Back on Track

TRAINING DAY: We're hoping things get back to 'normal' here at MPA pretty soon. It's been a whirlwind of out-of-the ordinary activity, that's for sure.  Between December 25 and January 3, I only slept in my own bed once. 

On Christmas day, we headed down to Bend, Oregon, and stayed there for three nights. One of the things we did while there was go see a cool train display. I'll have Annabelle tell you a bit more about that. 

Every year, Deschutes Public Library in Bend, Oregon, hosts an event spanning the week of Christmas. Michael Lavrich, better known locally as "The Train Man," uses the library's conference room to set up an impressive display of model trains. He's been bringing his trains to the library for 18 years, and collecting them since he was 50 - meaning multiple generations have had the joy of seeing the trains. 

As a former kindergarten teacher, Lavrich finds joy in bringing smiles to the faces of the kids that visit. According to his page on the Deschutes Library website, he enjoys controlling the train on the outer track the most since he can slow it down or stop it in front of the most intrigued children. While the trains have to take occasional 5-minute breaks so they can cool down, traffic through the room produces a line all the way out the door.

The Train Man has become a staple of Christmas in the Bend area, and for good reason! The event is totally free, as long as you're willing to wait in line. It only lasts one week, from December 21st to the 28th, so catch it while you can if you're in the Bend area!

As Annabelle mentioned, we did have to wait in line to get in to see the display.  We waited about 20 minutes, I'd estimate. The good news is, when you're in line at the library, there is plenty to keep you entertained!

We were fortunate that during our time around the display, it included a break where the conductor shared some factoids with the crowd. CJ can tell you more about some of the things we learned. ...

The first full-scale steam locomotive is often considered to have involved Richard Trevithick's steam engine, which, on 21 February 1804, powered a train along a tramway in what is now the United Kingdom.

According to Michael Lavrich, model trains might predate "the real deal," in the sense that they existed before actual, full-scale locomotives did.

Lavrich told us that, about once an hour, model trains need to "cool down" for a period of about five minutes. Lavrich used this time to tell us information about the model trains.

Last year's model train event marked the nineteenth year in a row that Lavrich has displayed his trains at the library. According to the Deschutes Public Library website, this means that kids who saw the first train events might have children of their own by now.

The train display takes about four days to set up and four days to take down. According to Lavrich, this means that the train display basically takes up most of his December.

There were so many little details to look at. The train community's inhabitants were a varied lot, everything from holiday icons to historic figures, cartoon and movie characters to 'regular' town folk. 

 You can check out a time-lapse video of the scene being set up here:

Of Spiders and Grunge

MATINEE: One of the activities on our recent trip to Bend was CJ and Annabelle were treated to an afternoon matinee with Nonnie. They chose to check out the new Spider-Man movie.  Following is Annabelle's review of the movie. ...

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a stellarly animated movie focusing on Miles Morales, a young teen who has to become the successor to his universe's Spider-Man after said hero's death. The bad news for Miles is that Spider-Man got mixed up in a dimensional portal just moments before his death, which caused Spider-Man's equivalents from 5 other parallel dimensions to be sucked into the main one. Between his newfound powers, other Spider-Men, and the dimensional portal now threatening the city, Miles must learn how to harness his new powers quickly and get the others home. 

The movie features some of the most stunning animation I've ever seen in movies. It's an expert blend between 3d and 2d, using a lower framerate to further it's "comic book coming to life" feel. It uses Ben-Day dots, which are usually associated with pop art, for most of its visual effects and shading. 

This movie, in terms of plot execution and visual style, is a huge step from Sony Picture's last animated film; the near-universally hated Emoji Movie. As of now, it's "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 97% approval rating. The movie still hasn't made much profit in the theater, so I strongly urge any fan of superhero movies - and even non-fans - to go see it while it's running. The only warning I can think of is the fact that much of the intro, some plot elements, and the outro include flashing lights which may strain some people's eyes. If this doesn't bother you, it's a must-watch.

Here's a trailer for the movie. ... 


MAKING A LIST:  Recently, CJ took it upon himself to come up with a list of his favorite grunge albums for each year between 1985 and now. He does share it with a little caveat, however, noting, "some of these were reluctant choices, e.g. Stone Temple Pilot's No. 4 and Shangri-La Dee Da (which are almost post-grunge albums)."

