Growing

 

DONE DEAL: Tonight, we finally got around to voting our ballots. Working for King County Elections, I know that it's really helpful if people turn in their ballots sooner rather than later. Ours will go into a drop box tomorrow. 

The good news is, a whole lot of people are into the early vote action this year. The graphic below was posted by Washington state Governor Jay Inslee yesterday. ...

Speaking of King County Elections, if you want to be in the room where it happens (to borrow a "Hamilton" quote), check out this site:

There, you can watch ballots being opened, registrations being taken, and more. Check it out! https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/about-us/security-and-accountability/watch-us-in-action.aspx

THERE IS ANOTHER: If you're a regular reader, perhaps you remember our not-too-long ago RIP pumpkin post. Our one and only separated from the vine when it was smaller than a walnut.

Yesterday evening, Christian was taking the dogs out and checked our pumpkin vine and lo and behold, there is a new squash growing!

It's already the size of a golf ball (so huge! haha). We're very excited. This could be the Great Pumpkin. :)

Touchdown!

KINGDOM COME: It's still very much the pandemic, so we can't go to games, but we can still play them. One we've played a couple of times recently is Carcassonne. It's about building highways and cities and an monastery every once in awhile.

It's fairly fast, and pretty fun, if you win, like I did tonight, hahaha. Actually, I didn't just win, I pretty much crushed the competition. That doesn't happen very often at all, so I feel pretty OK about reveling in it. :)

CRUNCH TIME: Busy busy busy times here. CJ's keeping busy with college and Annabelle is right by his side each and every day. They do their math and biology lessons side by side, and it's good for both of them.

Meanwhile, I am registering voters ... So Many Voters ... each and every day. Public service announcement/plea here: If you're ever filling out an important form, like, say a voter registration record, please, OH PLEASE, take your time to fill it out in a way some who isn't you can actually read it.

I beg of you. I spent a half hour today on one reg form, trying to figure out the name entering every which way it might have been. In the end it was all for naught, and that's so sad. I WANT to register voters!

Also, it's good if you spell your own name right (yes, that's a thing). Oh, and you were not born in 2020 (yes, that's another thing). Sigh. It's also really helpful if you know your address. Just sayin'.

NAILED IT: Big news from NASA this week. They managed to send a spacecraft to an asteroid, do a quick descent, and pluck a sample. Pretty amazing!

According to NASA, the probe touched asteroid Bennu’s surface for approximately 6 seconds, hitting its mark within 3 feet of the targeted location. Not bad at all!

In the video below, you'll see the SamCam imager’s field of view as the spacecraft approached and touched down on Bennu’s surface.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LJBv4reH9IU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I've tried over and over, but not sure the embed is working. Here's a link to the video: https://youtu.be/LJBv4reH9IU

One fun thing: We here MPA peeps had our name on the probe that touched down on the asteroid. So, we've been to an asteroid. We'll have to add that to our resumes. :)

Weekend Scenes

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: A couple of weeks ago, Annabelle said, "It may be the pandemic talking, but I think I want to cut my hair."

I told her it's her hair and she can do whatever she wants with it. 

She said she'd like to donate her hair to a nonprofit organization. A quick Google led us to Wigs for Kids,  a nonprofit organization that has been serving children suffering from hair loss since 1981.

They had instructions on their website, including the requirement that donors send hair that's at least 12 inches long.

We measured her hair carefully and I sectioned it off. 

I lopped off each of the pony tails and then cleaned up the cut.

We're still going to make her an appointment somewhere to get a pro cut and color, but this step was a good start. 

Her hair is ready to go to its new 'home,' the head of a child in need.

BIRTHDAY GIRL: Sunday, Annabelle turned Sweet 16. It was a pandemic birthday, so that meant the celebration was a bit different than it might have been.  We headed to West Seattle where we ordered brunch from the Easy Street cafe. (Easy Street is an iconic record store that happens to have a quirky little cafe on site.) 

Because of COVID, we ate in the car instead of in the cafe. 

Afterward, we headed  to a new game store in West Seattle, The Missing Piece, where I'd reserved a table. We'd never been there before, so that was fun. It was a nice place, spaced out, people were wearing masks and it felt safe. 

We spent an hour there, played a game (Taco vs. Burrito), she picked out a new game (Betrayal at House on the Hill), then we went to Super Deli and played her new game (outside, on a table under cover), and Sunday evening she played D&D with her regular group online.

All in all, a pretty nice birthday, despite the pandemic.

Birthdays Cake

CAKING IT: October is a busy month 'round these parts, at least in the birthday sense. It's Rick's birthday, my birthday and Annabelle's birthday.

We really aren't too into making cakes for ourselves, so we like to take our birthdays as an opportunity to make a cake for someone else. 

This week, we made a cake for a teen living in a homeless shelter. Like Annabelle, the girl loves to dabble in the arts. So Annabelle, our resident artist, helped make an art cake for her fellow Libra.

