Under the Sea

COLORFUL CHAOS: If you look around our house at any given time, you'll see projects. Many, many projects. The bulk are of the smaller-scale, artsy craftsy vein. The others are of the 'our bathroom is torn apart and we're tiling a shower' vein.

One of the things we've got going on now is a project to transform a hallway in a school into the Salish Sea. No big deal. ;)

For it, we have a 15-foot banner that will have a captivating passage about how we're all Salmon People. There will also be a 30-foot stream full of young hand crafted salmon making their way to out into the world. We also have a kelp forest going (amazing what you can do with plastic tablecloths and a can of spray paint), and then there is the octopus.

More specifically, the Pacific Ocotopus.

We've had fun taking a Strofoam (human) head, and augmenting it with spray foam insulation over a series of days to shape it into a squid head (complete with ping pong ball eyes, of course). Foam pipe insulation and some suction cups will the the octopus' arms/tentacles. 

Right now, they look like light sabers during the painting process, atop our dining room table as seen in the lead photo above.

I hope we can pull it all off. :) It has been fun (mostly, ha ha) working with a bunch of young artists on the various elements of this installation. The unveiling will be at the end of the month.

TO THE MOON: Today, like every day in my life, frankly, we celebrate David Bowie. 

But today is somber, as it is the day our Starman left Earth. Two years ago today, in fact.

A good friend posted an amazing science-meets-art lesson to my Facebook page today. I love it. It juxtaposes how long it would take to walk to the moon and uses a Bowie on Earth as a timeline. Lovely. You should watch.

Bowie Bash

BOFFO BIRTHDAY: January 8th has long been a day MPA has celebrated. It marks the birthday of three of our favorites: Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Stephen Hawking. How's that for an interesting trio?

In past years, we've made Elvis-related recipes, listened to musical marathons, watched informative videos and more.


This year, we put the spotlight on Bowie, by attending a birthday bash held in his honor at Central Cinema. They were showing the cult favorite movie "Labyrinth." 

Dressing for the occasion was encouraged, and so the kids made some custom shirt.

CJ chose a famous quote from the movie for his shirt.

You'd kind of have to see the scene from the movie for it to mean anything to you.

Annabelle went with a mash up of My Little Pony and Bowie's Labyrinth character, Jareth, for her shirt. 

For Annabelle's she created the image in Illustrator, and we printed it on an iron on transfer made for Ink Jet printers.

CJ's shirt was made using iron on material and our kind of new to us Cricut machine. 

There were just a couple of entrants in the official costume contest. The door knockers won. 

The night was full of singing and dancing and laughter and maybe a few tears. Such a fun time, and we're so glad we went!

ROSE CITY CIRCUIT: Saturday, we made a whirlwind trip down to the Rose City. Incredibly, I didn't manage to take a SINGLE photo of the trip. Wow. How lame.

We went down for a post holiday lunch date with family. We met at McMenamins' John Barleycorn location, in Tigard. Afterward, we stopped by to see a family member's nice new condo in John's Landing. 

The kids were gifted some nice presents. CJ got a rare, vintage record album . Annabelle received some great art supplies, which she loves, of course.

SHAR-T: Speaking of Annabelle and art, if you haven't checked out her ongoing Shar-Pei a Day series on Facebook, you should! She posts a new drawing daily, featuring a Shar-Pei she's drawn and some kind of Shar-pei pun.

For instance, a couple of days ago, she posted this "electric Shar."

And more recently, an the anniversary of George Washington being elected the United States' first president, she used a "This Pei in History" to post a Shar-Pei version of Washington.

Her cartoons are made using everything from crayons to colored pencils, the computer to an air brush. 

Crafts and Cards

FUN WITH FOAM: Each month, we post a bulletin board at a local school. Its purpose is to feature students' birthdays for the month, and each month, we try to come up with something a little different

It's now officially winter, but instead of hitting upon the obvious snowy theme, we thought it would be fun to picture what some critters usually pictured in snow would be doing, given their druthers. And so, the idea for "Penguin Vacation" was hatched.

The penguins and many of the elements (surf boards, a shark, and such) are made from craft foam. The rest is mixed media, everything from paper bags to printed card stock to produce netting, paper towels to Popsicle sticks.

We had fun thinking about penguins building sand castles, surfing, playing beach volleball, tanning (or burning) and even bellying up to a tiki bar.

In our case, it was a smelt smoothies bar (forgive the blurry, bad cell phone photo. Sorry!)
I loved Annabelle's little tinfoil smelt tails coming out of foam cups!

