Of Sloths and Dogs

SLOTH LIKE: We're glad that a favorite non profit, Birthday Dreams, is back to accepting donations. Annabelle signed us up for a sloth-themed cake. How fun and unique.

We drew up a few different schematics, and finally wound up with the idea of a sloth hanging from a tree, with a couple of sloth friends down below.

The rocks are chocolate, the path is brown sugar, and the sloths are all edible modeling chocolate and marshmallow fondant. 

It took a little engineering to make sure the tree could support the hanging sloth.

Christian delivered the cake with the kids. He took numerous photos of it, but there must have been something on his lens or something because most all of them are super blurry or otherwise not OK, unfortunately. So we don't have a photo of the finished cake. :( Use your imagination.

And yes, those are Tootsie Rolls as the border around the cake bottom.

DOG DAY: We were headed home last night around 7 after enjoying a tabletop card game and some sodas and a couple of pints at a local place (outdoors and super socially distanced) when our trajectory changed a bit. We came off the freeway and Christian exclaimed, "There's a dog!"

We're all about dog spotting and saw this tiny white turbo running toward us across 5 lanes of traffic. "Pull over!" I screamed at Christian, who was driving. We flipped a U-turn and backtracked to get ahead of the running dog. Annabelle and I jumped out of the car and basically the little guy ran into her arms.

He had no collar, bad teeth, long nails, not neutered. ... But he is the sweetest boy!

We brought him home, fed him, watered him, and took him on a walk with our two dogs. Tuk, BY FAR, was the best behaved of the three. (I named him Tuk because we found him in Tukwila.)

CJ spent the night in the basement with Tuk. The dog was so polite. Didn't jump up on furniture unless invited. Was stoic and quiet (until, after a bit, we'd leave him in the basement alone for awhile. Then he'd bark for companionship).

Around noon today, the kids and Christian too Tuk to a local shelter. 

On the way there he got to live his best life, head hanging out the car window.

The shelter folks were nice and encouraging, per Christian. They told him they were almost certain Tuk would be adopted if he's not reunited with his owner. Christian left our contact info just in case. It's not a no kill shelter, and Tuk doesn't deserve that end. 

Feeding Teens

MEGA MEALS: Many hours at MPA on Friday and Saturday were spent getting ready for our monthly gig prepping and serving 80+ meals at a youth homeless shelter in the University District on Saturday evening.

On Friday, we boiled up about 50 cups of salad pasta (cute little tubes) for a mountain of macaroni salad. We  also cooked up 20 pounds of chicken with barbecue flavor. No big deal, ha ha.

Also on the menu were watermelon, dill pickle spears, and nice big cookies.

We headed up to the U District and arrived there a few minutes after 5. When Teen Feed's director of community engagement Janine Kennedy saw us loading in on Saturday evening, she declared, "It looks like a summer barbecue!"

That was exactly what we were after with this menu, so mission accomplished! We had several friends help provide many items for the dinner. CJ and Christian collected those in the alley, while Annabelle, Kennedy and I prepped in the kitchen. Once the stuff was collected, it was all hands on deck in the kitchen.

Annabelle's duties included bagging the meals up. We had options for everyone, including vegan and gluten free diners. 

CJ can pretty much claim 'toastmaster' status at this point. He spend a hour toasting 90-plus buns to perfection. 

Let me tell you, the BBQ sandwiches were HEFTY. We loaded them up with a half pound or so of meat apiece. While we were prepping, the kitchen smelled so wonderful.

The cookies were nestled in french fry wrappers. That worked quite well.

And can we talk about the pickles? Such a simple thing, but it thrilled people to no end. We cut the big pickles into spears for easier eating and bagged them. Not only were the pickles loved, but imagine our surprise when we started fielding requests for 'pickle juice shots,' I kid you not.  Needless to say, the dills were a HUGE hit!

Ever since the pandemic hit, we have had to shift from buffet-style service, dine in, to to go. It has been hard. It has meant only one family in the kitchen instead of multiple, plus the added work of having to box or bag or whatever each and every item for the to go service. 

But somehow, every month we've made it all work. The need to feed is bigger now than ever. 

Seat Geeks

BOYS AND GIRLS OF SUMMER: Baseball is back. Well, sort of.

The season usually starts in March, but it's late July - post all-star break in the pre-COVID world - and the 'spring training' games are just getting underway. We watched an intra-squad game tonight. It was played at an empty T-Mobile Park, with fan noise piped in. 

