GAMERS DELIGHT: On Sunday, we made our annual trip down to Tacoma for the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show.
CJ will tell you a bit more about it. ...
From May 31st of this year to June 2nd, the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show was held at the Tacoma Convention Center. The event has been held annually since 2008, so this year marked the 12th iteration of the event.
As with previous iterations, there were over 400 different pinball and arcade machines, according to the event's official website. The machines themselves were held in a large auditorium, where countless attendees (likely more than the number of games) played the plethora of games available. Many of the machines from the previous events (example: Joust) returned from previous Pinball and Arcade Shows, while other machines (such as Contra) were newcomers.
I played a few games, but truth be told, I'm really more interested in the artwork on the machines. This old "Faces" pin has always been a favorite.
This year I noticed a couple of vintage pinball machines that seemed to be made to try to appeal to female players, like this Flip a Card machine (1970).
Who wouldn't want to hang out with those groovy girls?
This bumper with a typist on it cracked me up.
And this snow-racing themed pin seems to be urging girls to get in on the competition.
Naturally, there are also always PLENTY of pins that are trying to appeal to hetero males. Annabelle took one look at this machine's artwork and said, "That's not how a shirt's fabric works." Astute observation.
Not sure exactly to whom Alien Poker was supposed to appeal.
Bizarre.
I'm always interested in checking out games I've never seen before. One such case this year was this one, Chicken Shift. It had an interesting game play concept. You used two controllers to flip levers to get eggs into crates and such. We watched a pair of guys play it for awhile before Christian gave it a go. It looks so simple, but it actually gets pretty tricky pretty quickly.
While Chicken Shift was an old (1984) game we'd never seen before, there are always brand new games at the show, as well. One was a Primus pinball machine.
I really don't like the band Primus, after whom the machine is themed, but I did like this pin. I loved its old school analog/rolling counter. (I am weary of newfangled digital machines where even terrible players score 47,000,000 points in a round. It's ridiculous.) I also liked the Primus plunger.
Turns out there were only 100 of these machines made. Each one is autographed by all of the band members.
CJ played the enormous Hercules. The pinball was the size of a pool ball.
I think my favorite game of the day was the re-imagined PONG. Lordy, how many hours I spent playing that in my youth, when the oh-so-simple game was 'cutting edge.'
This new 3D-version is fun, with game play just like the old school one.
All in all, the show was a very fun way to spend a couple of hours.
OPEN AT LAST: We made a stop for lunch after the show, finally getting to check out the new McMenamins Elks Temple, on the Tacoma waterfront.
Over ten years in the making, this place is five floors of "WOW!"
We didn't come close to seeing all of it. This visit was limited to their front lobby (complete with an eclectic collection of regal chairs and couches).
And we only saw a little of the artwork on site.
The place as absolutely crawling with people. We'll go back on a more sedate day to check it out from top to bottom.
The experience started off with an orientation. It included an explanation of how Puget Sound was formed, and how its present-day watershed works.
It was an educational presentation, but it was down in the belly of the boat, and seemed to take a looong time, probably because it's like, "Hey! We're on a boat on the Sound! Why are we sitting on the floor down below? I want to see the water!"
Once that was over with, things got a lot more entertaining.
CJ can give you an overview.
On May 28 of this year, I went on a (relatively) short boat trip as part of a school activity (though I am no longer a student at the school the boat ride was affiliated with, I was still able to go on the ride). The boat ride lasted 5.5 hours, and the main activities involved teaching students about the Puget Sound. Before students boarded the boat, they were separated into three categories (my sister and I were placed in the "Orcas" category). The activities I remember from the trip are as follows (in more-or-less chronological order):
We went over to the boat's deck, lowered a large net into the water, and caught certain types of plankton. There were two cups of water: One had a smaller variety of plankton, and another had a larger variety of plankton. Afterwards, we analyzed the plankton underneath a microscope, and attempted to match the kinds of plankton we saw in our water samples with illustrations of them on a sheet of paper (to varying degrees of success).
We watched a "lecture" (for lack of a better word) by a teacher, providing his own analysis of a water sample provided to him. He briefly described some of the plankton he noticed.
