMHO) from there.

I feel like quoting the whole story, but won't due to that whole copyright infringement thingee. I would just encourage (or should I say discourage?!) you to read it and then come back. ... ;)

I don't usually post comments on group posts, but I couldn't help myself today. I wrote: Wow, not a fan of her philosophy at all. Do we need to teach kids to take care of and keep track of their stuff? Absolutely. Should kids be asked to (really, REALLY) try to find their lost items on their own first? Of course. But teaching kids NOT to help someone in need of assistance finding something, no matter what? Really? How does that help someone become a better person? And where do you draw the line? Will she also not help a neighbor find a lost dog? How about a lost child at the store? Are those also "not my problem" situations, because the things aren't hers? Has she never misplaced anything herself and hoped for help finding it? And when you live in a household with others, sometimes the other people move your stuff - so when other people mess with your stuff and you can't find it, are you still on your own?

Obviously (hopefully?) by the writer's tone, she's trying to be humorous, but I guess I don't see much funny about a statement like "I don't really care so much if my kids like me or not ... at my age, I just don't give a horse's behind." Sounds more like a grumpy mom than a "Frumpy Mom" to me.

BACK IN THE DAY: Harvard used to boast about its easy entrance exam, hoping to attract more applicants in the mid-19th century. So when I read that a 1869 Harvard entrance exam was recently posted to the Web (PDF HERE), I thought, "Oh, that sounds like fun."

Um, not so much. At least for me. Turns out, in order to even take the test, you need to know Latin, Greek, Greek history, ancient geography, and more. Yikes. :/

ANOTHER OUCH: Here's a comment from a NASA-related Facebook group I'm a part of, which was posted today: "If you watch NASA backwards, it's about a space agency that has no spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on the moon." Yikes. That will leave a mark! :(

In other news, tonight a robotic space probe scheduled to orbit Jupiter made its way to the rocket assembly building at Cape Canaveral's Complex 41. There, a powerful Atlas 5 booster awaits its $1 billion cargo, per Spaceflight Now. Juno's launch is scheduled for August 5 at 11:34 a.m. EDT.

City Livin'

SOMETHING'S FISHY: On the agenda this afternoon: Using the vouchers for free admission for the kids to the Seattle Aquarium that we got a couple months back as part of Starbucks' "We Love Seattle" promo.

We headed down to the waterfront a little after noon. There was a light drizzle, which made it really easy to tell the Seattle and surrounding area visitors from the out of town tourists. The out of towners were wearing heavy coats and hang dog expressions. I think a lot of them think the sun we had this weekend is normal, which it is most absolutely not.

There was quite a line to get into the museum. While we were waiting in it, Christian gave an extra voucher we had to a family in front of us. Boy were they happy - it saved them $12. That's right, it's $12 for a kid to get into the aquarium. Yikes. And the adult admission? It's NINETEEN damn dollars apiece. Good gravy. Certainly not something we'll be doing very often (like, until next year, if Starbucks has another promo and/or when the aquarium is a Groupon deal or some such thing). And let me tell you, we were packed in like sardines in the aquarium. So. Many. People, and about every other one seemed to be pushing a *&%^$ stroller the size of a Volkswagen. At times it was impossible to even move just because of the mass of humanity. But enough complaining.

We did manage to see some sea creatures. The starfish are always a favorite ... ... especially because the kids get to touch them (with a gentle, one fingered poke). We checked out the circular-shaped jellyfish tank. It reminds me of the portal in Stargate for some reason.CJ was attacked by an octopus ... ...they rode an orca ...... and Annabelle measured up to a sixgill shark! In their second building we saw some harbor seals. They have the sweetest faces.And we spied some sleeping sea otters.There were things to see outside the aquarium, too, of course. For starters - the orb is back! In fact, it probably never left. ... A few days ago, I reported that we saw it floating out in the bay instead of docked. At that time, we presumed that it was on its way home, wherever that may be. Instead, now we think maybe they were just testing something and then hauled it back into port.
We also got to see the tremendous amount of progress that has been done on the John T. Williams memorial totem pole. It was at Seattle Center, but now the project has been moved to the waterfront, just north of the aquarium. Two of Williams' brothers were there, one older, one younger. The younger one spoke to us for a bit, telling us how they're trying to make a positive out of a negative (their brother being gunned down while minding his own business, crossing the street, by a Seattle police officer). The totem pole is gorgeous. I wish I'd thought to ask the man where it will be installed.

