Cosmos

WASN'T BUILT IN A DAY: Several weeks ago, we received a LEGO kit I had on special order. It's the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover. Sweet!

The kids started building it a few days back, but when we pulled it out today, I was Very Not Happy with the less than perfect assembly methods. I mean, this thing has to roll on MARS. We can't half a$$ it, for Pete's sake!

And so, I made them rip it apart and start over. That's what kind of power you wield when you're mission director. :)

We only got about 1/5 of the way through it today, but that's OK. MSL wasn't build to NASA specs in a day, that's for sure!

COSMOS WATCH: Last night was the long-awaited premier of the new incarnation of  "Cosmos" on prime time television.

We gathered 'round our TV and enjoyed every minute of it.

Before and during the broadcast, NASA posted photos to social media, tying in to things seen on the show. For instance, here they posted, "As seen on #Cosmos: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope sees the oldest known star."
                                       
If you missed the show, you can see a replay here: here: http://www.fox.com/watch/183733315515

During the show, Neil deGrasse Tyson (NdGT) was great about trying to frame things in ways we common folk could remember. For instance, he talked about how Earth was in a solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy, in a local group in the Virgo Super Cluster in the observable universe.

"Mom, write that down!" CJ called from the couch. And because the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, I immediately responded, "I already did!" :)

I found myself getting a bit foggy eyed at the end of the show, when NdGT shared his connection with Carl Sagan. And he declared, "You, me, everyone we are made of star stuff ... we're all descended from astronomers."  AMEN!

All in all, "Cosmos" was astounding. We can't wait for next week!! "A community of minds, our journey is just beginning," NdGT promises. We're all in for the journey1

The kids each remarked today how much they enjoyed the show and asked when it would be on again. Yay, science!

STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER:  "The Music of The Beatles" class we're taking continues to be pure joy.

Lectures we listed to this morning were about The Beatles circa 1967. That year, a double A-side single was released with Paul's "Penny Lane," a main street in Liverpool, where he grew up, and John's "Strawberry Fields Forever" (about a park John used to play in as a child). The cuts originally were going to be part of an album of songs about the groups' childhood memories, but that got shelved and Sgt. Peppers ended up being the next album they produced.

The video for "Strawberry Fields" is like a time capsule. We dug the state-of-the-art special effects employed in it.  

While watching it, Annabelle said, "He has Harry Potter glasses," of John. I told her it was the other way around. ;) John had those glasses first.

I asked the kids to write a paragraph about what they thought one line from Strawberry Fields meant:  "Living is easy with eyes closed,."

Here was CJ's take: "Living is easy with eyes closed". We've all heard that line, but what does it mean? As far as I know, I think it means that imagination has greater abilities than reality does. Tell me, is it easier to travel to the nearest strawberry field by getting in that auto of yours, or by closing your eyes and imagining the fields there? Exactly. It's easier doing the latter!

Annabelle's interpretation:  Living is easy with eyes closed...what does that mean?

I believe it may mean that when you close your eyes, it's easy to imagine that say, your brother is now an octopus. Anything can be anything. A couch can be a book. your headphones, snakes. Nothing limits you. heck, you can even imagine yourself as a dragon! You can be what you want to be. everything around you can be what you want, where you want. You can be Godzilla in Tokyo. or NYC. or Seattle! Anytime. anywhere. anything. that is how "living is easy with eyes closed."

Being my old jaded self, I thought the line to be about how easy it is to go through life being ignorant and not caring to educate oneself, because that's too much work. I think I like the kids' takes better. :)

The Beatles in 1967 were living "The Summer of Love." Ironically, their big hit single that summer was "All You Need is Love." As we listened to it, Annabelle noticed, "They snuck in part of their other song," when "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah," was repeated a couple of times near the end.

The video is great - Beatles in full Sgt. Pepper-era satin jackets, an orchestra, a bunch of flower power people in studio. Imagine our surprise upon spotting a very young Mick Jagger in the group around the 2:40 mark. 

Last night, we checked out some of the YouTube videos of our Beatles' class professor's band. Our prof, John Covach, is on guitar, stage right, viewer's left.  This cover version of a Yes song is really great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOfExc_2VjE&feature=share&list=PL171303DB77148683

DESCENDING: Early evening, we watched the descent of a Soyuz capsule returning to Earth. The video of the descent of the capsule, Expedition 38 (Mike Hopkins, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy), from the ISS was remarkable. Gorgeous, GORGEOUS shots of the tiny spacecraft, with three astronauts on board, dropping down toward home.

