Food & Football

GOBBLE GOBBLE: So, it strikes me I never did get around to posting yesterday. Sorry. That whole Thanksgiving thing got in the way, I guess.

I did about 4-5 hours of prep work Wednesday, but for some reason, it still took another 10 or so on Thursday. Go figure.

I think I overdid it. What a surprise. The big bird wore a bacon sweater. Here's a before photo ...

It crisped up quite nicely.

We also had a Coca Cola ham, a zucchini and fennel salad, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread stuffing, gravy, a delightful butternut squash souffle and, of course, snacks during the day (Chex Mix, deviled eggs, and some lovely sausage stuffed mushrooms). Oh, and pumpkin bars and a fabulous cheesecake with a gingersnap crust. Mmm.

Did I mention there was too much food? Of course the upside of that is we have plenty of leftovers, and people to help make a dent in them. 

In addition to eating, we watched football. Lots and lots and lots of football on Thursday and Friday.

Come Friday, the game of the day for us was the Apple Cup. I bought a a variety of apples for the occasion, and we watched the Cougs beat the Huskies. Insert *$&%^$ words here.

Turkey Eve

TAKING FLIGHT: We're happy to have company for Thanksgiving - Nonnie and Bops made the trek up to see us. This morning Christian and the kids took them to one of our Absolute Favorite Spots, The Museum of Flight.

As always, the kids had a wonderful time.

TOUCH AND GO:  Last Thanksgiving, I was in a seedy motel at the Space Coast, awaiting the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory. That was the trip of a lifetime.

Today, the Internet is abuzz with rumors swirling about some major discovery Curiosity has made on Mars. It's not the first time. Just days ago, the Internet was abuzz with "news" of a methane discovery on Mars. Since living organisms produce >90 percent of the methane found in our Earth's atmosphere, finding methane on Mars would be a strong indicator of life and A Really Big Deal. But, as it turned out, the methane source on Mars was actually MSL itself. That's right, stowaway methane from Earth.

And so, we still wait for any "Earth shattering" Mars news, although the MSL team is quick to point out that this mission is one for the books no matter what.

But one bit of news the MSL team released today was this animation of Curiosity in action. It's a short of part of MSL's day on Nov. 18, when it first touched a rock with an instrument on its arm, then tucked the arm away and traveled 83 feet.  Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports this was Curiosity's first "touch and go" day. The animation below used the same software the rover planners use to plot Curiosity's movements on Mars.
 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cOgfzWhrRf8

HEARTWRENCHING:  This afternoon while I was working on an excessive amount of food for our upcoming Thanksgiving feast, I turned on the Food Network. I expected some Thanksgiving-themed cooking show to be on. Instead, the 'soundtrack' for my baking was "Hunger Hits Home," a one-hour documentary about the rampant childhood  hunger problem in the United States.

60 million kids in America face hunger this year. One in five U.S. children struggles with hunger and three out of five U.S. teachers see hunger affect their classrooms.

The hour was filled with one heartbreak after another. I swear, I was crying into my cornbread stuffing watching and listening to it as I worked.

At the end of the show, Guy Fieri suggested three ways to help. One, donate to the campaign to end childhood hunger by 2015. Two, encourage other people to watch "Hunger Hits Home." It's available free online for anyone to view. Here's a link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/hunger-hits-home/96181.html. And three, contact your local representatives to keep childhood nutrition programs alive and healthy.

Done, done and done.

HO-HO-HUBBLE: If you're planning on sending out Christmas greetings and are looking for some out-of-this-world ones, check out what Hubble has to offer. The telescope has a special holiday card site. There, you'll find "messages of joy and peace ... illuminated by the natural splendor of the universe." Sweet!

The cards are designed to be printed out using your home printer, or at photo stores or online photo labs.

Here's a sample of one beautiful option ... It's of Arp 147, a pair of galaxies. According to the Hubble site, the blue ring probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Wild!

Misty Morning

WATERWORLD, THE SEQUEL: After record rainfall on Monday (2.41 inches in Seattle over the last 48 hours), imagine our surprise this morning when we awoke to blue skies over the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie.

However, we'd seen the forecast and knew it wasn't going to last, so we got our collective acts together and got out to the falls a little after 8 a.m. We had the place to ourselves.

What was kind of ironic is that although it was clear skies and no rain, raging Snoqualmie Falls has its own weather pattern. There was a thick, drenching ground-level rainstorm produced by the water. We were absolutely soaked after just a couple of minutes, and it was absolutely hostile photo taking weather, so these photos were the best I could manage with the drenched Nikon.