1985: Green River — Come On Down

1986: Melvins — Six Songs

1987: Melvins — Gluey Porch Treatments

1988: Mudhoney — Superfuzz Bigmuff

1989: Nirvana — Bleach

1990: Alice in Chains (AiC) — Facelift

1991: Nirvana — Nevermind

1992: Nirvana — Incesticide

1993: Nirvana — In Utero

1994: Nirvana — MTV Unplugged in New York

1995: AiC — Alice in Chains

1996: Nirvana — From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah

1997: Melvins — Honky

1998: Jerry Cantrell — Boggy Depot

1999: Stone Temple Pilots (STP) — No. 4

2000: AiC — Live

2001: STP — Shangri-La Dee Da

2002: Jerry Cantrell — Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2

2003: Pearl Jam — Lost Dogs

2004: Nirvana — With the Lights Out

2005: Nirvana — Sliver: The Best of the Box

2006: Pearl Jam — Pearl Jam

2007: Pearl Jam — Live at the Gorge 05/06

2008: Mudhoney — The Lucky Ones

2009: Nirvana — Live at Reading

2010: STP — Stone Temple Pilots

2011: Soundgarden — Live on I-5

2012: Soundgarden — King Animal

2013: AiC — The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

2014: Soundgarden — Echo of Miles

2015: Kurt Cobain — Montage of Heck

2016: Mother Love Bone — On Earth As It Is

2017: Pearl Jam — Let's Play Two

2018: AiC — Rainier Fog

Around the Bend

LAST ONE STANDING: We recently spent a little time in Bend, Oregon. During our short visit, we were able to see and do a number of fun things. For CJ, the pinnacle of the sightseeing involved visiting the last Blockbuster video store in America.  

I would think nearly anyone who lived during the boom of the VHS era would have a Blockbuster memory - or many memories. I certainly remember heading into the stores, hoping that a copy of the biggest, newest release would be waiting on the shelves for me.  Also, in the days of CJ's big brothers' childhoods, Blockbuster (and other stores) provided hours of kid-friendly entertainment. (Keep in mind, this was back before there were dozens and dozens of cable channels with programming to choose from.)

CJ would be happy to tell you more about the Blockbuster story. ...

Blockbuster is/was a chain of film and video game rental stores (and later, an online video rental service) that, throughout the 90s and 00s, was synonymous with movie night for countless people and families throughout the developed world (particularly in the United States and Australia.) 

Since reaching its peak in 2004 (and making the decision to end late fees at the end of said year,) Blockbuster has been on a gradual decline, managing to go from Goliath to David within the course of about a half-decade. This was largely due to the rise of online movie and TV streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu (and, to a lesser extent, the presence of video rental kiosks such as Redbox.) 

In late 2013 and early 2014, the last of the corporate-owned Blockbusters were closed, and, over the course of the next four years, fifty more franchised Blockbusters across the United States were closed, thus leaving only one, in Bend, Oregon (where I'm writing this report.) 

The Bend Blockbuster (or, as it is sometimes known, "Bendbuster") has become a tourist attraction, largely due to its nostalgia and novelty. If or when Bendbuster closes, it will end the era of American Blockbuster stores, and possibly Blockbuster stores period.

A poster in the Bend store let us know a documentary about the last Blockbuster is in the works. We look forward to checking it out (but not from a Blockbuster store!). 

The Bend Blockbuster was festive for the holidays. There was even a little Blockbuster tree.

In a smart marketing move, the store has merchandise. 

CJ was most pleased to come away with a t-shirt.

Over the River ...

AND THROUGH THE PASS:  Christmas Day meant a bit (well a LOT) of traveling for us. We left Seattle at 7 a.m. on the nose. First stop: Lake Oswego, Oregon, for brunch with some family. Mercifully, holiday traffic was light, and we arrived there just a few minutes after 10 a.m.

I (lamely) neglected to take any photos, so I can't prove it happened. ;)

We left Lake Oswego (which is just south of Portland) about 1 p.m., destination, Bend, Oregon, another three-plus hour stint in the car (did I mention we had two dogs with us?).

Our trip took us through Detroit (Oregon-style), and we got to see the sizable Detroit Dam through the windows as we whizzed by.

Fortunately, traffic remained light, the weather was decent, and there was but a dusting of snow at the North Santiam Pass.

Mostly, it was dry pavement, and mostly blue skies.

We did encounter a snow plow that was pushing slush.

And we can now saw we've visited the Deschutes National Forest.

It was fun to experience at least a bit of a white Christmas!