And fake fans is the way it's going to go for the rest of the season, as long as it lasts before COVID shuts it all down.

But in the meantime, the only way we will be able to get into the park is via a printed picture on recyclable material. ...

Enter Major League Baseball's Seat Fleet program. For just $30 (I hear it's lots more in some parks, like Dodger Stadium), you can have your likeness fill a seat during home games this shortened 60-game season. And so, it seemed like we needed to get in on the Mariners Seat Fleet. (The Mariners are donating a portion of every purchase to non-profit organizations supporting COVID-related relief efforts in the community.) 

Fun fact: If your cutout "catches" a foul ball during a game, they say they'll mail the cutout fan  the baseball!

So, we just had to get in on the fun. But it wasn't easy. I wanted to use existing favorite Ms'-related photos.
Like this one of Rick and Ken, circa 1995, in their Halloween costumes. I 'made' their jerseys, in that I bought
blank grey ones, stitched the blue on, and made the Seattle on the front and their names on the back.

Their names being Buhner (Rick) and Charleton (Ken), two favorites from that team.   

The tricky part was separating the kids enough to fit the parameters of the cutouts.

I had to invent arms, fill in trees, erase people and more. Then look like a hot mess below, but they seemed to fit OK on the Seat Fleet website. 

Time will tell. ... 

Something Fishy

FISH ON: In a pre-COVID world, Christian and the kids would be camping this week. That likely would have involved some fishing. 

Given that, I recalled that we once drove by a trout farm a few miles from here, and thought a quick trip there might be a better-than-nothing substitute.

I had to work, but Christian and the kids (including Kennedy) enjoyed an hour or so at Springbrook Trout Farm.

It looks like a quaint place, per their photos. They tell me there were three ponds - small, medium, and large. They fished the medium pond.  

There, with their borrowed poles and 'free' bait, they caught a trio of fish.

There is complimentary cleaning on site. (Tips encouraged.)

Here is their bounty. The fishies are just slightly larger than the one in our fish tank at home. ;)

But they were pretty and they were tasty! Christian put them in foil packets with some onion and lemon. 

They were tasty, and oh so fresh.

AGGRAVATING: A couple of days ago, we broke out an old classic board game. 

Part Trouble, part Sorry and very much aggravating, this game is long and frustrating. 

It is definitely *not* America's favorite family game!

Working It

HOW IT GROWS: It's been a minute since we've updated the growings on in the MPA garden.

We have our first tomato with color - a chocolate cherry tomato. It is a superstar, given that there's almost NOTHING else going on with our tomato plants. They're leafy, and a few blossoms, but I don't think a whole lot of fruit is in our future.

There are a couple of bright spots, however. Our kohlrabi seems to be doing really well. 

Sure, something's eating its leaves, but the bulbs or whatever they're called seem to be growing well.

Have I mentioned we have NO idea what to do with it? I've never touched a kohlrabi until I impulse bought this as a much smaller specimen. 

We have some 'summer squash' that is blossoming. I hope we're overrun with zucchini, but I'm doubtful.

We have some pretty basil that's flowering. I just need to remember to use it when I'm cooking!

I'm not sure that we've ever successfully grown a pumpkin. We have a blossom this year, but I'm not super optimistic about it. 

And perhaps our biggest under achiever (oxymoron, anyone?) is our eggplant. Look at the puny, pathetic little things (foreground). They're no bigger than they were in May, in their little seedling start pots. 

COMET CHASERS: Yesterday afternoon, the kids watched a program all about NEOWISE, a comet that was recently discovered. It has been putting on a show in the Northern Hemisphere, including over Seattle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFn4-kQPjzk#action=share

Upon learning that this comet only comes around about once every 7000 or years, spotting it immediately went to the top of our to do list. 

In hopes of seeing it, we needed a pretty much floor-to-ceiling window of ground level to Big Dipper. 

The kids and I wove in and out of streets on the west side of our hill for  a half hour plus right after sundown.

Finally, at about 10:30, just as we were about to give up, Annabelle's young eyes spotted the comet, below and to the right of the bottom of the Big Dipper's ladle. Oh, happy day!

We have no photos to prove it - just our memories. :)

Skies and Sweets

RAINBOW CONNECTION: A couple of evenings ago, there was a magnificent rainbow to our south. It was pretty darn close to the house (especially the right side of it), and it had such an arc, it felt like we could see more than 180 degrees of the colorful arc.

When I was taking the photos, I knew that they wouldn't do the 'bow justice. But they're still pretty pretty. 