WEEKEND REWIND: We had lots of fun in the sun this weekend. On Saturday, we went to Seattle Center, where the kids enjoyed splashing around in the fountains.

We also popped into Experience Music Project, checked out the displays, including the always jaw dropping instrument sculpture. We also saw the Avatar exhibit ...

... as well as the Battlestar Galactica exhibit.

Definitely an awesome trip to EMP!

On Sunday, we spent an hour or so at Golden Gardens, a park about 10 minutes to our north, where a neighbor was having a party. It was hot-hot-hot, and the water was oh-so-blue.RAIN IN SEATTLE! FILM AT 11: I kid you not, the LEAD story on tonight's news was that it rained today. Oh, and there was thunder and lighting, too!

I will admit, I said to Christian this morning 'round 7:30 a.m., "That was the LOUDEST thunder I've ever heard in my life." And a few minutes later, Rick texted me and said the same thing.

SAY WHAT?: "I'm going to live with you forever," CJ announced around 7:30 this morning. Given that, I was surprised a bit later when he told me that he has decided on a career path that involves being "Santa's Apprentice." I told him if that was going to be the case, he'd have to move to the North Pole. He seemed OK with that, saying, "I'll remember to take a coat."

Looking Forward

SIZING IT UP: Right out of the gate this a.m. I read a Reuters story about a U.S. Department of Education "Naton's Report Card" that half of the nation's fourth graders knew the correct descending order of size: North America, the U.S., California and Los Angeles.

In fact, less than one-third of elementary and high school students showed proficiency in geography, the Education Department said. According to Roger M. Downs, a Pennsylvania State University geography professor, students aren’t learning subjects such as geography and history as teachers spend more time on math and reading to accommodate standardized tests.

Naturally, I couldn't wait to put CeeJ and Bee to the test. I listed the four places on a white board in no particular order and asked them to rank them largest to smallest. It took Bee all of 5 seconds to finish the task with 100 percent accuracy.

CJ took a bit longer, as he wasn't sure how to rank Los Angeles and California. He thought they were both states. :/ I was glad he at least got the continent-country-state hierarchy. I gave him a slightly different menu to choose from (subbing Seattle and Washington for LA and California). When I did that, he nailed it.
REST IN PEACE: My inbox fills with news from NASA each day, and while this isn't the artsiest shot ever, I think it noteworthy. Image: NASA/Kyle Herring
It shows where workers marked in bright red "MLG" at the spot where space shuttle Atlantis' main landing gear came to rest after the vehicle's final return from space. The end.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS: I tuned into NASA TV this afternoon half afraid I'd find it had become something else like "Real Housewives of the Space Coast." ;) I was SO happy to find it was a press conference about the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity which will launch later this year and arrive on Mars in August of 2012. That's right, NASA will not go quietly into the night!!!! A NASA spokesperson closed out the press conference by saying, "When it comes to tomorrow, science never sleeps." AMEN! :)

During the press conference, there was an amazing animation of Curiousity flying to and landing on Mars. It involved a capsule, which then opens, revealing a jet-propelled vehicle that carries the rover to near the surface before lowering it by cables, disconnecting the cables and then flying off away from the rover's landing area. My mind is boggled at how these designers are able to pull stuff like this off. Just the selection process that went into narrowing down candidate landing sites is something to behold.

The big news at today's presser was that Gale Crater has been selected as the Curiosity's landing site. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.

If you go to this portion of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's MSL site and you have QuickTime, you can watch the landing animation. In fact, the entire Mars Exploration Program Web site is pretty darn interesting.

