Preppers

THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE: The Seahawks' first playoff game is this Saturday, and we're expecting a houseful! Today's preparations for the party included a Winco run. There, we scored some Skittles -in Seahawks' colored packages! Skittles are a game day tradition for Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch, dating back to when his mom gave them to him before Pop Warner games, calling them "power pellets."

We also started making some decorations today. Rather than spending a small fortune on official flags or banners, we decided to do some crafting. We used white, blue and green butcher paper, and a small projector hooked up to a laptop to get the rather complicated Seahawks' logo right.

Then, the kids carefully cut the parts out.

In the end, we had three nice 3-by-5 foot or so logo posters! They're not perfect, but they'll do for our purposes. :)

JUMPING RIGHT IN: We are starting a new Coursera class next week, and I was going to do a bit of reading up on it when I noticed a listing for a course already underway, "Introduction to Genetics and Evolution."

My immediate reaction was, "Yessssssss!!!!!!!!" because for the past month or so CJ has been asking about 200 questions about genetics a day. I was still laying in bed this morning and he was asking me about canine characteristics and what you get if you mix this and that.

I was a bit worries when I saw the class started a week ago, wondering if we were already too late to jump on board. Lucky for us, the first homework isn't due until this coming Monday, so if we cram hard, I think we can manage to catch up.

The class is through Duke University, and Prof. Mohamed Noor is our instructor. We watched about an hour's worth of educational and engaging videos today, and CJ has already had a BUNCH of his questions answered. Hooray!

One of the things Prof. Noor shared with us today was a 2005 Science magazine survey revealing the USA has one of the highest rates of “disbelief” in evolution, and one of the lowest rates of “belief” that
evolution in a survey of 35 nations. In fact, we ranked 34th out of the 35 when it came to public acceptance of evolution. (About 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, 40 percent say they don't, and 20 percent aren't sure).

Only Turkey was less accepting of evolution. Iceland, Finland and Sweden were the most accepting of evolution. (More than 80 percent of Icelanders accept evolution as fact.)

As part of the support for evolution, Noor used a quote from Jerry Coyne's "Why Evolution is True." Coyne pointed out that species “seem intricately and almost perfectly designed for living their lives.”

As an example of this, Noor used the story of Lampsilis muscles which live in a Missouri stream grow appendages that look like tiny fish, which attract bass, who want to eat the little 'fish.' The attraction is important because in order to reproduce, the muscles need to spray their young into the bass' mouth, where they live in parasitic fashion. Amazing. You can watch it in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0YTBj0WHkU


Clearly, so far, so good on the class. Wish us luck trying to cram two weeks' worth of lectures into the weekend.

In a tangentially related note, we learned about a new-to-us job today - a paleo-artist. Christian found an interview with John Gurche, of the Smithsonian. SUPER interesting! Three minutes well spent, that's for sure. You can watch on National Geographic's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFrRHbgBitI


FROM A DISTANCE: Super cool shot from NASA this week. We've seen hundreds of photos taken by the Mars Science Laboratory since it landed on Mars. But now NASA shares with us a photo taken on Dec. 11, 2013, that is *of* MSL on Mars!

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resoluation Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

Spot the rover? It's the squarish shape in the lower lefthand corner of the photo. And when you look at Mars' surface, you can see Curiosity's tracks, too! They're about 10 feet (3 meters) apart.

SPEAKING OF SPACE: This morning we watched a launch. Orbital Sciences' Cygnus capsule was sent soaring on an Antares rocket, destination ISS.  

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

It was a pretty launch, but we noticed the rocket got off the pad relatively slowly. That's because it doesn't have solid rocket boosters, like many of the other rockets/shuttles we have watched launch.

You can see a replay here: http://youtu.be/_ksLbFhO-jc

Cygnus has around 2,500 pounds of cargo on board, including a number of science experiments, one being a crew of "antronauts." Some students on Earth will be studying the behavior of ants by comparing groups living on Earth to those in space. 