GAMERS: We've been playing a lot of card and board games lately thanks, in part, to Christmas gifts received.

One game new to us is CardLine Dinosuars.

The challenge is to take the cards you're dealt and take turns playing them according to what you guess their weight or size to be.

It's fun and educational.

Tonight, we revisited an old favorite, Hanabi. 

    Photo: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43516906

MEANWHILE ON JUPITER: My social media feeds were full of this astounding photo of Jupiter's surface.

Taken by the space probe Juno  on Dec. 16, 2017 at 9:43 a.m. PST  the image of colorful, dynamic clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. It was photographed 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometers) above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees.

It's worth noting the spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles per pixel (9.3 kilometers/pixel). Take a minute to think about that. Jupiter is enormous.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager."

If you want to see more, JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam        

Marvelous Moon

Jamie Kinney via West Seattle Blog

SUPER START: The year 2018 started in dramatic fashion, with the year's biggest Super Moon.

"Super moons" occur when a full moon coincides with the moon's perigee, or the point at which its  orbit is closest to Earth. When that happens, the moon appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a normal full moon - pretty dramatic!

We noticed the Super Moon when we were driving about on January 2. From our vantage point it looked like what I call an Apollo moon - very black and white. Not a hit of harvest gold or any other color.

For the record, it also happened to be a "Wolf Moon," because it was the first new moon of the year. It's named after the howling of wolves during a full moon.

BACK IN THE DAY: It was on this day (Jan. 3) in 1962 that the newly-announced Mercury Mark II project was renamed Project Gemini. 

Check out this cool artist's concept of a two-person Gemini spacecraft in flight, complete with a cutaway view. 

Image Credit: NASA

Per a NASA press release, "Gemini paved the way for Apollo, and had four main goals: to test an astronaut's ability to fly long-duration missions (up to two weeks in space); to understand how spacecraft could rendezvous and dock in orbit around the Earth and the Moon; to perfect re-entry and landing methods; and to further understand the effects of longer space flights on astronauts."

Winter Break

HOLIDAZE: It won't surprise anyone to read that we went missing as we got caught up in the swirl of holiday season activities.

It felt like it was a sprint from about Dec. 20 to Dec. 31. One event after another, gatherings here and there, and stuff to gather everywhere.

We ended up having some Christmas Eve snow - about four inches at our place. It was lovely to look at, but not so lovely given that we had to be at the airport at about 5:30 on Christmas morning. 

We had reserved an Uber for 5 a.m. Dec. 25, but when we upped on that day, nary an Uber was to be found. There was one lone car roving all of south Seattle, from about Boeing Field to Seatac. 

Fortunately, I had anticipated this scenario, so Christian had chained our Honda CR-V up the night before, and we carefully made our way down our steep hill and toward the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, and Seatac was a ghost town. The TSA agents were waiting on US for a change. 

Though the flight from Seattle to Bend, Oregon, was short (just under an hour), getting there was a bit of a drawn out process. Once we boarded the plane we first had to wait for well over an hour to get the plane de-iced (well worth the wait, of course), and then we had to wait many, many more minutes for a runway. Eventually, we took off about 1.75 hours after the prescribed time. It was a bit of a bumpy flight, but we made our way to Bend safely, which is what counts.

Along the way, we spied this lovely mountain outside a western-facing window.

 Check out that dramatic valley stretching out north of Mt. Hood.

Once in Bend, we appreciated sunny skies, the different vistas that high desert living provided, and wonderful hospitality.

We also got to see some of the city. Our first stop was a cool, old-school arcade, Vector Volcano. The place had a wonderful collection of old school video and pinball games. 

We also got to visit Bend's beautiful, outdoor ice skating arena, The Pavilion.

 CJ and I were spectators, but Annabelle (in a Team Unicorn hoodie) took a few spins.

 She was solo at first, but after a bit Christian decided to join her.

I spied these stones (below) just outside of the rink. I had to tell CJ they were for the sport curling.

Bend is a hot spot for micro breweries. We checked out McMenamins St. Francis, Crux Fermentation Project, Boneyard, and Worthy Brewing. 

The kids visited Santa Keg outside of super busy Crux.

Worthy even has a Hopservatory! We hope to visit again some day when it's open for some stargazing! 

It's also open for solar gazing (through a telescope with a filter) from time to time.

In checking out their website, it turns out that Worthy's Hopservatory is actually operated as a separate 501c3 non profit. 

