Frights and Sights

 

IN THE PINK: It poured last night, and early this morning, too. But starting at about 9:30, we managed to squeeze in a fairly dry, one-hour walk. We were pleased to see the trees lining the main east-west drag in our neighborhood are all in bloom. They stretch on for a few blocks - pretty! 
       
SPRING COMES CLOSER: Today, we made a positive step forward toward the next season. We now have in our possession tickets to the Mariners' home opener on April 8. Yesssssss!  Below is a Throwback Thursday photo to commemorate the event!
                
We also got tickets for the Mariners' 2014 Open House today. On March 31, the first day of the MLB season, the Mariners are on the road, but Safeco Field will be open to the public for a viewing party. We went last year, the first time they held such an event, and it was a BLAST.

OUTSIDE THE BOX: We watched a video today about a prototype for a very nontraditional NASA rover. Called "Super Bot Ball," it's revolutionary design would allow it to traverse terrain in a way completely different than all of NASA's past rovers. It's hard to describe a collapsible rover with no wheels. Just check out the video here to see it for yourself: http://news.yahoo.com/video/nasas-latest-robot-100545676.html

TABLED: This afternoon we headed to West Seattle. I forgot to mention last week that the kids have started a 6-week yoga class and 'social studio' there. It's led by the kids' longtime, wonderful yoga teacher Nicole, and for this session she's partnering with another wonderful professional, Ann. 

Since we had to be in West Seattle any way, we combined the trip with going to pick up an item I found for Rick's house on Craigslist. The piece of furniture was at a lovely waterfront home on West Seattle's Beach Drive. As we went to find the place, we discovered a new-to-us park, Lowman Beach. 

It's a downright disaster now, all muddy, fenced off, with heavy equipment everywhere thanks to a renovation and MAJOR sewage treatment construction. But we'll definitely be back to the beachfront property. It's secluded and will be a gorgeous park once work there is done. 

Per the city of Seattle's Web site, the park dated back to 1909, when the Yesler Logging Company gifted it to the city. It's named after James D. Lowman, who was a teacher when he arrived in Seattle in 1887, but later became a wharf master for Henry Yesler, and later a bookstore and printing business owner and eventual city parks commissioner. 

While Lowman Beach Park isn't much to look at right now, there's a house next door to the park that is a sight to behold.

 I've never seen the house before, but from what I can gather online, some of the decorations seem to be a rather in your face protest to the adjacent construction. 

From what I can glean on the Internet, the home is owned by a doctor of psychiatry, who used to have some kind of diorama of ducks in the front yard. Now, there's a placard at the top of his house that reads "The Duckies are Gone! Long live the sewage tank!"

We live in such an interesting world ... 

We found the house with the furniture, and got it transported to Rick's just fine ...except when I backed in his driveway and put the ol  CR-V into 'park,' clouds of something started billowing from below my hood in a big, BAD way. "My car's on fire!" I cried. 

Fortunately, it was 'just' steam, caused by a blown hose. Christian quickly spotted it, pulled it off, walked one block to an auto repair place, bought another hose for $1.90 and had it fixed within 10 minutes. It was a miracle, really. The best kind of car trouble ever. Had that happened to me on, say, the Viaduct or freeway, yikes, I don't even want to think about it! But the timing was as good as one could hope for, and the repair fast and easy, so we can't complain. 

And after all the drama, the table looks super ... :)

Getting Centered

ZEN RETREAT: Know a really lovely way to spend a lunch hour? Go to a garden center! That's what we did between the kids' math and science classes today. During our pleasant perusing, we spied a number of yoga frogs. The pair above  was adjacent to a concrete bench, so I had to have the kids attempt to recreate the scene.

Yesterday's mail brought "junior gardener" newsletters from Sky Nursery. It's right by the school the kids attend in Shoreline on Wednesdays, so we visited the nursery today. The newsletter included a coupon good for a free pack of poppy seeds in March, and so we went to pick those up (noting, at the time, it's IMPOSSIBLE to think the word 'poppies' without hearing the Wicked Witch of the West's voice. ...

Hopefully CJ and Annabelle's poppies will be of the friendly, non-narcotic variety. ;)

Today, they test drove a variety of expensive outdoor furniture. ... 

 
We stopped by the Jr. Gardeners' desk. 

Annabelle spent some time coloring.

Meanwhile, CJ and I checked out the nearby groundcoverings, including many "Stepables."  We agreed that we really didn't like the name of this one ... 

it conjures up creepy images of babies crying when you step on the plants. Ewwww.

FLY BY: After the nursery, we hustled back to school so we had a few minutes to check in on an asteroid in the neighborhood. Specifically, asteroid 2014 DX110. 

