Perseverance

HAPPY LANDING: We had NASA TV on all morning, but at noon we got serious about our viewing, as within the hour, the newest Mars rover Perseverance would land - or not- on the Red Planet.

Things started happening pretty fast starting at about 12:20. The capsule holding the rover was closing in fast. About 12:40 or so, the first chute deployed, slowing things down considerably. 

Not too long after, the sky crane kicked in. Jets helped slow the descent, and the rover was hanging from the crane, a tricky maneuver to be sure. 

We held our breath as frequent updates were announced and milestones along the way were reached. Then, finally, at 12:55 our time, Perseverance touched down in what sounded like a perfect landing. Hooray!

Just a moment or two later, there were images from the Martian surface, taken by Perseverance! I loved seeing its shadow on our neighboring planet.

                     PHOTO: NASA/Bill Ingalls

In a post-landing press release, NASA informed, "About the size of a car, the 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram) robotic geologist and astrobiologist will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of Mars’ Jezero Crater. While the rover will investigate the rock and sediment of Jezero’s ancient lakebed and river delta to characterize the region’s geology and past climate, a fundamental part of its mission is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. To that end, the Mars Sample Return campaign, being planned by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), will allow scientists on Earth to study samples collected by Perseverance to search for definitive signs of past life using instruments too large and complex to send to the Red Planet."

We used NASA's Mars Photo Booth to put CJ and Annabelle on the Red Planet

One of the next Really Big Deals involving this mission will be testing the helicopter. That's right, there was a flying machine along for the ride with Perseverance. Called Ingenuity, the copter is a first for NASA - or any space agency. If it succeeds, it will mark the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Here's a short animation from Jet Propulsion Laboratory showing what that might look like.

Prior to today's the main event, we braved the tail end of a.m. rush hour traffic to make our way to Krispy Kreme in Seattle's Sodo area. We wanted to get there early, as the special doughnuts were one day only, limited supply, first come, first served.

We masked up and walked into the surprisingly empty store. We were the only customers. I thought out chances were great that we'd get our Mars doughnuts, but when we rounded the corner to the display case, the two trays labeled Mars 2020 were empty! Our doughnut hopes and dreams were dashed.

However, we asked the friendly Krispy Kreme worker if there would be any more Mars doughnuts available today, and she said they had 'a few' in back. Hooray! We were in luck. We excitedly handed over our boarding passes and waited for the highly anticipated, limited edition treat.  

Imagine our surprise when we saw the doughnuts. I couldn't help but wonder if they were in the back because they were such a train wreck, visually.

For, you see, the doughnuts on social media were these beautiful orbs with swirled shades of red, and a dusting of "Martian" soil. 

The constrast between what we were expecting and what we were given was so sharp, I thought I'd do a little Photoshop side-by-side.

Meanwhile, up north Kennedy trekked out for his Mars doughnut. 

Clearly the North Aurora doughnut artist was having a better day than the Sodo one. 

Kennedy's doughnut was a work of art, relatively speaking.

So Close

Conceptual art: NASA

MARS TOMORROW!: You know what we'll be doing midday tomorrow ... watching NASA land their Perseverance rover on Mars!

You can tune in for live coverage and landing commentary from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) beginning at 11:15 a.m. West Coast time on the NASA TV Public Channel and the agency’s website, as well as the NASA App, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion, and THETA.TV. Touchdown is scheduled for approximately 12:55 p.m. 

Months - or was it years? - ago, we filled out an online form to get on board this mission. Our names are being carried to Mars on Perseverance, and we even got official boarding passes. 

Turns out these passes are going to pay off. Tomorrow we can get a FREE Mars treat at Krispy Kreme if we show them our passes. You know we'll be all over that!

                                        Photo: Krispy Kreme

BLOODY ORANGES: So, we like trying new produce from time to time. "A raspberry orange? Well those look like fun," I thought.

Until I cut into it and it looks like organ meat <shudder>.

And then when I started squeezing it for the juice I needed for a recipe ... double shudder. It looked like the prom scene from "Carrie" on my kitchen counter.

No thanks.

With my eyes closed, I used the grated peel and juice in a recipe for our Cubanos sandwiches tonight but ewww. 

WEIGHING IN: Last week, the kids were asked by a former teacher of theirs to submit a video explaining their preferred learning style and how they like being able to choose their own topics of study when that's an option. The teacher friend is working with a Seattle high school who has a number of kids struggling with the online learning model and who have lost interest in education. She is encouraging teachers to perhaps mix it up a bit with how .

I forwarded the request to the kids and told them they were on their own to make the videos, as I was busy that day trying to get COVID doses in my parents' arms. Happily, they did make the videos. Yesterday our teacher friend emailed thanking them for their input and it reminded me that I hadn't even viewed the videos yet!  

If anyone wants to take a peek, they were here ...

CJ: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13RODafmFgJ5r2pHD-NtV0n59nhQIbg8d/view?usp=sharing

Annabelle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19q-Lu2taKU3XsWlmI14WkmFaa5EBmgf-/view?usp=sharing

Cake and Campuses

 

CAMPUS VISITS: This morning, we worked hard to put the finishing touches on donation cake for Birthday Dreams. Once we got that done, we dropped it off at their office and headed south, Tacoma bound. We wanted to visit a couple of potential colleges for CJ, University of Washington Tacoma and Evergreen State College Tacoma.  

