Working It

HOMEFRONT: Apologies for the lack of posts as of late. It seems like our hands are continually covered in mortar, grout, joint compound, or wallpaper glue this week.

We *FINALLY* finished the tile installation in the downstairs shower. Hooray!
Honestly, it really wasn't much of a shower before. It had a drain that leaked, regular old drywall for its walls (who does that?!), and a broken shower head. 

So, we ripped out the drywall, resloped the shower floor so that water would actually get to the drain, surrounded the shower with cementious backer board, and installed a hundreds of subway-shaped tiles floor-to-ceiling.

And because one project begets another, new flooring is going down in the bathroom soon, and its adjacent hallway and bedroom. And before you put new flooring down, well, it makes sense to paint the walls. However, there was a 'small' problem: The hallway walls were covered in dark, dingy textured wallpaper. Worst-case scenario was that we'd paint over it if it was impossible to pull up. However, we found with a couple of test patches that we could pull at least the top, textured layer off without too much trouble, so then we had to remove the backer layer by scoring it, spraying it with some nasty chemical, and then painstakingly scraping it off one square inch at a time.

However, with CJ, Annabelle, sometimes Kennedy and I working together, we knocked the peel job out this week. The painting will be the fun part! (Also, yes, I know we need a new light fixture. The one in the photo is super dated and not in the cool funky-retro way that I like.)

Yesterday, CJ and Annabelle assembled a bath vanity from IKEA. It's a good exercise in following written, sequential directions.

Suffice it to say, we're nowhere near finished with the renovation(s), but we definitely made some serious progress this week. 

FIRE IN THE SKY: Speaking of this week, I've noticed "not normal" looking clouds bumping up against the east side of Mt. Rainier. 

They were stacked clouds, cumulus of some sort, but I didn't know what sort until I happened upon a post by KING 5 news about pyrocumulus clouds and Mt. Rainier. 

So there you have it, our meteorlogical lesson of the week.

BEES, PLEASE: Another story from our newsfeed this week involved burgeoning beekeeping in the heart of urban Detroit, Michigan.

A non-profit, Detroit Hives, is buying vacant land in the still- city, and setting up scores of beehives on them, where minorities are encouraged to learn about beekeeping. Talk about a win-win!


MEANWHILE, ON JUPITER: NASA's -year-old Hubble telescope continues to amaze. At least once a year,  Earth-orbiting Hubble turns its eyes to all our outer solar system planets to check on their weather. This week, new photos of our solar system neighbor Jupiter were released. (The photos were taken on June 27 of this year.)

Did you know that Jupiter's great red spot, an enormous storm, has been shrinking for years now? While it is getting taller and turning more orange, it is shrinking in diameter. Once upon a time the Great Red Spot was believed  to be large enough to cover the width of three Earths, but as of April 2017, the storm spot was just a little wider than one Earth (a diameter of 10,159 miles, according to NASA.

Using the latest Hubble images, NASA compiled an animation of Jupiter's rotation. (In case you were wondering, Jupiter completes one rotation every 9.8 hours.)

A few more fun Jupiter facts from the folks at NASA ...

Starry Eyed

PLAY PARK:  Saturday evening we made our way to Blanche Lavizzo Park in what has become an annual pilgrimage. It used to be to watch Star Trek episodes acted out, but last year they shifted universes to Star Wars. This summer's offering was "The Empire Strikes Back." Basically every scene, every line, oh-so-creatively done!

As always, the low-budget but big-imagination sets were fantastically done. Below is how they recreated the opening scene, with an Imperial Star Destroyer taking the stage.

The Imperial minions were throwing mini starships. CJ caught one. This is what is said (a famous quote from the movie).

 Pretty early into the script, a wampa gives Luke a real hard time. Love how they recreated that!

 And then there is the scene where the Rebel Alliance is fighting the Imperial Walkers.

 Tactically flying around them, they were able to take the legs out from underneath them. 

 The performance was very dynamic. Often cast members were posted up in the midst of the audience. 

The production's "little things" were so much appreciated - like Luke enjoying a bag of Dick's on Degobah.

Yoda was a big fan of the burgers and fries.