We checked coverage on both live.slooh.com and space.com.  It was fun watching the 100-foot rock hurtling through not-too-distant space.  In fact, the asteroid was closer to Earth than is our own moon!

We told the kids' science teacher about it, and as class started, she put the traveling asteroid up on the big white board, and led a discussion about what types of material it might be made up of, which was very apropos, given the kids just finished a unit about geology last week. 

While we were watching, it made its closest approach to Earth, about 217,000 miles (350,000 kilometers) away. 

Short Stuff

Image credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA; http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140302.html 

RED SUNSET: Imagine, what it would be like, standing on another planet in our solar system, and watching our oh-so-familiar sun set. If you were on Mars, it would look like what's pictured above.

As part of its Mars mission, robotic rover Spirit, deployed in 2005, was programmed to park and watch our sun sink below the Red Planet's Gusev crater.

The photo isn't too far off what our human eyes would see, as fine particles suspended in the thin Martian atmosphere tint the sky a reddish color. The dust also scatters blue light forward, creating the bluish glow near setting Sol. 

The sun is less bright on Mars, as compared to Earth, because it's farther away there, of course, and it only appears to be about two thirds of the diameter it appears from Earth. 

PUBLISHED POETS: Today's mail brought the quarterly Junior Gardeners' newsletter from Sky Nursery. As I opened the newsletter, I recalled the kids had submitted gardening related haikus for consideration, per a call in the previous newsletter.

Lo and behold, on the very first page inside the newsletter, there they were. The kids were very excited.

"They spelled my first name wrong and didn't include my last name, but oh well," Annabelle said, good naturedly, and genuinely pleased. :)

NORWEGIAN MORNING: I spent most of the morning working on a report with a today deadline. The kids spent the morning enjoying lectures about and listening to The Beatles. One of the song "close ups" they heard today was about "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," a song written about John. Such a pretty ditty, with lyrics that aren't quite as sweet (especially the end, where he burns his love's house down).  The song was the first of The Beatles' that employed use of the sitar, played by George.

In case you're wondering, Norwegian wood, per Paul is "pine, really cheap pine."  The song, by all accounts (John, Paul, and friends) is about John's indiscretions while married to Cynthia, his first wife.

Another song talked about was "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." While the title of this tune might make one think it's about John's further indiscretions, it's actually a song about the band's manager, Brian Epstein.

Epstein was gay, which was actually a crime at the time in England. So Lennon wrote about Epstein and others who had to, basically, 'hide their love' in order to conform to society's norms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz7IjXu0DfQ
LOVE this video of The Beatles performing the song, from their movie "Help!"

We are now halfway done with our Beatles class, and the kids are jazzed they have scored 100 percent on all their quizzes so far.

DOWN SOUTH: This blog post is short on content because we spent most of the afternoon in West Seattle (MPA South at this point!). I actually made a full fledged dinner in his kitchen for the first time, complete with multiple appetizers. Nice to know his kitchen works, it certainly got the biggest workout of the "Rick Era" so far, LOL. We were there because his 'contractors' came over for a meeting at their behest. Silly us, we thought they would want to discuss all of their misdeeds and shortcomings and fibs to date. Hahaha. Nope, they were there all about trying to upsell/add on work. Lame sauce. 

Flying High

UP AND AWAY: This afternoon we paid a visit to one of the kids' favorite places in the world - iFLY, for some indoor skydiving action.

The kids have both 'flown' in the wind tunnel a couple/three times before, but it's been months and months since we've gone. They were so darn excited on the way there.

After all of the 'pre-flight' activity (watching an instructional video, getting suited up and such), they made their way to the tunnel.

I'll let them tell you about their experience. Here's Annabelle's video she filmed at the facility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Iz89Sr_xI0M


And here's CJ's take (tho his video seems a little off, I must say http://youtu.be/uwoMpsjYEQQ#aid=P9rK0aUg6kI

But that's OK, because Christian captured some video with his cell phone.
Ceej flight 1: http://youtu.be/ntoh0CHLr_A

Ceej flight 2: http://youtu.be/uwW4aSrsgqM

Bee flight 1: http://youtu.be/SozhiqkHQo8

Bee flight 2: http://youtu.be/CwnmflICYvs

The second flights are when they shoot up the tunnel at the end

And I love the end of Annabelle's second flight, where the instructor purposely parks her short of the door. The result is just like the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where poor Dorothy is trying to get into the storm cellar with the twister approaching.

Naturally, their favorite part was flying toward the top of the wind tunnel!

MOVIE MINDED: Sunday seemed like it would up being all about movies. Just after noon, we headed to Southcenter to see the new LEGO movie. It was terrific!