We briefly gazed over the Puget Sound while eating our pre-packed lunches.
After finishing up with lunch, we watched a presentation by two SCUBA divers. The divers had a camera with them, broadcasting a video signal to TV screens on the boat. While the divers were diving, they showed up multiple different rockfish (a species of fish than can live to be octogenarians), as well as certain crabs, and even a juvenile octopus.
Towards the end of the boat trip, we went sightseeing for two sea lions on a floating platform near our boat. The one I noticed was rather chunky.
Lastly, the students went down in the cabin to watch a short presentation about preserving the Puget Sound from dangers such as pollution, acidification, and waste dumping.
Following are a few photos from the day's activities.
One of the first things the kids did was pull a water sample from Puget Sound to check for plankton and other life forms.
Annabelle got to help lower and raise the collection device.
The water was teeming with tiny lifeforms.
The facilitators took some of the Puget Sound soup and put it under a video microscope.
It was absolutely fascinating seeing all the different critters down below the waterline.
They come in so many different shapes and sizes.
The students all had several minutes to use their own microscopes to scope out the situation.
There were also ample opportunities to check out larger Sound dwellers, like sea cucumbers, crabs and such.
At one point, I looked toward Alki Beach and saw something in the water. At first I thought it was a seal, but I quickly realized that it was a diver.
In fact, it ended up being two divers, and they were swimming toward our boat.
Turns out they did a live dive showing us what was under the waterline, near the vessel we were on. We saw everything from sea pens to rock fish to an octopus!
Between activities, we did have a chance to do a little bit of sightseeing. For instance, we spied a ferry under repair.
Toward the end of our trip, I was disappointed we hadn't seen any whales or dolphins or any above-water creatures. Fortunately, these two male California seals fixed that deficit.
CLOSER TO HOME: On one of our walks last summer, we discovered an iris specimen garden just a couple of blocks from home. I made a mental note to visit it during the height of iris season this year.
Truth be told, we were more than a couple weeks past the prime time, but Leonine Iris was still an interesting sight, well worth checking out. They specialize in Pacific Coast Irises.
FLYBY: Recently, NASA shared some footage was taken by astronaut Nick Hague, who has been onboard the International Space Station since mid-March. It's 30 minutes' worth of footage condensed into 60 seconds. (The 30 minutes of filming is about one-third of an orbit of Earth on the ISS, by the way.). This clip shows cloudy skies over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
CAMP CATCH UP: We've been so darn busy, I neglected to get around to documenting Annabelle's last two days at Camp Seymour, in Gig Harbor.
Here's Annabelle's account of what happened her second day of camp. ...
During the second day of my stay at YMCA Camp Seymour, the classes we took were much more low-key than the high intensity activites on Monday. The first class we had was "Sustainable Systems", which mainly focused on how the camp filters and reuses up to 14,000 gallons of its used wastewater a week and how others can use taht as an example to do the same. There was a small activity involving building our own miniature water filters with supplies such as mesh, rocks, burlap, and moss to attempt to clean a cup of dirty water as much as possible.
The second class of the day was Ornithology, the study of birds. The first half of this course was focused on identifying taxidermied birds by their markings, beak and feet shapes, and other notable features explained in a field guide. The other part was mostly just us following our instructor around the camp and listening for nearby birds, which there happened to be a lot of in the forest.
The class after lunch, Beach Ecology, was very much freeform. We as a class were allowed to wander the (thankfully low-tide) mudflats and identify as many animals as we could. My group ended up identifying 5 species: the Eccentric Sand Dollar, Yellow Shore Crabs, and Acorn Barnacles among others.
The final true "class" that day was Orienteering, a rather simple class that taught us how to use a compass by directing us through a small maze/course of trees that each held a section of a particular quote (depending on the route you took). While I did often have a bit of trouble calculating paces, me and my partner finally managed to get at least 3 full courses under our belts.
The last day of camp, Annabelle and her campmates spent an hour or so at a little theater/chapel in the woods. But since she was there for the whole thing and I was only there for part of the last day, I'll have her tell you about it. ...