King for the Day

FIT FOR A KING: Our house smelled like Graceland all day. Or, at least what I imagine Graceland's kitchen smelled like, back in the day The King was ordering up eats from the kitchen help.

On January 8, the birthday of Elvis Aron Presley, MPA most always does something to celebrate. Often, it involves food, because Elvis' love of food was legendary. 

Above is an Elvis cake I made awhile back for my mom. It was banana, with peanut butter filling, inspired by Elvis' penchant for fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches. Today, we used that as an inspiration for breakfast. I made the kids peanut butter and banana pancakes.

After inhaling them, Annabelle declared, "Those. Were. Delicious! You just need to get a bit of everything. Especially the banana. If you don't, the peanut sort of overpowers it."

Spoken like a 9 year old who watches more than her fair share of "Chopped," don't you think?

The kids got their hands dirty in the kitchen, too. They had fun shaking chicken legs in brown bags to coat them in flour and seasoning. They also measured ingredients for the biscuits ...

 and kneaded the dough, of course.

We whipped up some 'red-eye- gravy, and you put it all together and you get this!

Dinner was a hit, except for the red-eye gravy. Its two primary ingredients are coffee and bacon drippings. That'll give you a jolt. Even though I watered it down and doctored it up, it was still a bit much for the kids. And me.

SOLAR SCRUB: We were gearing up to watch the Antares rocket launch this morning as part of an ISS re-supply mission, but it was scrubbed AGAIN. Yesterday, the cold weather caused the postponement. Today? The sun was to blame.

More specifically, the launch was scrubbed due to "excessive space radiation." First time I'd ever heard that reason used!

Turns out, yesterday, the sun unleashed a heckuva flare.

The launch postponement is a bummer, but one upside from the flare is that many people have a way higher than normal chance of seeing the Northern Lights (that's on my bucket list) - IF they have clear skies.  The light show is expected to be visible on the morning of Jan. 9, between midnight and dawn (that's just after midnight tonight/Wednesday).

Naturally, it is raining like CrAzY here today, with zero estimated chance of any clearing before dawn's early light. Grrrr.  But I hope someone(s) in the lower 48 gets to see them for the first time! More info on how and where to look here: http://earthsky.org/space/sun-unleashes-x-flare.

The launch has been re-rescheduled. They're going to try tomorrow at 10:07 a.m. US West Coast time. We'll be watching.

HOT AND COLD: The kids had fun in science class today. A super simple experiment clearly and quickly demonstrated how molecules expand and are less dense when they're heated, and how they're more dense when they're cold.

Two color-full cups were submerged in room-temperature water. Can you guess which colored cup had the hot water in it, and which had the ice water?

READING LIST: Last night Annabelle finished "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl. A classic, which I have yet to read. :/ The kids both recently finished a neat, short picture book, "Miracle Mud: Lena Blackburne and the Secret Mud that Changed Baseball."

I'd always known that major league baseballs were rubbed in some special mud before being put into play, but I never stopped to ponder the story behind the mud. This book changed that. We learned the backstory about the mud, as well as the man who brought it to the majors.
                                        
Blackburne was nowhere near a good enough baseball player to make it to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but a bucket of his mud is there!

In small print at the end of the book, there was a note that 'complimentary educational resources' regarding the book were available online at lerneresource.com

I had to create an account on their site (it took about 15 seconds) and then sign in, but then I repeatedly got a message about some Boolean error, and I couldn't get to the PDFs. BUMMER. I was about to give up entirely, but I closed everything, re-opened it and it worked, finally.  The 'eSource' was a two-page article by Miracle Mud author David A. Kelly about how he researched the book. Cool! The kids will read it tomorrow.

The mud marketer's Web site included a link to a CNN story about baseball's 'dirty little secret.'
You can check it out here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/28/baseball.mud/index.html

In my digging around, I also found a PDF published by the state of New Jersey (home of the miracle mud): http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/library/documents/edweb/mud.pdf

And BTW, David Kelly is author of a series of children's books called "Ballpark Mysteries." Intriguing!