Well written, visually engaging, good voice acting, fun music, tons of humor and plenty of sentimentality, too. We gave it eight thumbs up.

Upon arriving home, we checked out the LEGO movie Web site. There, we had fun creating ourselves in LEGO form.   Here's CJ's 'self portrait.'

And here's me!
                                       
If you want a challenge, I double dog dare you to listen to this song, "Everything is Awesome" and try NOT to sing it for the rest of the day. It's an 'earworm' of the first order.


On Sunday evening, we watched the Oscars. For a chance we'd actually seen some of the movies which were nominated for awards, including "Gravity," which was up for best picture.

It was fun watching various NASA accounts' Facebook feeds during the show. They were picking up on the "Gravity" theme and posting all sorts of great off-planet, microgravity shots, like this awesome one from 1999 of Astronaut Steven L. Smith retrieving a power tool while standing on the mobile foot restraint at the end of the remote manipulator system on board the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA

And of course there had to be shots of Bruce McCandless II's adventure wearing the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). Here, McCandless was photographed further away from the safety of his ship (space shuttle Challenger) than any previous astronaut has ever been. Hard to believe this photo, taken on Feb. 12, 1984, is over 30 years old now. Wow.

The MMU was a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. In this free fly (which definitely reminds me of the movie "Gravity," McCandless was 320 feet away from the Orbiter. Talk about trusting your equipment!
Image credit: NASA

SONG CLOSE UPS: We are still enjoying our class "The Music of The Beatles." We're in Week 3 of six, and this week (so far) is focusing on 1965, and the release of the albums "Help!" and "Rubber Soul."
From time to time, the professor will focus more closely on certain titles. Today, he talked about "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." A John Lennon song, it has a distinctly Dylan-esque sound not only in the music, but it's almost as if John is trying to sound like Bob Dylan. The song was written and recorded not too long after Dylan met The Beatles and encouraged them to write more serious and less pop music.

We also learned more about "Yesterday," penned by Paul McCartney. We were lucky enough to get to see him perform it in an encore last summer at Safeco Field. Here's someone in the crowd's video. As you'll hear, it was basically a sing along. http://youtu.be/lNkc2oaMhj4

Speaking of song close ups, here's a closeup of CJ playing a song. :)

Friday Blue

MARVY MORNING:  The day dawned with blue skies, happy Friday to us! I decided we should take advantage ASAP, as the weather can change rapidly. So, by 9:15 we were parked on the upper west fringe of Queen Anne Hill, ready for a stroll. That locale gave us a nice view of our neighborhood, and the bridge we strolled on Tuesday morning.

Elliott Bay was so blue today!  Here are hundreds of parked pleasure craft ...

and here's a big working boat, anchor dropped, waiting for a dock, apparently.

We walked the west promenade and made our way to the southern sidewalk. Here, West Seattle is barely visible behind CJ and his furry friends.

No great photos of the Space Needle, it was a bit too hazy to the south. But it was still a wonderful walk. We enjoyed checking out edifices' architecture, including the old West Queen Anne Public School. Per its Wiki article, it was "designed in the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style by Warren P. Skillings and James M. Corner." It's high end condos, now, of course. :/

On our way back to the car, the kids stopped in Top Pot for a "hand-forged" doughnut while I dog sat on the sidewalk outside. Just before we reached our ride, we could spy the Olympics through some towering evergreens. So pretty!

Upon returning home, we watched two and a half lectures for our Beatles class. During the third, we were interrupted by a phone call from Rick's needy contractor requesting our presence in West Seattle, so off we went.

We dealt with the contractor's confusion and  made good use of our time there, organizing Rick's expansive DVD catalog. It provided a good opportunity for the kids to practice alphabetizing.

LIGHT SHOW: When the sun erupted with a solar flare a couple of days ago, the first thing I thought was, "Northern Lights!!!!"  Seeing the Northern Lights is definitely on my 'bucket list.'

If I had been on the ISS yesterday, I could have seen a first rate light show, and even though these were technically Southern Lights, that would have sufficed. :)

These Aurora Australis photos were taken on February 27 by NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio.
In a Facebook post, he described the one above as "Aurora like thunderstorms on the horizon with a bit of sunrise and Venus(?) rising up through it."

MUSIC MINDED:  Last night, we watched a new episode of "Live From Daryl's House," featuring Daryl Hall and his guest, fellow Philly dude Amos Lee. It was great, as always. If you haven't seen any of his show's I'd strongly encourage you to check out the catalog of past concerts. We've seen them all and every single one is golden.

After that, we fell into watching "Saved in San Francisco," a documentary about the band Train, who we had the pleasure of catching on concert last summer.