Here's a horribly blurry screen capture ... doesn't do the video justice. (photos credit: NASA) 
                                          
                                          
At about 8:24 our time, the spacecraft touched down,. and we watched the recovery efforts. They landed safe and sound, in a snowy field.
                                              

Treasure Hunting

RELICS: Today we took a field trip to Second Use, just south of the stadiums in the Sodo (South of Downtown) part of Seattle.

We were looking for flooring for the office of Rick's place. We found what we needed (at a great price!) but we also had fun perusing the store's eclectic selection of non-building material relics. For instance, they had a Sanborn Viso-Cardiette 1940s electrocardiograph. Housed in wooden box, it has dials and a window through which you view the cardiograph tape. Cool!!!

Nearby was a centrifuge, complete with original glass test tubes! Obviously, that's something you'd expect to find at a recycled building materials store!

A sign on it said it apparently used to be used to swirl bear blood. Neat-o!

We also ogled this century-plus old drill press. 

And I had fun giving the kids clues regarding what the machine pictured below is. ... 

They didn't guess it was a movie (projecting) camera. 

Speaking of cameras, I had lots of fun explaining this relic to the kids.

I LOVED it, as it conjured up fond memories of hours and hours I spent in the darkroom in decades gone by. I explained to the kids how once upon a time you had to take your film, develop it, take these things called negatives from that, and use an enlarger (like above) to project light through the negatives onto light sensitive paper for the exact right amount of time. Then, you'd take that special paper and put it into a chemical developer bath, followed by a wash and a fixer. A little different than the digital photos they knew exclusively in their lives. 

We did finally make our way to the building materials. As we walked down an aisle of doors doors doors, I laughed out loud when I saw this graffiti on one ...

I'll bet Grumpy Cat wouldn't agree with that sentiment. 

TIDE IS TURNING: We took some time out this morning to watch a 5-minute presser with Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway. Probably not something that would typically be in our curriculum, but he was announcing his decision not to defend Kentucky's ban on marriage equality in court. 

His words were oh-so-carefully chosen as he explained, "As attorney general of Kentucky, I must draw the line when it comes to discrimination." He said the issue is "larger than any single person," and his decision was about "placing people over politics." In conclusion, he said he hoped "we all find ways to work together to build a more perfect union."  Amen to that.  And in that same vein, the Dalai Lama announced his support of gay marriage today. The tide has turned, I'd say. 

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SUN: Learned today that my favorite Seattle weatherman of days gone by has moved on to permanently sunny skies, zero chance of rain. Harry Wapler was the weatherman during the Mariners' great runs in the late 1990s. Ironically, baseball was being played under a dome in those days, but still, he was part of the KIRO Seattle newscasts during that golden era, and I'll remember him fondly for that roever. Love this old clip of him and Seattle icon JP Patches.

MUSICAL: We're still working through our Beatles class, and this evening, I thought I'd introduce one of George Harrison's post-Beatles projects to the kids. The Traveling Willburys, featuring Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Harrison was remarkable. It's both fun and frustrating to think about how much more great music they would have produced had not Orbison died. Their first album was recorded over a 10-day period in May of 1988.

Frights and Sights

 

IN THE PINK: It poured last night, and early this morning, too. But starting at about 9:30, we managed to squeeze in a fairly dry, one-hour walk. We were pleased to see the trees lining the main east-west drag in our neighborhood are all in bloom. They stretch on for a few blocks - pretty! 
       
SPRING COMES CLOSER: Today, we made a positive step forward toward the next season. We now have in our possession tickets to the Mariners' home opener on April 8. Yesssssss!  Below is a Throwback Thursday photo to commemorate the event!
                
We also got tickets for the Mariners' 2014 Open House today. On March 31, the first day of the MLB season, the Mariners are on the road, but Safeco Field will be open to the public for a viewing party. We went last year, the first time they held such an event, and it was a BLAST.

OUTSIDE THE BOX: We watched a video today about a prototype for a very nontraditional NASA rover. Called "Super Bot Ball," it's revolutionary design would allow it to traverse terrain in a way completely different than all of NASA's past rovers. It's hard to describe a collapsible rover with no wheels. Just check out the video here to see it for yourself: http://news.yahoo.com/video/nasas-latest-robot-100545676.html

TABLED: This afternoon we headed to West Seattle. I forgot to mention last week that the kids have started a 6-week yoga class and 'social studio' there. It's led by the kids' longtime, wonderful yoga teacher Nicole, and for this session she's partnering with another wonderful professional, Ann. 