We arrived in Bend a little after 4, and had a lovely prime rib and potatoes dinner, and then had barrels of laughs by gifting the kids' cousins with crazy candy canes in flavors like macaroni and cheese, clam, dill pickle and (worst of all) rotisserie chicken. They were delightfully disgusting. 

Christmas Countdown

FEAST: Saturday night, we headed up the monthly feast we and a group of friends put on at a local shelter for homeless young adults. This month's menu was an "Aloha 2018" theme. We had kalua pork and teriyaki chicken, white rice, macaroni salad, coleslaw, and a plethroa of Hawaii-inspired desserts.

We made a coconut, macadamia nut, pineapple yellow cake for our contributions to dessert. (It's in the upper portion of the photo above.) We also made 30 teriyaki chicken thighs, 10 pounds of pork, and 4 pounds of macaroni salad. And a couple of gallons of coleslaw. We were busy. 

As usual, Annabelle made a cute poster with the menu (an in-progress part of it appears at the top of this blog entry). As usual, I forgot to take any photos of the finished menu. :( Sigh. I did remember to take a couple of photos of the event in progress, but it gets pretty busy and so there are only a couple, including this one of Annabelle working it in the dish room. She is a dishwashing pro at this point.

HOLIDAZE: I don't usually post on Sunday nights, but I know our schedule is going to be wacky this week, so I thought I'd post while I could. We're busily trying to get our Christmas 'to do' list tackled. Believe it or not, today that involved a pressure cooker on our patio for a couple of hours. We were attempting to make vanilla extract for the first time ever. I've seen dozens of posts about how to do it on the official Instant Pot group on Facebook, however, when researching the process, I also found a couple of articles that scared the begeezus out of me, about how the vapors from the process could be potentially hazardous/combustible/burn your house down. So, we opted to put the cooker outside and keep a close eye on it. Happily, no fires, and it looks like it worked really well - hooray!

We'll be caught up in holiday bustle for the next few days, but will try to post when we can. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, and here's a short scene from our cozy fire tonight.

Blustery

NASA's InSight lander placed its seismometer on Mars on Dec. 19, 2018. This was the first time a seismometer had ever been placed onto the surface of another planet. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

IN PLACE: Exciting news from NASA - InSight, their latest Mars lander, is doing so well, it's ahead of schedule. Already, the lander has placed a seismometer on the Martian surface. From what we read before the probe's landing, that wasn't expected to happen until well into 2019.

In a press release, InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, explained, "InSight's timetable of activities on Mars has gone better than we hoped. Getting the seismometer safely on the ground is an awesome Christmas present."  

It's kind of a big deal. "Seismometer deployment is as important as landing InSight on Mars," according to InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt. "The seismometer is the highest-priority instrument on InSight: We need it in order to complete about three-quarters of our science objectives."

The seismometer will be measuring "marsquakes" (you didn't expect them to be called 'earth'quakes did you? ;) ) Scientists hope to deduce the depth and composition of the layers of Martian soil  by studying the waves captured by InSight's seismometer.  

Next up for InSight: Getting level. Right now it's sitting at about a 2- to 3-degree tilt. Engineers will level the lander, and once it's in the right position, seismometer measurements should commence. 

For more information about InSight, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight

GALE FORCE: Thursday evening we received a warning from our insurance company. No, we hadn't missed paying a bill. Rather, the warning was about an upcoming weather event where we live. On Thursday, Dec. 20, winds of up to 60 miles per hour were expected.

It certainly was blustery this morning, starting at a little after 9 a.m. at our place, just south of Seattle.  Lots of places lost power. Fortunately, we were spared.

North of Seattle, up by Mukilteo, check out this ferry making its way across choppy waters. I told the kids I'd kind of like to be on board for a ride like that. It would be exciting, for sure. 

IT'S A WRAP: We have spent hours and hours wrapping dozens of gifts over the past couple of days.  I can't believe there are only five days to go until Christmas.

Check out the Dollar Store 'treasure' we scored today to help us keep track.

Wrapping gifts is kind of mindless work (well, at least the way we do it), so we listened to some music to help make the time pass. Today's excellent choice was a cool set from one of our contemporary favorites, twenty one pilots.

Smart Cookies

FUN WITH FONDANT: Busy weekend, as usual. While the kids and Christian went for a quick trip down south, I stayed home and worked on a 'little' project, namely making 30 melted snowman cookie kits. We had a date with a class full of third graders on Monday afternoon, and so I had some work to do.