There were epic battles.

And Luke was a little worse for the wear, having to get an artificial hand installed. 

There were some heartfelt goodbyes during the show, as well. 

 Poor Han. Hope the carbonite doesn't kill him!

The show runs the first four weekends in August. The reason we went on opening night was it coincided with celebrating Grandpa R's birthday. In addition to serving up dinner for nine in the park (pastrami sandwiches and potato salad) Annabelle and I made some Star Wars cookies for dessert. Most of them went to the cast after the show.

All in all, it was such big fun. Hats off to Hello Earth for providing such fun (and free!) entertainment each summer.

BTW - this R2D2 costume was the inspiration for Annabelle's Halloween costume last year, right down to the roller skates. 

On Display

SPACE ROCKS: Thursday night, CJ's months-in-the-making Museum Apprenticeship Program display finally debuted.

He's involved in a program at The Museum of Flight where he was tasked with coming up with an innovative display for the museum. CJ loves classic rock and space stuff, so a "Space Rocks" display seemed a natural. 

Below is a test run of his display on our dining room table. 

Thursday night, we dropped him and all of his stuff off at the museum. We returned a couple of hours later to see how his fledgling display was going. Below is what it looked like approaching it from the stairs down into the museum's Great Gallery.

I was happy to see he had a crowd when we approached! Turns out other people are interested in rock and roll and space! 

Below is the poster he had behind the juke box.

On the juke box, he had a playlist running of dozens of space-inspired songs. 

In the middle of the booth, he had a laptop playing videos performed by musician astronauts on the ISS. 

Here's a short video of what the booth looked and sounded like. 

All in all, it sounded like his booth was a success. Museum of Flight overseers said it was popular, and he's encouraged to bring it back in the future for others to enjoy.

galaxy cake

CJ's MAP MOMENT

TOMATOES

BLACKBERRIES

Fun and Games

DISC-O: This past weekend, Kennedy took CJ and Annabelle to a new-to-them disc golf course, Gaffney's Grove.

It's in a Maple Valley park, about a half hour southeast of the MPA campus. Kennedy has done a fair amount of disc golfing, and calls the course his favorite.

It sounds like the kids had a good outing - CJ even managed par for the first time on one hole.

According to the course's website, Gaffney's Grove has been named the top played course in the state of Washington by people who use the UDisc app.

BELATED CELEBRATION: Monday marked one week since the kids successfully finished private pilot ground school. They were supposed to walk to a nearby diner after graduation and have a milkshake to mark the occasion, but they forgot to bring money I'd given them with them, so the celebration was postponed.

Instead, we went to the diner, Randy's, on this Monday. Housed in a 1970s-vintage former Denny's, Randy's is a feast for the eyes. Its retro pink and orange decor is delightful, and as its right by a Boeing plant, Boeing Field, and The Museum of Flight, it has taken on an aviation theme over the years.

While the decor is delightful, their plating is, shall we say, a little less than inspired. This is what you get if you order half a turkey sandwich.

The meals were all just kind of meh, but the kids loved their milkshakes and it was a fitting place to celebrate ground school's completion.

Bountiful

PICKIN' AND GRINNIN': Harvest time for a pair of our biggest spaghetti squash today!

Annabelle and CJ each found one they thought was the biggest of the 10 or so that are growing in our side yard.

Annabelle's little bundle of squashy joy weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds and 10.8 ounces. CJ's was 5 pounds 5 ounces - still a pretty darn big one.

We baked it up for dinner and served it with spaghetti sauce that I'd had cooking for 10 hours. Delicious!

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: The kids had mostly fun at a big rock show on Friday night. It was held at the Showare Center, south of us, in Kent. 

Even though I bought them seats in the last row, as you can see from this shot by CJ pre-concert, it's a pretty intimate venue.

I'll have him tell you more about the experience. 

Last year, veteran hard rock act Shinedown released Attention Attention, their sixth album. Attention Attention is a (loose) concept album about an unnamed character who, stuck in a negative mental state, gradually works their way to become a more positive, healthy, person. To support the album, Shinedown embarked on the Attention Attention Tour, with the bands Broken Hands, Dinosaur Pile-Up, and Badflower as opening acts for the current (as of the time of writing) leg of the tour.