We headed back to Seattle on Dec. 28 via the lovely little Redmond, Oregon, airport. We couldn't help but chuckle at its "Charlie Brown" type tree on the mezzanine. 

It seemed a symbol that Christmas was, in fact, over.

All in all, a whirlwind couple of weeks! 

And now, we're right back in the thick of things in Seattle. 

Welcome, 2018!

Ad Astra

FLY ON: To the stars, Bruce McCandless. Eighty years on Earth and now to infinity and beyond.

The first NASA astronaut to fly untethered (see above), McCandless said, " May well have been one small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me!”

It was Feb. 7, 1984, when McCandless II became the first “human satellite” when he tested the Manned Maneuvering Unit during STS-41B. 

In the amazing and iconic photo above, McCandless is seen floating against the blackness of space, 320 feet from orbiter Challenger.  He's floating 217 miles (350 km) above Earth!

In the photo, the former U.S. Navy captian McCandless is propelled via 24 small nitrogen-powered thrusters. McCandless was instrumental in developing the Manned Maneuvering Unit he's operating. Pretty freaking awesome.

Countdown Clock

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is shown atop Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this artist's concept. Its maiden flight is scheduled for January 2018. Credit: SpaceX

HEAVY DUTY:  We've had our eyes on an upcoming launch for years now, and the T-minus clock is about to start ticking in earnest. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is set to launch from the Space Coast's historic Pad 39A. That's the same pad from which Apollo 11's astronauts launched to the moon. I was lucky enough to get to visit the old site during the Mars Science Laboratory launch back on Thanksgiving weekend of 2011.

This shot is from standing under the old 39A launch pad. This is one of my favorite photos I've *ever* taken, and I've taken a *lot* of photos.

It's exciting to thing about rockets rumbling to life on that pad once again. 

CJ will tell you a bit more about it all. ... 

The Falcon Heavy rocket is a spacecraft designed at SpaceX scheduled to launch in January of 2018. According to SpaceX's website, when Falcon Heavy lifts off in 2018, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit over 54 metric tons (119,000 lb)--a mass equivalent to a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel--Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.

The test flight of the Falcon Heavy is planned to carry the Tesla Roadster weighing 2,723 pounds, designed by SpaceX's Elon Musk. The long-term mission of the Falcon Heavy rocket is to bring humans to places such as the moon and Mars.

Recently, Musk, CEO of SpaceX and founder of electric car maker Tesla tweeted photos on Wednesday of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket in a hangar in Florida where it's being prepped for its maiden launch.

Elon Musk ✔@elonmusk

Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.

The Falcon Heavy is pretty much three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together with a second stage added to the top of the center rocket.

The exact launch date has not been announced, but whenever it is, you know we'll be watching!

THREE-DEE: Wednesday afternoon, CJ and Annabelle attended a two-hour class at Living Computer: Museum + Labs. It was called "Designing for 3D Printing." Before attending class, the kids each had to register for a (free) account on TinkerCAD.

The 3D Printing course I took at the Living Computer Museum was mainly about how 3D printers worked and how to make an effective 3D print model that will stand up to gravity and pressure. Our instructor explained that if something on your model is at more than a 70 degree angle and doesn’t have any support, the molten plastic will droop on the bottom due to gravity. He told us that one way to prevent this is to keep your models upright and compact or use temporary supports that can be removed later. If you have very thin attachments that sit on the ground, you can add a thin layer of material called a “Raft” to expand the area of contact and keep your project more stable, minimizing flaws.

Near the end of the workshop, we used a 3D print model-making program called TinkerCAD (www.tinkercad.com). TinkerCAD uses simple blocks and shapes that can be put together in many ways to make almost anything you could want to 3D print. Our instructor walked us through many tutorials on the TinkerCAD website. Between that and students' questions, in the end, we were left with only a 30-minute period to work on our custom 3D models. I was very disappointed that we spent so much time talking and not much working, as it really took away the part of the workshop that was advertised (the model making). I felt bad for our instructor, as he was trying to keep up with numerous kids who wouldn’t stop asking questions or having temper tantrums about not knowing what to do (despite being told by both the website tutorial and the instructor what comes next). The part where we did get to work was fun, but as previously mentioned it was rather short-lived.

So, while there was valuable information, you can see the kids were left wanting a LOT more personal hands on time. The good news is, thanks to TinkerCAD, they can play around with the 3D modeling on their own time.  

They get to pick up their creations next week some time. Hopefully, I'll remember to post photos.