Back at It

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
ON THE MORROW: In the image below, an Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen on launch Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. The photo was taken on Monday, Jan. 6. The rocket's set to launch tomorrow morning, at 10:32 a.m. Seattle time.

It was supposed to launch today (the 7th), but the frigid weather resulted in it being put off until tomorrow.

 

The Antares will launch a Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Among the cargo aboard Cygnus set to launch to the space station are science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware.

Today we watched a fair amount of NASA TV, including coverage of Cygnus rolling out to the launch pad.

BOW WOW: The kids spent some time with "Time for Kids" this afternoon, reading a couple of short issues, each a 2013-in review theme. One was about the year's 'coolest inventions.' I asked the kids which one interested them most, and they both pointed to a product that lets people chat with their pets from remote locations. It's funny, because our family has talked about that before - how it would be nice to be able to phone home and yell at the dogs to stop barking or remind them not to pee on the floor. Of course, the maker of iCPOOCH ("interactive care for dogs") has a friendlier chat in mind, with owners calling because they miss their dogs so much, and the bonus of being able to 'give' them a biscuit. We found an informational video about it on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/skD7zSAnGBQ

It's a neat idea, but I have to admit, I picture dogs pawing at the device featuring their owner's face and voice, and quickly breaking their human's expensive electronics. ... I was curious how much an iCPOOCH retails for, but in poking around their Web site, it looks like the units aren't on the market yet. It looks like they plan on having a Kickstarter campaign. Heck, maybe the teen inventor will show up on "Shark Tank" soon. :)

POLITICALLY-MINDED:  I wanted to make spaghetti for dinner tonight, but Christian avoids gluten, so that's a no go, unless we could find some gluten free pasta for him at the local grocer. I spied a box of Barilla gluten free spaghetti and grabbed it, but CJ basically shamed me into putting it back, loudly reminding me (and everyone else in the aisle) that the chairman of Barilla is "not LGBT friendly," as evidenced by his widely reported remarks last September.   Fortunately, there was also a box of Ronzoni gluten-free spaghetti on the shelf. It came home with us (and tasted pretty good, might I add).

In other political news, CJ spent about 90 minutes today watching one BrainPOP video after another, all of them having something to do with politics. Of course, that meant I spent 90 plus minutes talking about everything from ancient Rome's governance to the socialist just sworn in on the Seattle City Council. 

FUNNY FACE: Yesterday Annabelle discovered that my phone had both a) a way to take a "selfie" and b) a fun photo editing/graphics software program. This was the result. ...

SEND IN THE CLOWNS: If you read regularly, you have already read plenty about our adventures over at Rick's new house, trying to get it habitable. To that end, yesterday we went to a local salvage store, Second Use, to peruse their appliances. All of their fridges were thrashed, but look at this gem we found hanging from their high ceiling!

A glass, clown-faced, ceiling light cover. How wonderfully awful! It had to be ours. Well, Rick's. ;)  We took it right over to his place and installed it in the dining area, lucky guy! (That's what he gets for giving me his keys.) 

                                   

THOUGHT BUBBLES: If you live in North America, chances are you've been hearing about the cold snap hitting the middle and eastern parts of Canada and the northern U.S. Most of the stories are definitely about the unpleasant aspects of the weather (frigid cold, impossible commutes, loss of utilities and such). However, I read a story today about a mother and her son who decided to go out and play in the cold, with a bottle of bubbles. The photos from their fun are remarkable. Check them out here:
http://distractify.com/culture/arts/frozen-bubbles-in-wintertime/

Busy Weekend

 
CONTEMPLATING RACE: For weeks we have been meaning to get to Pacific Science Center's special exhibit, "Race." But our schedule kept pushing it aside - holidays, projects, and such. However, when CJ noted the exhibit was ending this weekend, we made sure we got there Sunday morning. (I'm not gonna lie - it helped that the Seahawks had a bye.)

SO glad we went. It was through provoking and impactful. For instance, above, CJ contemplates these students at a college who posed wearing t-shirts depicting how they'd be labeled in various years' U.S. censuses.