CAKE CRAFT: We're so happy that Birthday Dreams is accepting cakes from volunteer bakers once again. They stopped back in March, when there were still so many questions marks about how COVID is spread. (Originally, 'experts' were saying it was primarily contact-spread. Turns out that's not true - aerosol is the biggest danger.) Anyway, we hopped back into the cake baking game.  Annabelle chose a 14 year old who wanted a Minecraft-themed cake.

Minecraft is an online game where you build most anything you want in a blocky-looking world.

As soon as she saw the ask for a Minecraft cake, Annabelle suggested making the literal Minecraft cake. 

So that's what we did. It was three layers of chocolate with fluffy chocolate filling with mini chocolate chips. 

It was crumb coated in vanilla buttercream, and then wrapped in homemade marshmallow fondant, which we decorated. 

Annabelle made the birthday girl's age out of modeling chocolate, in the style of a Minecraft torch and fence. 

It's not our fanciest cake ever, but it's definitely a Minecraft cake. We hope the birthday girl likes it.

ANOTHER CASUALTY: Every summer, the kids look forward to their one and only annual 7-11 Slurpee, when the store gives them away on July 11 (7/11). 

Well, add a free Slurpee to the list of COVID casualties. 7-11 canceled the event because they didn't want crowds in their stores during COVID. Smart move.

I didn't want the kids to feel too disappointed, though, so we went ahead and bought them each a Slurpee. It only set us back $2 - not free, but not bad. So at least they got their one Slurpee of the year.

FIRE IN THE SKY: Perhaps you've heard, Comet NEOWISE is dazzling in the evening skies. I've tried to spot it a couple of times, to no avail, but I'm not giving up!

Comet photo from NASA

Perhaps after tomorrow's NASA news conference, we'll have a better chance of spying the stunning celestial visitor.

NASA experts will discuss and answer public questions about Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE during a broadcast on Wednesday, July 15. Per NASA, "The comet is visible with the naked eye in the early morning sky and starting this week, after sunset."

The NASA Science Live episode will air live at noon on Wednesday on NASA TV, as well as on their Facebook Live, YouTube, Periscope, LinkedIn, Twitch, and USTREAM channels.
Following the noon broadcast, there will be a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT Wednesday. The media teleconference audio will stream live at: https://www.nasa.gov/live

The participants of the teleconference will include:

Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer and program executive of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, NASA HeadquartersEmily Kramer, co-investigator on the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) science team, NASA's Jet Propulsion LaboratoryAmy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, University of Arizona

For information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, including its Near-Earth Object Observation Program, check out:
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

Early Summer Scenes

JUST ONE: Our solo sunflower bloomed this week. It's not big, and it's not strong (it falls over all of the time), but it is pretty.

While admiring the 'chocolate' sunflower, I couldn't help but feel a bit sad about my alien garden art standing next to it. Check out how the black paint on its eyes is flaking terribly.

I asked our resident artist (Annabelle) to see if she could do something about it.

She scraped off the bad black and simply used a Sharpie to make the statue look much sharper. It's *so* much better!

PUFFY: A few evenings ago, we were headed toward home under clear blue skies. However, to the south, we couldn't help but notice TOWERING clouds

They were cloaking Mt. Rainier entirely. In fact, it's obvious the mountain created the micro climate around it so that the clouds accumulated there. It was really pretty and really interesting.


TABLE TIME: This week, we made it a point to get back to some gaming. It seems like that pretty much stopped when the pandemic started. We played the easy and always fun UNO, the cute and competitive "Llamas Unleashed," and a looooong round of Zombie Fluxx (not as much fun as the other themed Fluxx games, in our humble opinions).

CANCELED: My morning Google calendar alerts have been like salt in a wound for months now. Every morning I have a notice about my upcoming events for the day, and every day it's fun stuff that's been canceled.

Tonight, CJ and Christian should have been seeing Ozzy Osbourne at the Tacoma Dome. And that's not a date that will be rescheduled. Ozzy has been diagnosed with Parkinson's, on top of a host of other ailments he already had. 

Today's COVID-19 casualty was the annual 7-11 day, where the store gives out free Slurpees on July 11.

They didn't want thousands of people streaming into their stores today, so no special Slurpee day. 

This photo was from 7-11 day back in 2012. 

I told the kids they would still get their annual treat, so Christian took them to a nearby 7-11 (with masks on, of course), and they got a socially distanced Slurpee. As the old jingle goes, "Oh thank heaven for 7-11."