In both photos, you can kind of seen the lodge perched up above the falls, with the sun emerging from behind it.

It was much more hospitable back inside.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN: After an excellent breakfast at Fall City Roadhouse & Inn, we headed back to Seattle. We did some Thanksgiving prep, including making some turkey cookies out of a hand-shaped cookie cutter.

I think Annabelle's mutant turkey is my favorite. :)

And tonight, we went out to dinner at Laredo's to celebrate Christian's half century mark.

Waterworld

WATER EVERYWHERE:  Last night, this morning, all afternoon and into the evening it rained. Wait, no, that's an understatement. It poured. But even that doesn't capture the blanket of wet pounding down on us. T|he rains were torrential. And still are.

When someone in Western Washington tells you it's raining buckets, that means it's coming down hardcore. It rained 1.89 inches in Seattle from midnight to 3 p.m., Poor Bremerton got twice that.

Too bad the weather was so miserable, as we had a field trip scheduled for today. But go we did, as a reservation was involved.

A few weeks ago I scored a half off Living Social deal for Salish Lodge, in Snoqualmie, Wash, overlooking Snoqualmie Falls. I've wanted to check that place out since I was a fan of "Twin Peaks" back in the early 1990s, when it aired on ABC.  Parts of the haunting series were filmed at Salish Lodge, and points nearby.

When it was established in 1916, the lodge (then Snoqualmie Falls Lodge) was an eight-room inn built as a rest stop for travelers. The facility underwent a major face lift in 1988, right before "Twin Peaks" filming commenced.

We were thrilled that at about 3 p.m. there was a tiny break in the torrential rainfall, so we sprinted for the falls. You could hear them before you could see them, and what a roar they give off. Amazing, turbulent energy, some of which is harnessed by two Puget Sound Energy hydroelectric power plants. Combined, they produce enough electricity to power 16,000 homes.

At the falls, water plunged 268 feet. There is a 65-foot deep pool at its base.  The water flows at a rate ranging from 500 and 1500 cubic feet per second. Today, I'd have to think it was at the upper end of that range, due to mountain runoff and the crazy rain. According to SnoValley Star.com (a news site for Snoqualmie and North Bend), geologists recently discovered that the Falls flow over a 20 million year old extinct volcano.

According to the Snoqualmie Falls Web site, "Snoqualmie" is a Salish (American Indian tribe) word meaning moon. The falls were a spiritual place to the tribe, and the setting of many legends, including one about the beaver (S'Beow) climbing into the sky to fetch trees and fire to bring back down to Earth. The native people who lived in the valley near the falls were known as the people of the moon.


The dramatic falls attract more than 1.5 million visitors a year, making it the state's second most popular tourist attraction.  We certainly plan on coming back on a nicer day. It's only about a 45 minute drive east of Seattle.

I mean, check out this photo (gleaned from Wikipedia and taken by photographer Meher Anand Kasam) of how gorgeous the falls are on a lovely day!

We checked into our room a little after 3. CeeJ and Bee dig the bathtub.

ROOT BEER GOLD:  While driving eastbound on I-90, away from Seattle and toward Snoqualmie, I saw a sign along the highway saying something about XXX Rootbeer. While the family tends to stay away from anyplace with a big XXX sign, we thought we'd live dangerously, hoping it really was about rootbeer. Was it ever!

From the parking lot, it was clear this was no ordinary burger joint. First, the towering rootbeer barrel sign commands your attention. There were dozens of tables out on the patio. On this dreary day it was a drippy Ghost Town, but in my mind's eye, I could see the place packed with families and cruisers. (Apparently they are a hot spot for hot rods and car clubs.)

From the chrome barstools and colorful booths to the memorabilia covering seeming every square inch of ceiling and walls,, the diner has a fun 1950s vibe. The menu also looks like it could have been from a 1950s time capsule (though the prices are in the here and now). They poke fun at themselves that it ain't exactly health food!

While CJ had rootbeer, of course, but Annabelle was entranced by this gizmo, and opted for an Orange Crush.

I had a sip and it took me right back to the 1970s.

To put it mildly, CJ was quite pleased with XXX, but I'll let him elaborate on his blog, 'The Rootbeer Kid."

Another Friday

CAUTIONARY TUNE: This song played in our house approximately 128 times today. (I may be understating it, actually.) Catchy tune by Tangerine Kitty. And it may save your life. :)

COVER TO COVER: Today we scored the last copy of "The Third Wheel" off the shelf at Target. It's the latest in the "Diary of Wimpy Kid" series, CJ's favorite books ever.