Many of the stations had videos that took some time to sit down and watch. One was of teens in a lunchroom, discussing race. Bee had a sit at 'their' table and listened in.

 At another station, Annabelle tried to match people's nationalities based on their appearance. It wasn't as easy as stereotypes might lead you to believe.

Near the end, there was a large map on the floor. 

CJ took the opportunity to hold court and explain how humankind spread across the globe from our African ancestors.

The exhibit showcased how people can overcome stereotypes. 

But we also learned about the toll racism takes on human beings, from healthcare to housing and more. 

I'm glad so glad we made it to the exhibit.

It was a gloriously beautiful Sunday in Seattle, and the grounds of Seattle Center never fail to impress.

 Pacific Science Center's arches looked whiter than ever against a brilliant blue sky.

And we had to have the gratuitous Space Needle pose, of course.

The International Fountain was putting on a heckuva show while we were there!

 

 It shot to great heights and came crashing down!

We even spied a rainbow - how 'bout that?!

The kids were wishing it was swimsuit weather, so they could go frolic in it, but that's a loooooooong ways away!

Every time we go to Seattle Center, I notice something new (to us). This visit, it was a sundial at Pacific Science Center. Its time-telling-ability was spot-on.

PLAYFUL: Saturday night, we continued what has become a holiday season tradition for us, attending the Fremont Players' British Panto at Hale's Palladium. Panto is short for pantomime, and it's a form of musical theatre that's traditionally performed in the Christmas holiday season in Great Britain. The stories are typically riffs on familiar fairy tales, interjected with contemporary references, with audience participation encouraged. This year's production was "Dick Whittington (and his Cat)."  Based on a true story,

Following is a collection of seriously craptacular photos taken via my struggling cell phone camera with cast members after the show. The place was dark and my camera phone was crappy, but I feel compelled to post them, because if I don't it didn't happen, LOL (damn you, social media!!!).

Here are the kids with "Sarah" ...

 and the fabulous fairy Bubbly Bowbells!

 During the show, the character of Alderman Fitzwarren was entirely greedy ...

but afterwards he/she gave the kids some fabulous baubles! They were thrilled!

 The villain, Rat King, was wonderfully despicable!!!!

Here are the kids' reviews of the event ... CJ's first.

"The story of Dick Whittington is a fairy tale that was recently performing by the Fremont Players at the British Panto. Dick Whittington is a fictionalization of the real-life Richard Whittington, who was (and still is, especially in the United Kingdom) most famous for rounding the charity of Sir Richard Whittington, which still operates 600 years later. Dick Whittington and his cat is the story of how a man named Dick Whittington seeks to defeat King Rat. If you are new to the story, then I will not spoil the story. One especially fun part was the pop-culture references, which would be shown every once in awhile (HEY! TEACHER! LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE, for example.)

Over all, I would give Dick Whittington and his Cat a 10/10.

And Annabelle's take ...

"Dick Whittington was a British Pantomime (a type of play) performed by the Fremont Players at Hale's Palladium. It was a very fun experience, and there were some funny jokes, too. (Another fact about 'panto' is that it adds extra jokes!) Overall, it was great, and I give it a 9/10!

The story goes somewhat like this: A fairy named Fairy Bowbells says there is a rat infestation and they need a hero to stop the rats and save London, and lo and behold; Dick Whittington appears! I'm not going to spoil anymore, so you can go see it!

MEANWHILE, IN FLORIDA: Though we were on the road this afternoon, we made a pitstop around 2 p.m. to make sure we could watch the launch a SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. It was carrying a Thai communications satellite to orbit. It went off like clockwork, a picture perfect launch.
                          
Photo credit: SPACEX

Keep on Rovin'

                             
A DECADE: Tonight, a bit after dinner, we paused to ponder the fact that the United States has now had a continuous presence on Mars for a decade now, thanks to a robust rover program.

When Spirit landed on Mars back in , it had an original mission length of about 92 Earth days. However, the durable rover kept on rolling for 2695 days, before getting stuck in sandy soil in the spring of 2009. 