Since we had to be in West Seattle any way, we combined the trip with going to pick up an item I found for Rick's house on Craigslist. The piece of furniture was at a lovely waterfront home on West Seattle's Beach Drive. As we went to find the place, we discovered a new-to-us park, Lowman Beach. 

It's a downright disaster now, all muddy, fenced off, with heavy equipment everywhere thanks to a renovation and MAJOR sewage treatment construction. But we'll definitely be back to the beachfront property. It's secluded and will be a gorgeous park once work there is done. 

Per the city of Seattle's Web site, the park dated back to 1909, when the Yesler Logging Company gifted it to the city. It's named after James D. Lowman, who was a teacher when he arrived in Seattle in 1887, but later became a wharf master for Henry Yesler, and later a bookstore and printing business owner and eventual city parks commissioner. 

While Lowman Beach Park isn't much to look at right now, there's a house next door to the park that is a sight to behold.

 I've never seen the house before, but from what I can gather online, some of the decorations seem to be a rather in your face protest to the adjacent construction. 

From what I can glean on the Internet, the home is owned by a doctor of psychiatry, who used to have some kind of diorama of ducks in the front yard. Now, there's a placard at the top of his house that reads "The Duckies are Gone! Long live the sewage tank!"

We live in such an interesting world ... 

We found the house with the furniture, and got it transported to Rick's just fine ...except when I backed in his driveway and put the ol  CR-V into 'park,' clouds of something started billowing from below my hood in a big, BAD way. "My car's on fire!" I cried. 

Fortunately, it was 'just' steam, caused by a blown hose. Christian quickly spotted it, pulled it off, walked one block to an auto repair place, bought another hose for $1.90 and had it fixed within 10 minutes. It was a miracle, really. The best kind of car trouble ever. Had that happened to me on, say, the Viaduct or freeway, yikes, I don't even want to think about it! But the timing was as good as one could hope for, and the repair fast and easy, so we can't complain. 

And after all the drama, the table looks super ... :)

Getting Centered

ZEN RETREAT: Know a really lovely way to spend a lunch hour? Go to a garden center! That's what we did between the kids' math and science classes today. During our pleasant perusing, we spied a number of yoga frogs. The pair above  was adjacent to a concrete bench, so I had to have the kids attempt to recreate the scene.

Yesterday's mail brought "junior gardener" newsletters from Sky Nursery. It's right by the school the kids attend in Shoreline on Wednesdays, so we visited the nursery today. The newsletter included a coupon good for a free pack of poppy seeds in March, and so we went to pick those up (noting, at the time, it's IMPOSSIBLE to think the word 'poppies' without hearing the Wicked Witch of the West's voice. ...

Hopefully CJ and Annabelle's poppies will be of the friendly, non-narcotic variety. ;)

Today, they test drove a variety of expensive outdoor furniture. ... 

 
We stopped by the Jr. Gardeners' desk. 

Annabelle spent some time coloring.

Meanwhile, CJ and I checked out the nearby groundcoverings, including many "Stepables."  We agreed that we really didn't like the name of this one ... 

it conjures up creepy images of babies crying when you step on the plants. Ewwww.

FLY BY: After the nursery, we hustled back to school so we had a few minutes to check in on an asteroid in the neighborhood. Specifically, asteroid 2014 DX110. 

We checked coverage on both live.slooh.com and space.com.  It was fun watching the 100-foot rock hurtling through not-too-distant space.  In fact, the asteroid was closer to Earth than is our own moon!

We told the kids' science teacher about it, and as class started, she put the traveling asteroid up on the big white board, and led a discussion about what types of material it might be made up of, which was very apropos, given the kids just finished a unit about geology last week. 

While we were watching, it made its closest approach to Earth, about 217,000 miles (350,000 kilometers) away. 

Short Stuff

Image credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA; http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140302.html 

RED SUNSET: Imagine, what it would be like, standing on another planet in our solar system, and watching our oh-so-familiar sun set. If you were on Mars, it would look like what's pictured above.

As part of its Mars mission, robotic rover Spirit, deployed in 2005, was programmed to park and watch our sun sink below the Red Planet's Gusev crater.