My final day at YMCA Camp Seymour was much shorter and less exciting than the first two. My school group had to get up very early in the morning and head down to the dining hall so we could help set up tables while on "Kitchen Patrol". Being on Kitchen Patrol meant we also had to stay late and sweep away the mess afterward, which segwayed into our first "activity" of the day: cleaning our cabins and preparing to go. This took the better part of the morning, but we still had time for our last activity at camp.
The final thing we did before eating lunch and leaving was hike out to the "Chapel in the Outback", a small space in the forest that was ideal for presenting and talking to a group. Our chaperones performed a small ceremony where we wrote things we wanted to let go of on special sheets of flying wish paper, which we lit on fire and watched lift into the sky. We then selected rocks that each had a value we'd like to hold on to written on them and shared with each other what we thought each one meant. We were given special memento charms with our names and the value we chose written on them as the ceremony ended, along with our time at camp.
MEMORABLE: On Memorial Day, we four headed to T-Mobile Park for a Mariners' game.
We haven't been going to baseball games as often this year for a number of reasons. One: We've been super busy. Two: The Mariners are super terrible. But Monday was a sunny day, and there was a super special on tickets (only $10 apiece), so we decided to give it a go. And we're so glad we did! As I mentioned, it was a beautiful day, and the ballpark is a lovely place to be on such an evening. The attendance was so abysmal, that parking was a breeze, and rather than sit in our $10 bleacher seats, we decided to sit at the bar in the Hit it Here Cafe. That spot affords an excellent view of the field, and some decent eats, as well (not to mention seat service).
We stayed most of the game there, but one the sun started heading down, we decided to venture down to the lower deck for the last third of the game.
We walked the concourse and wound up behind home plate. We stood there for awhile, and in the bottom of 7, decided to actually sit down there and see how long it took before we were approached by an usher to shoo us away. It took 30 seconds for an usher to show up. Fortunately, he did not shoo us away. He asked if we had tickets for those seats. I said, "Nope. Not at all!" and immediately stood up to vacate. He then invited us to stay for awhile, "But only two innings," he said with a wink. (That, in effect, was through the bottom of the ninth.) And so we stayed. While in those seats, we got to see Mariners slugger Daniel Vogelbach hit a towering home run. Here he is approaching the plate right before that feat.
It was so big, it landed in the upper deck. That's only the third time that's happened in our ball park's history, and it's the first time a Mariners' player has hit one up there. Shortly after, Ms' rookie Mallex Smith was walked. A speedster, Smith stole second in short order. And then he stole third! At that point I leaned over to Christian and said, "I think he's going to steal home!!!" I could see the Rangers' infielders struggling, and just *felt* it was at least going to be attempted. Keep in mind, while Ty Cobb stole home 54 times, stealing home in contemporary baseball is a 'dead art.'
Despite that ... that's exactly what happened! Mallex Smith stole for the cycle (second, third and home) on Monday. I've been to so many major league baseball games, and that's the first time I've seen anyone steal home in person!
SWARM!!!: Friday morning, I was getting out of the shower, and I looked out the window, to the south. I noticed dozens of bees flying erratically (straight up and down, zig zagging and such). Usually bees are pretty linear - they're on a mission and fly efficiently. Naturally, I thought, "Are those 'our' bees?' and moved to my bedroom window where I could see the hive. Uh oh. There were hundreds and hundreds of bees swarming in the air above the hive.
We knew our hive was getting crowded - our bees have been such prolific breeders! We had even purchased another bee box to double their space. It had arrived the night before, and we hadn't had a chance to install it yet. :( I quickly called Christian to let him know what was going on, and he hustled home from work. Meanwhile, I was off to the Google. Never before had I used the search phrase "what do do when your hive swarms." Thankfully, I quickly hit on some super helpful advice, including an article called "How to catch a Bee Swarm and Install it in a Beehive" by Beebuilt.com. I also watched this video. ...