Even when it was unable to rove anymore, Spirit worked on, analyzing geological samples at its location for months. In March of 2010, the final communication came from Spirit, marking the end of the mission. In all, it traveled 4.8 miles - 12 times its original projected distance.

A twin workhorse, Opportunity was launched three weeks after Spirit - and it's still going!

And then, in Nov. of 2011, Mars Science Laboratory was launched. It landed flawlessly on the Red Planet in August of 2012, and has been making news ever since. 

This morning I received an email from the folks at the Planetary Society letting us know abou ta special "Rover Party" to mark the 10th anniversary on Mars. At planetary.org/roverparty, there are videos, games, trivia, and information about what Spirit did and what Opportunity continues to do on Mars.

CJ and Annabelle checked out the site today.


Also via the portal, people can send a personal message "to the scientists and engineers responsible for these remarkable roving robots," per the Planetary Society. "We'll be collecting messages throughout January, so there's plenty of time to get your friends and family to send messages, too," they say. 

PUZZLED: Every so often, I get an email from Ralph, a gentleman who hosts an Internet based jigsaw puzzle site, letting me know he's used one of my photos for a puzzle.   Today, he sent a 'happy New Year' message along, and a link to a tulip photo of mine that has been puzzle-fied. 

AND ALSO: We spent a few more hours working around Rick's place today. Many, MANY technical difficulties, from drywall finish to wiring up some fixtures and a few other projects. It made me say bad words, and we cut our day short there. ;)

Step Backward

A TURN FOR THE WORSE:  It was one week ago today that CJ's shin took on a boulder and lost. 

Since his accident, we have been watching the injury closely and we have been keeping it clean/sterile and protected, and CJ has been really pretty good about taking it easy, but by Dec. 30th we thought it looked like it was getting worse, not better, and so Christian took him in to urgent care. 

They instructed Christian to keep an eye on it, and watch for it to get red margins and tough to the touch. Last night when I was redressing the wound, lo and behold, red margins had developed and it was hard. MAJOR BUMMER. So  today, it was my turn to take him to Group Health where the Dr. confirmed our suspicion that it's now infected. Unfortunately the urgent care visit today turned into a FIVE HOUR odyssey, but I will spare you the details. We now have antibiotics, and hopefully CJ's healing will get a boost in the right direction from here forward, fingers crossed!

To rewind a bit, after getting Rick and Annabelle started on their work for the day in West Seattle, CJ and I headed to Capitol Hill. We'd never approached Group Health from that direction, so at least we had a scenic drive. There was one portion that was stunning, as we were heading into the city over a high green bridge, with a view to the west of the stadiums, and in front of us, skyscrapers, including pointy Smith Tower, that was Seattle's tallest building a long, long time ago. 

Doing a little research tonight, we learned it was the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge (12th Avenue South) we crossed for the first time.

Gorgeous, isn't it? (Two following photos from Seattle Department of Transportation)

Just over 100 years old, the 420-foot span is one of Seattle's original steel bridges. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and is the state's oldest steel arch bridge. It crosses over Dearborn.  

The view was a little different back in 1912, in this great photo from the Seattle Municipal Archives

I'd love to walk across this bridge some day and take some photos. Check out this lovely graphic of it on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48054713@N08/5574176135/

Of course, we also had to read up on the bridge's namesake. From Wikipedia we learned "José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, was a Filipino nationalist, novelist, poet, ophthalmologist, journalist, and revolutionary. He is widely considered the greatest national hero of the Philippines."
                                                       
An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal was also a writer and poet. He died a martyr, executed by a firing squad on Dec. 30, 1896, by a squad of Filipino soldiers of the Spanish Army. Wikimedia Commons had a photo engraving of the event.