This evening we were discussing Beethoven and I qued up a couple of songs on YouTube. One of the gems we found was an orchestral flash mob in Spain performing "Ode to Joy." Enjoy - we sure did! http://youtu.be/kbJcQYVtZMo

Batter Up

COSMIC: This morning brought an uncharacteristic Thursday trip up to Shoreline for us, to the place the kids usually take classes on Wednesdays.

Annabelle had a special, one-session jewelry making class. As soon as she walked in and sized up her bead choices, Bee decided she was going to make something with a planet and stars theme. She chose a star as her big focal point, and then beads that looked like planets. The black beads closest to the clasp represent a black hole. "I'm really proud of it," she declared afterward. I can see why! :)

While Bee was in class, CJ and I took the pups for a nice long walk in the forest behind the school.

It's a towering stand of evergreens. There's a rustic little bulletin board near the public street entrance. The big sign exhorts people to pick up dog poo.

I like the smaller sign (a Post-it note, really) ...

Nice sentiment, randomly placed (right above an earnest plea for more donations of dog poo bags).

PLAY BALL: Today was a glorious day, as it marked the beginning of the 2014 Major League Baseball pre-season, which means the real thing isn't far away. The game started shortly after 12 p.m. We were driving toward Rick's house at that time. I timed it so that we pulled up to baseball field right before the first pitch. I had the kids get out of the car and run around the bases.

My timing was great. As soon as they touched home plate, I had them run to the car ...

and as they slid into their seats, the first pitch was delivered! Go Mariners!

Once at Rick's, I refinished a table, and worked on making the house more like a home while I waited for a contractor who showed up a half a day plus late. The kids enjoyed a picnic of spaghetti, because everyone knows that's a great picnic food. ;)

MEANWHILE, IN JAPAN: While Bee was beading and CeeJ and I were strolling, a joint mission and between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency thundered into space from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan.

Image Credit: 

NASA/Bill Ingalls

On board was the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory.

In a press release NASA administrator Charles Bolden said, "With this launch, we have taken another giant leap in providing the world with an unprecedented picture of our planet's rain and snow. GPM will help us better understand our ever-changing climate, improve forecasts of extreme weather events like floods, and assist decision makers around the world to better manage water resources."

More info on the GPM's Web site: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/

Evergreen

FOLLOW THE SUN: It was sunny and nearly 60 degrees - a glorious winter day, in other words.

It's the kids' one official school day of the week, but we spent as much time as possible outside today. The kids played on the playground outside their school and above is a shot of a great stand of trees behind it. 

It was so lovely to stand at the base of these grand evergreens and seen bright blue sky overhead.

After the kids' science and math classes, we ran a couple of errands and then met Christian and enjoyed the sunshine and a couple of board games. First we played Taboo, where CJ has gone from someone almost completely incapable of giving good clues to the guy who whats to be the full time clue giver, so that's an improvement. The game is a great exercise in adjective and adverb usage, really.

Next up was the somewhat silly 'The Worst Case Scenario Survival Game."   Below, CJ's contemplating something like how to drive across quicksand. ...

WE'VE GOT COMPANY:  News from the NASA folks today. The Milky Way just got a bit more crowded.

Actually, it's not really more crowded, it's just that, thanks to NASA planet-hunting telescope Kepler, we now know of 715 (!) newly-discovered planets circling stars other than our sun. Yowza!
                                       
Image: NASA handout

Further, NASA reports that four of the 'new' planets are in habitable zones (where it's not too hot or too cold to host life as we know it). Time to send the welcome wagon?

Just 20 years ago, astronomers had not found any planets outside our solar system. Today, we're at 1,700 plus, and counting. 

Want to know more about the Kepler mission: Check out this neat-o video ... (http://youtu.be/2zO5BdHMnZU)

EVERYWHERE A SIGN: Here's a fun little tool. Thanks to the Hollywood Sign Generator (http://hollywoodsigngenerator.com/), you can take any name or phrase and turn it into the Hollywood sign! 

The utility is run by a group called The Trust for Public Land, which has been campaigning to save Cahuenga Peak. 

MUSICAL: During dinner, we enjoyed music via "Live from the Artists' Den: Mumford and Sons." Really, really wonderful. We were lucky enough to see Mumford and Sons live shortly after their release "Sigh No More" absolutely exploded on the U.S. music scene. Here's a clip from that evening (via YouTube - http://youtu.be/pKVNr1OX3BM


LIGHTS OUT: Check out this image from the Expedition 38 crew on board the International Space Station. To the bottom right of the frame is South Korea. To the upper left is China. That black void in the middle? That's North Korea. 

While you can see some lights from the country's capital, Pyonyang, for the most part the country is kept literally in the dark. Wow.