The three opening acts all played relatively (and mercifully, in the case of Badflower) sets, so they barely got to display their discographies to the crowd. In my opinion, Broken Hands and Dinosaur Pile-Up were rather forgettable, save for the former's thick British accent (which displayed heavily in his singing).

Badflower, the third opener, notably has a (minor) rock radio hit in "Ghost". Unfortunately, the two adjectives I would use to best describe Badflower's performance at the show are "shrill" and "emo" (both of which are attributes I almost always dislike). Badflower's singer began their set by informing us about his... self-gratification practices (needless to say, very TMI), after which the band lumbered through their setlist, ending with their hit "Ghost".

Shinedown, the headliner, began their set at approximately 9:30 P.M, opening with the song "Devil" from Attention Attention. This was followed by "Diamond Eyes", a song the band recorded for the soundtrack of the 2010 film The Expendables (though did not appear in the film's theatrical version). The rest of the setlist featured songs from across their discography (in particular Amaryllis and Attention Attention). Overall, Shinedown's stage presence was very theatrical, with lead singer Brent Smith often asking concertgoers to participate in various activities he listed (such as shaking hands to the people sitting in the seats next to them).After playing their biggest hit "Second Chance" (surprisingly early in their setlist, might I add), the band performed a cover of "Numb" by Linkin Park, followed by an off-key cover of "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden. This, in turn, was followed by a mostly-acoustic cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man". After the covers were over, Shinedown played "Get Up" (the big single from Attention Attention), followed by the title track from The Sound of Madness, and concluded with the song "Brilliant".

Overall, Shinedown played a decent, entertaining show.

You can see a low quality cell phone video CJ shot at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJsm5N2gPAf1LMkVT4du5Lxe4QgGL6aZ/view?usp=sharing
The video even includes some fairly cringe-worthy singing by the audience. :)

SUMMER SUPPER: This past Saturday night was another Teen Feed for us. We chose what seemed like a nice summertime menu, with barbecue pork and chicken sliders, corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw, and watermelon pizza for dessert.

As usual, Annabelle made a menu poster for the diners to peruse upon entering. 

We probably only had about 30 or so people come for dinner, but BOY were they HUNGRY. My gosh, we served So. Many. Sliders. We started off by giving them two apiece. Most had one each of the pork and chicken. (I need to note that our friends Emily and Kyle smoked 15 pounds of pork for the occasion!) Two other friends brought a bunch of chicken, and I made about 10 pounds of chicken just in case (we don't ever want to be caught short at Teen Feed). Another friend even brought bbq/pulled jackfruit for the vegans. 

It is impossible to overstate how grateful many of the diners were for that dinner. They'd walk in and talk about how good it smelled, and would gratefully take their first plate and then come back for more and more and more. 

One guy was so hungry for protein, he skipped all of the rest of the offerings stuff and just asked for pairs of sliders ... Five times. Another guy took that one step further, and didn't even have buns. He just wanted platefuls of meat.

It was the first time we'd attempted corn on the cob at Teen Feed, and it was a big hit! I heard more than one diner say, "I can't remember the last time I had corn on the cob!"
We boiled it stove top, and then took ears out and dipped them in huge pans full of butter (or margarine, for the vegans). In addition to freshly ground salt and pepper, diners could also have cotija sprinkled on their corn. 

They also had fun ordering their slice of watermelon 'pizza' (a wedge of watermelon, with choices of toppings including coconut (that looked like the cheese), raisins, chocolate chips, whipped cream and more. 

All in all, it was another great Teen Feed, and we're already thinking about next month's menu.

DRAGON CAPTURE: A couple nights ago, we finally got to see the ISS fly over. It seems like it had been *so* long since we'd spied it.

It's been busy up there. A Russian cargo ship just left, and a SpaceX one, the Dragon, recently arrived. 

• Taken on July 27 by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, the photo above shows Dragon approaching the ISS. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch used the Canadarm2 to capture and dock the Dragon to the Harmony node of the Space Station.