Once Christian got home, we went looking for our runaway bees. We found a cluster about 18 feet up a neighbor's tree. We armed ourselves with the necessary tools for capture, asked the neighbor's permission, and off we went. He climbed up the ladder and I called out 'orders' to him, drawing upon my vast (LOL) knowledge having read one article and watched one video about how to capture the swarm.
Here's CJ's retelling of the event. ...
A few months ago, my family bought a large amount of bees (as well as a hive for them to live in). Since installing their hive in our yard, the bees have been very active, and built a sizable amount of honeycomb (most of which has yet to be filled with honey). However, the hive appears to have some overpopulation problems, with the bees not using the hive's second level for reasons unknown to us. Yesterday, likely as a consequence of the overpopulation, the bees swarmed over a section of our yard. Perhaps needless to say, the sound of thousands of bees swarming in a chaotic fashion was rather loud.
After swarming for a bit, most of the bees went over to part of a tree in one of our neighbors' yards. My dad returned home from his workplace to assist in "catching" some of the bees. Using a ladder, a beesuit, and a box, my dad shook the trunk that the bees were inhabiting, and made many of them migrate to a large white box intended to hold the bees. Early the following day, my father took the white box containing the bees, and brought them next to our original hive box, hoping to make the bees migrate back to the hive.
Even though they were just in temporary digs for less than 24 hours, check out the honeycomb the split squad made in the cardboard box overnight.
Here's a photo of our new temporary set up, with the dual hives. The one on the left is the old queen and her swarm.
It's amazing how much we've been through with our hive in the short time it has been established.
I really can't believe we successfully retrieved the swarm, considering five months ago, we knew hardly anything about bees and beekeeping.
IN THE FIELD: Yesterday, CJ and I took a trip to the Kitsap Peninsula. Our mission was to pick Annabelle up from outdoor school at Camp Seymour, a YMCA facility, in Gig Harbor. Annabelle and her classmates were there Monday midday through Wednesday midday. Below, she can tell you a bit about her first day there. ...
During my first day at YMCA Camp Seymour, my school group had a number of athletic-focused "classes" across the campsite. The first class we attended among arrival was a high ropes course featuring two wooden structures for campers to climb up with the help of a belay team holding their rope and securing their place in the air. The two climbing structures were Madrona Perch (an old Madrona tree stump that had a very small platform at the top) and Giant Jenga (hanging sets of wooden bars that resembled a massive Jenga tower if you took out every piece except the middle ones). My climbing team only managed to get about halfway on each structure, though I was still proud of myself for continuing even when the sway structures caught me off guard. The second "class" we had was rather brief. We took a small hike to the campground's zipline, which was reportedly about the size of a small football field. I myself didn't go down the zipline as the large amount of slack in the cord intimidated me, but all of my classmates seemed to have plenty of fun. After returning to the camp and having lunch, we continued with a few smaller tours of camp and familiarizing ourselves with the facility.
The final activity that day was after dinner, where we headed down to the dock for a canoeing session. This was rather low-key and calm, and even though the seats were a tad cold and wet from earlier rain the canoes were comfortable and easy to use. Since I was in a canoe of three people it was difficult to go in a straight line, though we still managed to go rather fast and devise systems for switching sides at the appropriate times to turn. Overall, the first day was very fun if a tad physically stressful.
Sounds like a fun - and busy - first day at camp. During my short visit there, I didn't get to see the ropes course or the canoeing, but I did notice some cool light fixtures made using paddles.
Here's a short video Camp Seymour has posted about their Challenge Course, which Annabelle described above.
FURTHER AFIELD: Looking for adventure. How about hopping on board a mission to Mars? OK, so it's in name only, but hey, that's better that than nothing! Right now, you can sign up to send your name on a microchip that will be Red Planet bound next year as part of the Mars 2020 mission.
The mission will have a new 2,300-pound Mars rover on board. It's scheduled to launch July 2020 at the earliest, with a touch down on Mars in February of 2021. The rover will be looking for signs of past microbial life, as well as making observations about Mars' climate and geology. It will collect samples return to Earth at a future date. From now until Sept. 30, 2019, you can add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars here: https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Pass
Per NASA, "The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to etch the submitted names onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be inscribed on a single dime-sized microchip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover."