The photo isn't too far off what our human eyes would see, as fine particles suspended in the thin Martian atmosphere tint the sky a reddish color. The dust also scatters blue light forward, creating the bluish glow near setting Sol. 

The sun is less bright on Mars, as compared to Earth, because it's farther away there, of course, and it only appears to be about two thirds of the diameter it appears from Earth. 

PUBLISHED POETS: Today's mail brought the quarterly Junior Gardeners' newsletter from Sky Nursery. As I opened the newsletter, I recalled the kids had submitted gardening related haikus for consideration, per a call in the previous newsletter.

Lo and behold, on the very first page inside the newsletter, there they were. The kids were very excited.

"They spelled my first name wrong and didn't include my last name, but oh well," Annabelle said, good naturedly, and genuinely pleased. :)

NORWEGIAN MORNING: I spent most of the morning working on a report with a today deadline. The kids spent the morning enjoying lectures about and listening to The Beatles. One of the song "close ups" they heard today was about "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," a song written about John. Such a pretty ditty, with lyrics that aren't quite as sweet (especially the end, where he burns his love's house down).  The song was the first of The Beatles' that employed use of the sitar, played by George.

In case you're wondering, Norwegian wood, per Paul is "pine, really cheap pine."  The song, by all accounts (John, Paul, and friends) is about John's indiscretions while married to Cynthia, his first wife.

Another song talked about was "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." While the title of this tune might make one think it's about John's further indiscretions, it's actually a song about the band's manager, Brian Epstein.

Epstein was gay, which was actually a crime at the time in England. So Lennon wrote about Epstein and others who had to, basically, 'hide their love' in order to conform to society's norms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz7IjXu0DfQ
LOVE this video of The Beatles performing the song, from their movie "Help!"

We are now halfway done with our Beatles class, and the kids are jazzed they have scored 100 percent on all their quizzes so far.

DOWN SOUTH: This blog post is short on content because we spent most of the afternoon in West Seattle (MPA South at this point!). I actually made a full fledged dinner in his kitchen for the first time, complete with multiple appetizers. Nice to know his kitchen works, it certainly got the biggest workout of the "Rick Era" so far, LOL. We were there because his 'contractors' came over for a meeting at their behest. Silly us, we thought they would want to discuss all of their misdeeds and shortcomings and fibs to date. Hahaha. Nope, they were there all about trying to upsell/add on work. Lame sauce. 

Flying High

UP AND AWAY: This afternoon we paid a visit to one of the kids' favorite places in the world - iFLY, for some indoor skydiving action.

The kids have both 'flown' in the wind tunnel a couple/three times before, but it's been months and months since we've gone. They were so darn excited on the way there.

After all of the 'pre-flight' activity (watching an instructional video, getting suited up and such), they made their way to the tunnel.

I'll let them tell you about their experience. Here's Annabelle's video she filmed at the facility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Iz89Sr_xI0M


And here's CJ's take (tho his video seems a little off, I must say http://youtu.be/uwoMpsjYEQQ#aid=P9rK0aUg6kI

But that's OK, because Christian captured some video with his cell phone.
Ceej flight 1: http://youtu.be/ntoh0CHLr_A

Ceej flight 2: http://youtu.be/uwW4aSrsgqM

Bee flight 1: http://youtu.be/SozhiqkHQo8

Bee flight 2: http://youtu.be/CwnmflICYvs

The second flights are when they shoot up the tunnel at the end

And I love the end of Annabelle's second flight, where the instructor purposely parks her short of the door. The result is just like the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where poor Dorothy is trying to get into the storm cellar with the twister approaching.

Naturally, their favorite part was flying toward the top of the wind tunnel!

MOVIE MINDED: Sunday seemed like it would up being all about movies. Just after noon, we headed to Southcenter to see the new LEGO movie. It was terrific!

Well written, visually engaging, good voice acting, fun music, tons of humor and plenty of sentimentality, too. We gave it eight thumbs up.

Upon arriving home, we checked out the LEGO movie Web site. There, we had fun creating ourselves in LEGO form.   Here's CJ's 'self portrait.'

And here's me!
                                       
If you want a challenge, I double dog dare you to listen to this song, "Everything is Awesome" and try NOT to sing it for the rest of the day. It's an 'earworm' of the first order.


