Rough One

SHE SAID, HE SAID:  Today, we got our algebra in, and learned about subordinate clauses. Good stuff. 

But most of our day was spent on social studies - watching the coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing about Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
I wanted CJ and Annabelle to see and hear this, because I believe it is an event that will be talked about for decades.

This morning, Dr. Christine Ford painstakingly recounted her memories from a traumatic  event when she was a teenager, and alleges she was attacked by Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. 

This afternoon, an angry, and at times belligerent, Judge Kavanaugh came out yelling and (figuratively) swinging.  He was anything but impartial when it came to party lines (contrary to his former testimony).

Granted, he's fighting for his career, but, for instance, when he refuses to answer a question about his conduct and instead asks a United States senator if she's ever been blackout drunk, well, to me, that's crossing a line, big time. Talk about deflecting.

I was hoping today's hearing would be a lesson in civics, but IMHO, there was little civil about it. Rather, It was a circus sideshow. 

I remember the Anita Hill testimony during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. It was 1991. I was horrified then. I am horrified now. 

I'd like to think we can do better than this as a nation. 

That said, I will be shocked if Kavanaugh is not confirmed. 

Long Ball

EXTRA INNINGS: Kind of on a whim, we decided to go to the Mariners' game last night. It's the last week of their season and, of course, there won't be a post season, because, well, Mariners. Sigh.

Anyway, we got great seats right behind home plate for super cheap. It even included a parking pass in the Safeco Field garage, right across the street from the stadium. (About the only good thing regarding having your team not in the thick of things is that tickets are cheap.)

It was a beautiful night at the ballpark. And a looooooooooong night at the ballpark.

The first two innings seemed to take two hours. So many hits. So many runs. 

In the improbable end, the Mariners won it 8 - 10, via a walk off home run by a back up back up catcher in the bottom of the 11th. In all there were THIRTY hits in the game. That might be the most in any Major League Baseball game I've been ever seen.

GREAT PUMPKINS: It will be October before we know it, and so we're already going on a few craft projects for the tenth month of the year. Naturally, they involve pumpkins.

We're making a Great Pumpkin-themed birthday board for a local learning center. CJ and Annabelle helped trace Linus and Sally, as well as a shadow-y Snoopy. We made pumpkins, which will have the birthday kids' names on them in a Peanuts-like font, and cut out dozens of leaves for the pumpkin patch.

In the midst of all of this, I used one orange IKEA napkin, a roll of toilet paper, a cinnamon stick and one of our construction paper leaves to assemble this.

It took all of ten seconds - so easy!

MAD DASH: This morning we plugged away on algebra for nearly an hour. This afternoon, we dabbled in some language arts, using a video on BrainPOP all about hyphens and dashes. It was really interesting - I learned things I've never known my entire life (like the dash in this sentence should have been longer).

I'll have CJ tell you a bit more about dashes and hyphens and what we learned.

Today, I learned about the different kinds of hyphens and dashes. They are, in order from narrowest to most narrow:

1. Hyphens (‐), primary use is to form compound words (example: fifty-year-old), also used to separate syllables in a dictionary (example: syl-la-ble.)

1. Figure dashes(‒), primarily used in phone numbers (example: 123‒456‒7891.)

1. En dashes (–), primary use is to bridge times together (example: 9 A.M – 5 P.M.)

1. Em dashes (—), primary use is to separate parts of a sentence (example: John repeatedly stained my shirt — the same one I had bought the day prior.)

So interesting, don't you think?!

For our science schooling, we watched a video about conditioning - as in Pavlov's dog, not what you do after shampooing. ;)

Annabelle can tell you a bit more about that. 

Conditioning, made famous by Ivan Pavlov, describes how one can teach animals or humans to respond to certain stimuli in a new way. The experiment most are familiar with, known as “Pavlov’s Dog”, is an example of classic conditioning. It involves ringing a bell right before giving the dog food, which if repeated enough, will eventually cause the dog to associate the bell with food, and salivate at the sound of it.

On the other hand, there is another type of conditioning referred to as “Operative Conditioning”. This is when instead of prompting the subject with something, the subject learns that a certain action equals a certain response. An example would be a small child learning not to draw on walls, because when they do that they are scolded. This can go both ways, both positive and negative.

Grand Times

SIGHT SEEING: We're still playing catch up on our grand adventure last week.

Our travels to the American Southwest included a couple of visits to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The amazing attraction lived up to its billing. 

My camera couldn't possibly do the destination justice.

The layers of the canyon walls and the stories they tell were so compelling. 

Below, CJ used one of the spotters along the trail to zero in on a point of interest.

I believe this photo, below, is from the Verkamp's Visitor Center. More on that place later. ...

Here are some of Annabelle's recollections regarding our Grand Canyon visit.