He started reading it for about 10 minutes between Target and acting class, and then half the the way home (with Annabelle getting the other half of the time to read), and then for about an hour once we got home. He managed to finish it off and said he enjoyed it.

Annabelle will likely finish before bedtime.

Too bad these books only come out once a year or so.

END SESSION: Today was the kids' last class for the year (sounds weird saying that) down in West Seattle. So, Bollywood, Scratch (programming) and acting are on mothballs until January.

At the end of the Bollywood class, the kids did a couple of dances for an admiring crowd (moms and siblings). And at the end of acting, the class demonstrated "You Can't Get Rid of Me," a fun improv game. One room in the house is selected as the setting, and then the players play the roles of objects in the room. One actor says they need to clean up said room, and goes from object to object expressing their need to declutter, and the object lobbies to save themselves, stating the reasons they're keepers. In the round they demonstrated, the room was a kitchen, and CJ elected to be a silverware drawer, while Annabelle was a fridge/freezer combo. Both of them made the cut. :)

BRAINS!!!!: I glanced over at Christian's computer screen tonight and saw a big ol' brain photograph. Turns out it was none other than Einstein's brain. Cool!

Naturally, I called the kids over right away, saying, "Who wants to see Einstein's brain?!!" They came running like hungry zombies. BRAINS!!!!

The photo was accompanying a story on Nature.com, a weekly journal of science.

According to the story, the photos were taken by pathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey, who, in 1955,  removed Einstein's brain, preserved it in formalin and then took dozens of photographs before slicing it up into 240 blocks.

Photos: Left and Right views of Einstein's brain, National Museum of Health and Medicine

For years, the blocks sat in a cider box under a beer cooler in his office for years. Relatively recently, anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University obtained a dozen of Harvey's original photos from the National Museum of Health and Medicine (a Department of Defense museum), and Falk and associates analyzed the photos, comparing the patterns of convoluted ridges and furrows of Einstein's brain to 85 other brains described in other studies.

Interestingly enough, Einstein's brain is smaller than average. However, his brain had some remarkable characteristics, that you're best off reading about in the Nature.com story here: http://www.nature.com/news/snapshots-explore-einstein-s-unusual-brain-1.11836

I HAVE A DREAM: CJ spends a fair amount of time on the computer each day. If it were all - or even most - playing games, that would be a problem, IMHO. But for him, the computer is primarily a research tool. He's way more likely to be reading about the history of a video game or character or company than actually playing the game!

In the course of a given day he probably reads dozens of articles about any number of people or things. Today, while he was writing down the rules to a new political board game he's devising, he started asking me questions about past presidents and Martin Luther King Jr. I helped as best I could and then reminded him that he could find all of his answers on the magical Internets. Pretty soon, he wound up on YouTube, watching MLK Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, respectfully requesting silence from the rest of the household so he could hear it. And he watched the entire 18 minutes or so.

"That was great!" he said afterward.

For more than one reason, I had to agree with him.

We're Off to See the Wizard

OPEN WIDE: We started our day at the dentist. Both kids had six month checkups. CJ was complimented on his Superior Brushing Skills. According to the hygienist  he shines in comparison to his peers. Nice. :)

Annabelle asked the dentist whether or not she will need braces. He was very diplomatic. He said her teeth are still moving, so it's a little too early to tell, but that it was a definite possibility. Something to look forward to. ...

As you can see above, Annabelle did *not* like the taste of the "tooth vitamins."

As usual, we were a couple of minutes early to the dentist's neighborhood (Leschi, on the  western shore of Lake Washington, on the east side of First Hill), so we stopped at a park we love over there, Powell Barnett (named after the Leschi Improvement Council's organizer and first president).

Everything was wet and the kids were cold, but they had 10 minutes of fun nonetheless.

TALL TALE: Yesterday the kids read a passing reference about Paul Bunyan in one of their weekly Time for Kids pamphlets. I asked them if they were familiar with that folk tale and they both said 'no.' Oops. So today we fixed that by watching the wonderful 1958 Disney cartoon about the oversized lumberjack and his blue ox. (It brought back fond memories for me, as I recalled watching it while sitting on the gym/cafeteria floor at Lake Shore Elementary back in the early 1970s.) 