First, I had to hand cut all of the melted snowman bodies. Then I had to make marshmallow fondant. So. Much. Marshmallow fondant. I made about eight pounds of white and two pounds each of green and brown. Oh, and I had to make three dozen gum paste carrot noses (or snowses, as I like to call them). And we had to cut parchment rectangles (for pressing/shaping the fondant, and round up pounds of sprinkles of different colors and shapes, and more). Oh, and then we had to make the heads out of crispy rice.

We reported to Kent Elementary at the appointed time. We've gone there this time of year in years past to help the class of CJ and Annabelle's oldest brother, Rick, make the snowman cookies. Rick has moved on (he's teaching in Vegas now), but we returned to Kent to make the cookies with one of his former teacher friends.

On each student's desk, we placed parchment, the fondant, a body, a head, and a nose.

Once they got the basics out of the way, they could get to customizing!

It's always so much fun to see how different all the little snow people are! Check out the headdress and legs on the one below.

 And I think it was just so sweet how the snow person (below) had a gummy teddy bear tucked into its scarf. I also love the pink Unicorn Os cereal buttons on it.

 This snowperson was a Seahawks' fan, right down to its eyes!

 And how adorable is this snowman? That little hat? And the arms placed just 'so'!

 Each of the kids was given a 'to go' box to tuck their creations (and the leftovers) into.

Later, at home, I told the kids that they should make their own snowpeople, too. Clearly, we had a few leftovers. 

 CJ came up with this cute creation. I like its surprised expression, and the pattern on its trunk.

 In news that will surprise no one, Annabelle used the carrot 'nose' as a horn ...

 and created a melted snow unicorn. I love its ears!

 How cute is that?!

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: On Friday morning, CJ, Annabelle and Christian headed south to check out the Christmas ships display on the Willamette River. A cousin of Christian's kindly invited them to view the show from her houseboat. 

On the way south, they stopped in Vancouver to visit family friend Glenn and have lunch with him. (Glenn wound up joining them for the light show, too!)

Before the show, the kids and Christian stopped by Oaks Park. I'll have CJ tell you about a nature walk they took in the neighborhood. 

On 15 December 2018, during a trip down to Portland, Oregon, my family (excluding my mother,) while waiting for a party (in anticipation of that night's Christmas Ships celebration), went on a short walk on the Oaks Bottom Loop Hike, present on a nature reserve. We had gotten to the trail from an outdoor area near Oaks Park, which itself is best known as an amusement park.

Near the start of the hike (or at least where we started,) a large mural of wildlife painted on the side of the Portland Memorial Mausoleum was visible. According to OregonHikers.org, this is the largest hand-painted mural in America.

Arguably the most interesting part of the (otherwise-unremarkable) walk was the sight of a coyote climbing the dirt wall near us. The coyote briefly gazed at us before going on its way up the wall.

According to Wikipedia, the 2009 mural was painted by by Dan Cohen of ArtFX Murals and Shane Bennett. The mural covers approximately 43,485 square feet across eight surfaces.  You can see some thumbnails of it here: https://racc.org/public-art/search/?recid=2924.89

Annabelle can tell you a bit about the Christmas ships. ...

The Annual Christmas Ship parade is an organized event that takes place in Oregon, crossing the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. When we saw them, it was as part of a party with many of our relatives on the Willamette River on a houseboat. The Christmas ships were less than 10 feet away from the houseboat, providing us a great view of each one. While it was cold and windy outside, the boats persisted with animated light shows and displays strewn across them. A few of my favorites included one with floating, glowing jellyfish hanging from the back of the boat. Another one I enjoyed was stylized to look like a large Rudolph head, complete with flashing red nose and large antlers. This is an annual event and they're still making their rounds, so see when and where you can catch them on their site at https://www.christmasships.org/ !

My friend Glenn took some video, and was kind enough to let me share it with you. 

ENGINEERING LESSON: Today's STEM education came from YouTube. It's a terrific video by former NASA engineer Mark Rober. He was tired of porch pirates making off with his deliveries and so he engineered the hell out of a booby prize for would be thieves.

This video is definitely worth 11 minutes of your time.

FLICKER OF HOPE: It did my dark heart well to read this tidbit today, from US National Weather Service Seattle Washington:  "Less than 30 seconds of daylight left to lose in Seattle until winter solstice. After that, we gain 50 seconds by the New Year."

Hooray! This December has seemed so over-the-top (or should that be under-the-blanket?) dark. Let there be light!