During our 2-day visit to Grand Canyon National Park, we visited the South edge of the canyon, from “Hermit’s Rest” to the visitor’s center. This spans approximately 9.1 miles of the canyon’s edge, possibly more due to winding trails and viewpoints. On our first visit, we took around 4½ hours, from 2 p.m. to sunset at 6:30. The trail was surprisingly packed with plants and vegetation; much more than promotional materials may lead you to believe. One of the most notable types of plant is the Blooming Agave plant, which can reach over 6 feet high. There’s also quite a bit of wildlife, including everything from lizards to ravens and the endangered condor.

The canyon itself is so much larger than I had expected. It’s extremely wide, reaching the horizon from most anywhere you stand. Rock formations jut out into the middle, with small steppes closer to the bottom. Rocks in the canyon are commonly layers of limestone and sandstone, with a few more clay-dense areas tinted a stunning red. The light rock, combined with most trails being in direct sunlight, makes the canyon especially hot during the warmer months. Thankfully, there are stations scattered on the trails where you can fill water bottles using purified water from the canyon spring itself. The heat is nothing compared to the view of all the crazy rocks and shapes you can find, including holes, cliffs, and an odd rock shaped like a duck.

On our second day, we visited the much more remote West end of the South rim, where there are multiple “points” with amazing views. These points are purposefully remote, allowing you to admire the canyon in absolute silence (except for the wind and other people, which is admittedly predictable). Among the most scenic is Hopi Point, right in the middle of the “Hermit Road” trail. This point was recommended by our tram driver, who repeatedly mentioned to more stubborn passengers that this was not a spot on the return trip. We stopped by nearly every point on this trail, before heading back to the village and saying goodbye to the canyon. In conclusion, while the sunset we saw was mediocre, everything else about the canyon was just as breathtaking as I had hoped.

Grand Time

GREAT WIDE OPEN: So, last week we had a great trip the the American Southwest, including spending several hours at the Grand Canyon. 

It was the first time Christian, CJ, Annabelle and I had ever seen it.

I was expecting it to be big, and, well, grand, but wow ... you just have to see it to believe it.

Have I mentioned it's really big? Oh, and do you see the wildfire across the canyon there? That made our photos not so clear and my sinuses not so happy.

I have *so* many pictures. 

In retrospect, I wish I had cataloged all my photos somehow by viewpoint, day, time ... anything, but I didn't. We just went, and marveled and I snapped some shots.  Living in the moment.

For the record, we were there on  the afternoon of September 12, 2018, through sunset, and then on the morning of September 13.

So, I'll park a bunch of photos here now. At some point I hope to double back and explain which viewpoints we were at. 

I do love this photo (below). Kind of puts things in perspective. Literally.

 I suppose I should mention we were on the south rim. 

 The rock formations below were so interesting. What caused the craters in them?

 In the photo below, note the smokes from wildfires on the north side of the canyon.

 The Grand Canyon offers so many faces!

Up, down, and every place in between, life finds a way !

 There were many points and places to stop and contemplate. 

 The canyon has so many faces. 

 Now that I've seen just a portion of it on high, I really want to be on the floor and gazing upward.

 In the photo below, check out the people off trail (to the left) for a photo opp.

Scenes from the Road

LV to GC: On September 12, we left Las Vegas and started making our way toward the Grand Canyon, where we'd spend the next couple of days. It's about a five hour drive.

Honestly, most of the drive is desolate stretches of desert, but we did make a few stops along the way.

For instance, we took a few minutes to make it a point to stop at an overlook of Lake Mead.

Turns out we were at the Robert L. Mendenhall Scenic Overlook. Mendenhall was a standout in the paving business. In 1974, Mendenhall’s Las Vegas Paving Corp. made history by renovating a one-mile stretch of interstate highway with recycled asphalt. Mendenhall devised the process by experimenting with hot pavement recycling. It was a game changer in the industry, and Mendenhall was a celebrity in the paving world. He passed away just this June, at the age of 90. At the time he held more than 50 U.S. patents, and was an inductee into the Nevada Inventors Hall of Fame.

 Another highlight of the trip - a stop at Gus' "Really Good" Jerky store.

We'd seen a couple of billboards along the way. It struck us that Gus was advertising just "really good" jerky. Not great, not the best, but just 'really good.' We had to try it for ourselves. 

And so we stopped. In our opinion, it was just fair jerky. 

We drove on and found ourselves in Ash Fork, Arizona, at one point. CJ can tell you a bit more about that stop.

In the midst of our visit to the Southwestern US, while on our way to the Grand Canyon, my family and I passed through the city of Ash Fork, with an approximate population of 457 people. According many of the city's residents, it is the "Flagstone Capital of the World," due to the five large stoneyards (and, by extension, stones) present in the city. The only real address we stopped at in Ash Fork was the local "Family Dollar," probably Ash Fork's most significant grocery store. We bought a pack of straws, and that was about it. Before heading out of Ash Fork, we had to get a picture by one of the umpteen Route 66 signs.