THRIFTY: Today, we popped into a suburban Goodwill for a short treasure hunt. As always, we checked out the vinyl records they had on hand.
It was the usual (STACKS of Glenn Miller, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond, and Barbra Streisand, to name a few 'regulars' in the record bins). I did find one "gem" that made me laugh out loud. ...
I immediately thought the album would make the "best" present for a White Elephant gift exchange at Christmastime. Surely anyone would be overjoyed upon opening it!
CJ found a semi-famous record that you don't usually find at Goodwill. I'll have him tell you more about it.
In 1973, Mike Oldfield, a then-19-year-old English man, composed and recorded Tubular Bells, an album composed of two (mostly) instrumental songs (each of which take up one side each of the album). After a part of Tubular Bells was sampled in the 1973 film The Exorcist, sales of the album skyrocketed, and it hit #1 on the UK album chart.
Today, I got the album at a nearby thrift store, for $1.99. Though it had some scratches, I was able to play it in its entirety.
Musically, Tubular Bells is rather dated to the 1970s. This is probably a consequence of prog-rock falling out of fashion in the wake of more commercial genres such as new wave, as well as less commercial genres such as punk rock. The album features a wide array of instrumentation, nearly all performed by Mike Oldfield. I enjoyed Tubular Bells, but parts of it felt "empty" compositionally, for lack of a better word.
Here's a photo of the album's back, where the instruments are listed.
AWAY: It's a littler quieter than usual around here. Annabelle is away for a couple of days, attending eighth grade camp, at Camp Seymour, near Gig Harbor on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Monday morning, she caught a ride to camp with one of the chaperones. Her schedule for yesterday was as follows:
Out in the outback for Sack Lunch followed by an afternoon of High Ropes and Dual-Zip 4:45Walk back in to camp, and move-in to cabins. 5:30Everyone line up outside the dining hall and take the "FOOD WASTE CHALLENGE!!!" 5:45DINNER/CHECK IN 7:15Evening Canoeing led by a Seymour Naturalist 8:30Return to cabins for Skit practice & cabin time supervised by the Cabin Leaders Skit practice, camp flags, camp games 10:00LIGHTS OUT!!! GOOD NIGHT!!!
Here was her schedule for today (Tuesday) ...
7:55 Everyone line up outside the dining hall 8:00BREAKFAST 9:05Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall 9:10CLASS 3: Sustainable Systems 10:30CLASS 4: Ornithology 11:45 Everyone walk together to the ball court. 11:50Wash hands for lunch with your cabin groups in the dining hall or shower house 12:00 Line up outside the dining hall 12:05LUNCH 1:10Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall 1:15CLASS 5: Beach Ecology 2:35CLASS 6: Skit Planning in cabins supervised by the Cabin Leaders and Teachers Self portrait 3:50Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall 4:00 Class 7: Orienteering 5:15Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall to regroup. Once cabin leaders have all of their campers, return to cabins to wash hands for dinner. 5:40 Everyone line up outside the dining hall 5:45DINNER/CHECK IN 7:15Skit Night Campfire led by the School Adults 8:00Archery led by a Seymour Naturalist 9:00Return to cabins. Start packing up for tomorrow’s departure! Camp bracelets, camp t-shirts, camp games 10:00LIGHTS OUT!!
So it looks like they keep them plenty busy. Too bad the weather isn't a little nicer. At least she won't come home sunburned, though!
Here's a video about the camp.
IT'S A WRAP: This morning, CJ and I headed over to Birthday Dreams' headquarters. We usually have a cake on board when we do that, but this time, we were answering a call for volunteers to wrap presents.
Neither CJ nor I consider ourselves particularly gifted at wrapping presents, so I was kind of relieved when we were given a stack of gifts for a 1 year old's birthday. I figured a 1 year old would be pretty forgiving about the quality of the wrap job. ;)
Birthday Dreams had lots of cute paper to choose from, and we spent about a half hour wrapping, until there were no more presents to wrap (because a bunch of volunteers answered the call for help).