We often look online for ideas, but Annabelle didn't like what she saw. All of the art-themed cakes she was coming across skewed too young for a teen, she figured.

So, we came up with our own plan. We like to start with a conceptual drawing.

 

The birthday girl wanted a chocolate cake, so CJ baked a three-layer one. I made chocolate filling and added some mini chocolate chips for a little bonus surprise. 

Meanwhile, Annabelle made modeling chocolate that would be shaped into brushes, tubes of paint and more. 

Those shapes were then covered with fondant we made. 

We always have some trouble. This time it came in the shape of edible paint brushes. One broke in multiple ways while being attached to the cake. Sigh. We solved that by making it shorter and stronger. In the end, we were the only ones who would ever know that it wasn't the original piece. (Well, if you're reading this, I guess you know, too.)

FYI, on the photo at the top of the post, I Photoshopped the birthday girl's name, for anonymity. 

 

Sporty

GET KRAKEN: This week has been a little bit sports-focused. Which is normal in non-pandemic times, but it's an anomaly now.

Monday night, after two years of being on a waiting list, we had the opportunity to get in on season tickets for the new National Hockey League franchise in Seattle, the Kraken.

We had a Zoom meeting Monday night with a Kraken sales rep and chose our seats. It's super exciting. We were lucky to get in on the deal. We were number 3,200-something out of 15,000 or so who were in the 'first' tier of people wanting season tickets, and there are another 50,000 or so on the second tier waiting list.

We had to do our homework and crunch numbers ahead of time, finding the seats that worked for us and our budget.

We settled for the Red Line plan, and some aisle seats we hope are great. It's kind of weird buying seats like that for a venue you've never set foot in, but #thanksCOVID, it was what it was.

BASEBALL BRUSH: Saturday, we went to the Mariners' stadium. Unfortunately, not for a ballgame, but to pick up a couple of Seat Fleet cut outs. 

The 'Seat Fleet' was a way to represent your fandom in the park when we couldn't actually be in the park.

For around $30, you could have a photo cutout placed in a seat at the field, silently rooting for the home team.

Fortunately, there was free and easy parking just south of the stadium when we went to pick up the first pair.

Signs showed us the way to our familiar faces.

Fortunately, the pick up was well organized and we didn't have to wait too long.

We picked up Rick and Ken, also known as Jay Buhner and Norm Charlton circa 1995, in short order. These were their Halloween costumes that year. The height of Mariners fever, they scored lots of candy that year.

Today, Christian picked up the rest of the kids.

I envy these cut outs and their ballpark time this year. The Ms didn't win enough, as usual, but there are some exciting up and comers on the team. I hope we get to see them in person next year.

Quick Update

THE COUNTDOWN'S ON: Like so many others, we are counting down the days until the election. We decided to do so literally and I ordered a DIY advent calendar.

Annabelle used her Cricut to cut out numbers for the drawers. She also cut out letters for the sentiment in the middle of the calendar.

Now, we just need to figure out what to put in the little drawers. I bought some chocolate coins tonight at Winco. They are blue foil with an eagle on one side and John F. Kennedy on the other side. I thought they would be perfect! I was wrong. They're just a tad too big, darn it. Now we have 50 blue foil covered coins we don't need and nothing for our little drawers. The search continues.

TRAGEDY: Remember me crowing about finally having one little pumpkin growing in our garden? We were so excited.

Well, yeah, pox on that. I took the dogs out yesterday morning and went to check on our pumpkin and found it has become detached from the vine. Nooooooooo!

I'm blaming the dogs. They like to walk along the wall and I'll be one of them knocked it off the vine. Drat!

In happier news, we do still have a few flowers around, including a couple of dahlias, some poppies, the clover is blooming again, among other bright spots. We also picked a couple dozen more tiny red tomatoes.

So there's our gardening round up. 

And So It Continues

DIGGING IT: So, here we are again, blogging about nothing other than planting stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with planting, per se, but there are WHOLE lot of things we'd like to be doing in addition to that, but COVID. Sigh.

Anyway, a few weeks ago a friend messaged me a photo of a cute pumpkin planter stuffed with succulents. I tucked that away in my mind and this week we go around to creating some of our own.

We scored a couple of cute, vibrantly orange pumpkins for $2 apiece at Grocery Outlet. We hollowed those out.

Then we filled them with potting soil and went 'shopping' in our yard, where there are so many succulents growing.

I don't have photos of our scavenging, but I do have photos of the finished product. Below is CJ's planter. Isn't it pretty?

And here's Annabelle's succulent stuffed pumpkin. So pretty!

SCIENCE CLASS: CJ has started his sophomore year of college. One of his classes is biology. There are a few things about the course that are already red flags for me, but I'm trying to stay open minded.

In the meantime, the kids started a controlled experiment today involving planting and growing mung beans.

The first step was potting soil in four pots.

The dirt was supposed to be within an inch of the pot's top.

The mung beans were planted at a precise depth,

The seeds are germinating even as we 'speak.' Once they sprout, there will be some controls and variables employed.