The story Paul Bunyan serves up all sorts of folk-lore-y information about why things are the way they are. For instance, did you know Paul dug the Missouri river so he could float logs he'd cut to the mill? And did you know waterfalls at Yellowstone served as his shower? Or that the Northern Lights are cause by Paul and Blue wrestling in Alaska? Fun stuff. 

The kids really enjoyed the cartoon and I am glad that I no longer have to feel guilty about the kids not knowing about Paul Bunyan.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ: A couple of days ago CJ saw a playbill for the Seattle Children's Theatre production of "The Wizard of Oz" and asked if we could go.

I told him we would be going next month, and that I already have tickets. In the meantime, however, we learned about another Wizard production not too far from home, in Shoreline. (The kids' science teacher's son is in the cast.)

The show starred 40 Shorewood High School kids, was accompanied by Shorewood's 26-piece orchestra, involved a stage crew of 30 and 150 costumes. Pretty ambitious - and they pulled it off nicely.

It was a two-plus hour production, sticking to the oh-so-familiar movie storyline pretty faithfully. It was thoroughly entertaining from opening line to the curtain falling. The kids loved the play. It brought Annabelle to tears twice, the first time when Dorothy's beloved Toto is taken away by the evil Miss Gulch, and the second time when Dorothy was leaving her trio of friends in Oz behind to return home.

Dirigibles, Trains & Automobiles

TICKET TO RIDE: Yesterday (while surrounded by 1,000 microbrews at Chuck's) we spent an hour plus playing a new-to-us board game, Ticket to Ride. In the game, players cobble together different railway lines criss-crossing the United States and southern Canada. 

Once we got the rules down, game play was fast, which kept the kids engaged. I loved that they learned some geography while they were playing. While some luck is involved, how well you do depends largely on how well you strategize, something I'm a fan of when it comes to games. (Even as a kid, I hated simple roll-of-the-dice no skill games.)

Last night Christian was the winner, but CJ and Annabelle weren't too far behind him. I'm sure we'll be playing Ticket to Ride again in the future.

SHOW AND TELL: This afternoon CeeJ and Bee took their mega periscope to science class for show and tell. It was enthusiastically received by their teacher and classmates, and they were proud of themselves.

It was fun seeing other kids' inventions, from spy devices to a kaleidoscopic. Creativity is alive and well within that group. 

OH THE HUMANITY: Awhile back I pulled a book off the library shelf thinking CJ would be interested in it. Turns out I was right. This morning he was immersed in "The Disaster of the Hindenburg"

It's been several years - and maybe even decades - since I've watched this news clip. My god, I'd forgotten just how horrifying it is. The poor reporter on the ground was so traumatized by the scene unfolding, as was everyone, no doubt. 


Watching it, I find it impossible to believe that anyone survived that, but remarkably, some did. In fact, most of them did. There were 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crew members), and 62 of them survived the crash (albeit many with significant injuries). One member of the ground crew was killed, which is also remarkable watching how quickly the flaming ship came down. 

One man has assembled a remarkably in-depth "Faces of the Hindenburg" site, with photos and bios of most everyone on board: http://facesofthehindenburg.blogspot.com/

RIGHT ON: We are still working our way through the study guide that goes along with "D is for Democracy." Today, the kids did a worksheet involving vocabulary, and one about the Bill of Rights. One of the questions on the latter was "Write a paragraph explaining which freedom you feel is the most important and why you feel this way."

Annabelle wrote, "I feel that freedom of religion is important because it allows people to be free to study any religion they like. It also allows them to worship whichever idol they wish to."

CJ wrote, "I feel that freedom of speech is the most important. I feel that way because we can express our feelings to other people. Also, that means we can show what we are going to do if we run for President."

Speaking of freedom of speech and presidents, I saw the most asinine bumper sticker today. It read "Don't blame me, I voted for the American." 

What a moron. But being able to have a super stupid bumper sticker is his constitutional right, so God bless America, including people born in Hawaii and the "birther" driving the Chevy Aveo. 

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT: Today a Facebook friend posted a link to this sweet video, '100,000 Stars."

It's an amazing, interactive visualization of our stellar neighborhood, including real location data of over 100,000 nearby stars. It's definitely worth taking three minutes to watch it. (And you really should watch it on YouTube on fullscreen, BTW.)


And when you're done with that, take it a step further and better and check out the phenomenal Web site http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/ (its data rich, and takes a minute or so to load). There, you can control what you're seeing. (I'd suggest your first click be in the upper lefthand corner, on the circle with an arrowhead in it, as that allows you to take a tour of the site.