There are memorials to Rizal all over the world, and there is a self-sustaining, non-profit, and non-partisan, Website containing comprehensive materials on and by Rizal in both the English and Filipino languages: http://www.joserizal.ph/in01.html

2014

Photo: http://www.hdwallpapersinn.com/hd-happy-new-year-wallpapers.html
FIZZLE: We did manage to stay up until midnight last night. About 11:45, we headed up the hill a few blocks to get a 'floor to ceiling' view of the Space Needle. It wasn't easy. The fog was so thick, there was no way we were seeing the base of the Needle, and we had a hard time picking out its well-lit saucer.

It was a *little* easier to spot by 12:01, but the fireworks were less than spectacular due to the low flying clouds. By 12:04, we decided to rip home to watch the rest on TV.  It was funny, even on TV with the close up cameras, the fireworks were considerably muted. Oh well, there's always next year. And at least the kids got to stay up until midnight, which is what they were most concerned about.

HARD LABOR: I spent the day slinging mud. No, not saying nasty things about people. Rather, I was spackling, filling, smoothing and fixin' the walls at Rick's 'new' house. We're getting there. One of the reasons it's taking so long is it's not nice, big wide open wall spaces. What I'm working on is making a new transition between his living room and kitchen. It involves 11 corners, which sounds ridiculous, but it's true. That's why it's so labor intensive.

Anyway, in a perfect world, we'll go back tomorrow and it will have dried up nicely. We'll sand and paint. In a real world, there will be some places that shrank too much, didn't dry thoroughly, or some other mudding heartbreak, and there will be more mudding to do. Time will tell. Bottom line is, this post is short today, because it's hard to do anything very compelling when you're covered in plaster.

INTERPRETATIONS: Every once in awhile, I will Google my name and find out where photos I park on Morguefile wind up. A recent hunt turned up some interesting drawings of Annabelle, based on this photo of her. ...
                            
The drawings were posted to a web site for artists of varying levels, called "I Draw and Paint." Drawing challenges are posted (in this case, Annabelle's photo, along with some others), and people who frequent the site submit their artwork based on the photo of their choice. There were some interesting interpretations of Annabelle, some better than others, IMHO.

Here's one:
 http://api.ning.com/files/4z2bpK7Bb4UmzWs*2GMqyITe2P2YyNupruqHbJd43QxZneCG9Jo*5SHtUw8u3DMOGPEal9T0RiIZ3VI2xSzmAz1JmKfWNqqO/DSC02087.jpg

and another: http://api.ning.com/files/MD*QRO8USlAZsAoxfAzhXaIpqVcpSngouAg-wADzmKpL4B1yjE3TsfiXj3Iqk6FTy6qMr7HGzNibYw6pyv-7pOQ2h088yUi0/ballerina.jpg

another: http://api.ning.com/files/Lg8i9AAw*3T*krnZ8Sh9FVfcxVhni5b*JDT-EyIWIgb-Sr2ZBafMh6GjEclAcAhNf-Pyxv27ec5Ox28bQF70pii2feY3hg5X/File1618.jpg

here's one with a little color:  http://api.ning.com/files/aJCkZUSzogUIqg*2qzQSUasSwju1GobZWuDFc0kJDYTdK8l1no6vNBFm-atCMWrZsC4a1UhHBvsJKtQpOYdnHtAdClYdR3f8/DSC04873.jpg

another one with a bit of color: http://api.ning.com/files/Ym*1iBEpXoZHBhyxQsPUjYXM0PRVarjzNNswzB2ajIfIjOVCoAdbZv0Uui0ok94*JybMZElVfK2b1hb1lOgTuqYj6cVrCWK*/IMG_0088.jpg

this one is my absolute favorite!
http://api.ning.com/files/sDsZvODZEOJgnnA35kt9UEE1MUj8Y*qZWsluPwHSQkbxd*wX4bHtofD*JdIGhK1upmNROdRk9giQ5e5xGq-XNxbgwp-GQnoQ/YoungBallerina.jpg

and here's another one I liked
http://api.ning.com/files/t*xpVL9ufGLagG-G5On5xGk5ryDoweTR4xz0nKmBr0AHIy3Uu2V5vDmXlJTEvQkCtcdeD3dza92kN3xk*XJpvspJWe1gwGKX/PerfectPupil.JPG