I'm guessing Ash Fork, like a lot of other little towns, had their fortunes fade when Route 66 no longer brought a steady stream through their city.

We were on Route 66 for small stretches multiple times on our trip. Annabelle has a bit to share about the historic highway.

Route 66, officially “Historic Route 66,” is a highway stretching from Santa Monica, California, to Chicago, Illinois. It passes through many towns and cities, one of which being Flagstaff (where we stayed during our vacation to the Grand Canyon). It was established November 11, 1926, and signs were put up the following year. The route is well known for being the main highway across America for a large time, though it has since been overshadowed by others.

Nowadays, Route 66 is usually used by those looking to take a relaxing, slow-paced road trip instead of having a specific destination in mind. Since the route doesn’t even show up on most modern maps, if you want to drive it you’ll have to look for one specifically made for doing so. I haven’t seen the whole route myself, but I’d be very willing to drive it and see what’s in store!

Another thing we saw along the way were multiple political signs, including ones where someone was running for Justice of the Peace. 

We don't have that in Seattle, so I Googled just what that job is. Per the ,"In Arizona there are 87 Justice of the Peace precincts. JP courts are considered the “People's Court.” Per the Arizona Justice of the Peace Association, "JP's see everyone arrested and charged with a felony within 24 hours - 7 days a week. They read the charges and set release conditions."

Hot Dam and Cool Treat

UPDATE FROM THE ROAD: MPA is still off campus. After a couple of days in the Grand Canyon, it was off to Flagstaff, Arizona for a night, and then back to Vegas. On the way back to Vegas, we felt it would be remiss if we didn't stop by a world-renowned engineering marvel, the Hoover Dam.

Annabelle will give you a brief overview of our visit. More facts and photos to come when we're back on 'campus.'

When we arrived at the Hoover Dam, the temperature was over 105 degrees

Fahrenheit in the air alone, meaning the dam itself was over 110. When we stepped out of the car, we immediately began walking to the nearest drinking fountain, hoping to get some relief from the intense heat. We splashed ourselves with water and filled our bottle to the brim, enjoying the shade when we could. On one side of the dam, there was a "cooling station" with a large swamp fan provided to the public.

The architecture of the dam itself was beautiful, with multiple concrete arches and an Art Deco look. There were two towers along the edge with large clocks reading "Arizona time" and "Nevada time" respectively. There were multiple memorials scattered along the edge dedicated to the workers and volunteers that helped create the dam, including one featuring two angels surrounding the American Flag. The dam is hard to describe in words, but it's completely free to drive across, and if you'd like to walk, parking is just $10.

We've been working on a few projects around the house, and having fun in Vegas - including seeing Queen on Saturday night (more on that later). We've also had some fun with food experiences. CJ will tell you about a trip to the custard shop today. ...

On the way back to Vegas for the weekend. On 17 September 2018, a warm, sunny day in Las Vegas, I went with my father, my brother, and my sister to CJ's Italian Ice & Custard, located at 3555 South Durango Drive. According to the creamery's About Us page, CJ (the founder of the establishment) founded the restaurant because he felt the Las Vegas area was lacking in custard and Italian ice, which is a dessert staple in the Eastern United States (where he grew up.)

While at the restaurant, I ordered a regular-size Italian Ice + Custard treat. From bottom to top, it was:

• Chocolate custard

• Mountain Dew Baja Blast Italian Ice

• Salted caramel custard

It tasted better than one might expect. In addition, I also got an "I  ❤️  CJ's" t-shirt (which, according to my mother, appeared as though it was designed by a nine-year-old girl.)

Grand Time

WONDERMENT:  MPA is on a field trip to America's Southwest. First stop was Vegas, baby! We flew in Tuesday midday, and got to see Rick and Rachel's new place and visit our favorite Dobermans, Pretzel and Strudel. But more about that later, as it's late we're oh-so-tired, a little sunburned and totally impressed by what we saw today: The Grand Canyon.

Naturally, we've seen photos and videos and know it's one of the seven wonders of the natural world, but it's impossible to appreciate it for all it is until you're there, on the ledge, looking out and over it. 

Trust me, the crappy cell phone photos in this post don't do it justice. With an average depth of one mile and an average width of ten miles (16km). 

 It's stripes and steppes, plateaus and craggy cliffs are so varied and compelling. They tell an ancient story about just how different this blue marble was long ago. 

 We visited the south rim of the canyon, about four hours east-southeast of Vegas. We walked well over three miles in high heat, at an elevation of 7000 or so feet, and in sometimes high winds. 

 We walked from east to west, then caught a shuttle bus back westward to where we parked our car, and then drove further east to where we could get a look back at the canyon for sunset.

More photos and facts to follow when we're better slept and I can get the pictures off my Nikon camera.