On Sunday evening, we watched the Oscars. For a chance we'd actually seen some of the movies which were nominated for awards, including "Gravity," which was up for best picture.

It was fun watching various NASA accounts' Facebook feeds during the show. They were picking up on the "Gravity" theme and posting all sorts of great off-planet, microgravity shots, like this awesome one from 1999 of Astronaut Steven L. Smith retrieving a power tool while standing on the mobile foot restraint at the end of the remote manipulator system on board the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA

And of course there had to be shots of Bruce McCandless II's adventure wearing the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). Here, McCandless was photographed further away from the safety of his ship (space shuttle Challenger) than any previous astronaut has ever been. Hard to believe this photo, taken on Feb. 12, 1984, is over 30 years old now. Wow.

The MMU was a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. In this free fly (which definitely reminds me of the movie "Gravity," McCandless was 320 feet away from the Orbiter. Talk about trusting your equipment!
Image credit: NASA

SONG CLOSE UPS: We are still enjoying our class "The Music of The Beatles." We're in Week 3 of six, and this week (so far) is focusing on 1965, and the release of the albums "Help!" and "Rubber Soul."
From time to time, the professor will focus more closely on certain titles. Today, he talked about "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." A John Lennon song, it has a distinctly Dylan-esque sound not only in the music, but it's almost as if John is trying to sound like Bob Dylan. The song was written and recorded not too long after Dylan met The Beatles and encouraged them to write more serious and less pop music.

We also learned more about "Yesterday," penned by Paul McCartney. We were lucky enough to get to see him perform it in an encore last summer at Safeco Field. Here's someone in the crowd's video. As you'll hear, it was basically a sing along. http://youtu.be/lNkc2oaMhj4

Speaking of song close ups, here's a closeup of CJ playing a song. :)

Friday Blue

MARVY MORNING:  The day dawned with blue skies, happy Friday to us! I decided we should take advantage ASAP, as the weather can change rapidly. So, by 9:15 we were parked on the upper west fringe of Queen Anne Hill, ready for a stroll. That locale gave us a nice view of our neighborhood, and the bridge we strolled on Tuesday morning.

Elliott Bay was so blue today!  Here are hundreds of parked pleasure craft ...

and here's a big working boat, anchor dropped, waiting for a dock, apparently.

We walked the west promenade and made our way to the southern sidewalk. Here, West Seattle is barely visible behind CJ and his furry friends.

No great photos of the Space Needle, it was a bit too hazy to the south. But it was still a wonderful walk. We enjoyed checking out edifices' architecture, including the old West Queen Anne Public School. Per its Wiki article, it was "designed in the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style by Warren P. Skillings and James M. Corner." It's high end condos, now, of course. :/

On our way back to the car, the kids stopped in Top Pot for a "hand-forged" doughnut while I dog sat on the sidewalk outside. Just before we reached our ride, we could spy the Olympics through some towering evergreens. So pretty!

Upon returning home, we watched two and a half lectures for our Beatles class. During the third, we were interrupted by a phone call from Rick's needy contractor requesting our presence in West Seattle, so off we went.

We dealt with the contractor's confusion and  made good use of our time there, organizing Rick's expansive DVD catalog. It provided a good opportunity for the kids to practice alphabetizing.

LIGHT SHOW: When the sun erupted with a solar flare a couple of days ago, the first thing I thought was, "Northern Lights!!!!"  Seeing the Northern Lights is definitely on my 'bucket list.'

If I had been on the ISS yesterday, I could have seen a first rate light show, and even though these were technically Southern Lights, that would have sufficed. :)

These Aurora Australis photos were taken on February 27 by NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio.
In a Facebook post, he described the one above as "Aurora like thunderstorms on the horizon with a bit of sunrise and Venus(?) rising up through it."

MUSIC MINDED:  Last night, we watched a new episode of "Live From Daryl's House," featuring Daryl Hall and his guest, fellow Philly dude Amos Lee. It was great, as always. If you haven't seen any of his show's I'd strongly encourage you to check out the catalog of past concerts. We've seen them all and every single one is golden.

After that, we fell into watching "Saved in San Francisco," a documentary about the band Train, who we had the pleasure of catching on concert last summer.

This evening we were discussing Beethoven and I qued up a couple of songs on YouTube. One of the gems we found was an orchestral flash mob in Spain performing "Ode to Joy." Enjoy - we sure did! http://youtu.be/kbJcQYVtZMo