Wheel Stop

Photo: NASA
IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS: Last night before going to bed, I set two alarms on my cell phone - one for 2:40, the other for 2:43. I wanted to make sure we were up for the historic 2:50-something landing of Atlantis.

Because I didn't trust those alarms, between 11 and 2:30, I woke up about every 20 minutes, and when I managed to sleep, naturally my dreams were about being in Florida, at the landing site.

When I awoke at 2:30, I decided just to get up and be done with it. I went downstairs and turned on the TV in the kids room.Together, with only the TV as light (don't let the flash photography above fool you), we watched Mission Control track Atlantis over the Gulf of Mexico and then into Florida.I didn't turn the computer on, which almost led to a DISASTER. For you see, the four of us were in the kids' room, in the dark, glued to the NASA TV broadcast of the landing. Atlantis was about 45 seconds to touchdown when the view from the cockpit is replaced by a black screen and the words MONTHLY TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did NOT get up in the middle of the night to watch a test pattern and miss history being made. Can you believe it?! Christian and I literally dove for our computers hoping to boot up NASA TV online, all the while knowing that it would be too late once they booted up. Thank GOD someone, somewhere must have realized the error of their ways because the EMERGENCY TEST message went away about 15 seconds before touch down. Phew, disaster averted.

George Diller, the voice of NASA liftoffs and landings for years, did a fine job calling the game (so to speak). Only once did I hear his voice catch. It was at the instant Atlantis touched down and Diller noted it was "the final mission of the space shuttle program."

And so, our Shuttle Program is no more. In all, the five remarkable flying machines launched on 135 missions, traveled 542,398,878 miles that spanned 21,152 orbits of the planet, and carried 355 humans and 3.5 million pounds of payloads as the Space Transportation System.

BLUE MOVES: Yesterday, we rented (at the kids' insistence) some Wii game featuring dancing Smurfs. The kids have really enjoyed it, much to my surprise/chagrin.This morning while they were playing along I heard Annabelle say, "I don't care what score I get, I just want to DANCE!!!!" So, I have to give the game points for prompting that. :)
Remembering her comment, this afternoon I cued up a bunch of BeeGees on the PC speakers. That got her moving again, and this time she had a furry friend to disco with.DUST IN THE WIND: This afternoon CJ, from across the room, asked me, "How would a year without rain be?" Would you believe at that VERY moment, I was reading an email from the Library of Congress about using original images, documents and recordings to teach about the Dust Bowl? So, we spent some time looking at Library of Congress resources.

For me, this woman - a migrant mother taken by Dorthea Lange in 1936 - is the face of the Dust Bowl. PHOTO: Library of Congress
MATH MANNERS: The (minor) struggles with math continue 'round MPA. We're doing problems where Soandso has $10 and they buy thingamajig, so how much do they have left? As you can see, Annabelle spends more time on the artistic interpretatation of the problems than she does doing the math itself.At one point Bee got stuck, so I offered up CJ as her tutor. Before too long I heard him retort, "I'm not going to help a person with a crappy attitude. You're on your own now, Annabelle."

Harsh, but I have to admit, after hearing her whining and snapping at him, she had it coming.

GET RICH QUICK: CJ's latest idea for striking it rich? "24 hour energy drinks. Why just buy a 5 hour energy drink, when you could have a 24-hour one?" he reasoned.
I suggested that perhaps most people would like to be able to sleep at some point during a 24-hour cycle.
Back to the drawing board for CJ.

ON PATROL: This morning CJ and Annabelle were playing a two-player game of Bubble Bobble and I hear CJ say to his sister, "I'd like it if you use good grammar."

That's right, apparently the grammar police are on patrol even when you're playing a video game. A couple minutes later, he chastized, "Don't talk like a cheap person." Oh, snap! Honestly, I'm not sure what she said to elicit that comment. Maybe talking slang?

HMMM: Last night, from CJ's lips ... "I have a question. Is there a B.B. Queen?"