We've driven past the UW campus in Tacoma many a time. It's in a very urban setting, and just a bit south of the Tacoma Dome, in the city's arts/museum district. 

Parking was easy as the campus is deserted in these darn pandemic times. We walked the length of the campus east to west and back. There was lots of interesting architecture to admire. I think the building below, from the 1890s, is the oldest on campus.

Mid campus, there's a set of stairs leading up to a big W. I

In the middle of campus there are abandoned railroad tracks. Most of the campus' buildings flank the tracks.

We were so fortunate to have some blue skies during our visit!

There's an interesting art installation on site (see the blue squiggles below). It's a map of waterways, from local to Africa.

The photo below was the headwaters of the installation.

Random spotting: We found a solitary snail on a campus bench.

The UW campus is across the street from the Washington State History Museum, seen below. Pretty nice proximity for a history major who's interested in museum studies.

While in Tacoma, we also swung by the Evergreen State College campus. From a facilities standpoint,  it's significantly less grand than UW Tacoma. It's just one building and block was encircled by one of the biggest city camper encampments I've ever seen (and that's something coming from a person from Seattle). It has been so cold out, and we couldn't help but think of the human suffering going on in that block. 

We did a lot of talking after visiting both campuses today. CJ is more interested in the curriculum than the campuses, which I appreciate. I found a link to the list of history classes spring and winter quarter at UW Tacoma. It's super enticing to CJ. He was like a kid in a candy store reading it.

All things considered, he has as couple of questions an admissions counselor should be able to answer, but CJ is definitely seeing purple and gold. He's probably just a day or two from signing on the dotted line.

SWEET STUFF: We try to make sure to do at least one cake a month for Birthday Dreams. February is marching right along, so a couple of days ago, we checked out the Birthday Dreams wish list for a cake we could take on. We settled on a 15-year-old who didn't pick a theme for their cake but it was noted she loved teal and white. Honestly, it was harder to do one without a clear cut theme. We wanted to make something she'd love, but didn't know, exactly, what that would be.

We decided to do an over-sized cupcake cake. We'd done one a couple of times before, but it had been years. We used a Big Top Cupcake silicone mold we have. I remember using it about 4-5 years ago and not being thrilled with how the batter baked in the mold. I didn't remember what a kind of disaster it is. It's waaay too deep, so the sides and bottom and top brown and the middle is raw. No bueno. Ugh.

 

We were so unhappy with the way the top 'baked' that we pretty much threw it out. (We did salvage one slice from it to use in the bottom mold.)

We wound up salvaging it by making some small layers in the bottom part of the mold. We opted to make the top of the cake a Rice Krispies treat instead and iced that. You can't tell by looking at it that it's not cake, and really, most people love Rice Krispies treats, so I think it's OK.

One thing that did go really well was using teal candy melts to make a candy 'wrapper' to hold the base cake. It was really pretty and darn near perfect. And we worked *really* hard to make the icing for the 'normal' sized cupcakes match the candy melt teal color. I think we did a pretty good job of that!

One thing you can't really see in this photo is that the cake board is covered in marshmallow fondant that is embossed with words (like "fun" and "happy birthday" and graphics like cupcakes and party hats). Just another fun, custom touch we hope the birthday girl likes.

The roller is pictured on the left in the photo below.

And below is a shot of the early stages of building the candy melt cupcake 'wrapper' up.

If we do something similar in the future, I would just bake the cake in some of our 6-inch cake pans and then cut them down to fit in the bottom bold. The Rice Krispies atop worked great.

Whiteout

SNOW ZONE: It was snowing sideways last night when we went to bed, with winter storm warnings hanging over our heads.

This morning we woke up to a blanket of white - and a truck stuck in the street out in front of our house. There were two guys having no luck whatsoever getting it unstuck. Enter Christian, the hero, heading down the driveway with two shovels and some muscles. They dug out around the tires and then the three of them pushed.

Success! The guys were on their way!

Meanwhile, out back, Captain Kirk was keeping an eye on the depth of our snow.

By mid afternoon, he was looking a little worse for the wear. The snow is significantly deeper than our Kirk indicator, but a lot of it was blown away from him.

The kids had the perfect snowy day dessert last night, big ol' mugs of hot chocolate.

ARTFUL MATH: From a social media post, I learned about a neat-o website today, "Artful Maths."

It has lesson plans about projects where math and art intersect. We haven't tried any of them yet, but I wanted to park this here, so we can come back to it and give some of them a go.

In other math news, we spent a fair amount of our snow day doing math that was decidedly not artsy.

In their current math chapter, CJ and Annabelle are having all sorts of fun with the 'simplex method' and tableaus. Good times (she says, sarcastically).

The textbook they are using doesn't do nearly a good enough job explaning the concepts, let alone the solutions. We turned to YouTube for help. Fortunately, Annabelle found this video.  
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Actually, it was one video in a series of the FIVE videos it took to solve one problem! 

We watched them all and it paid off. Doing the homework problems was no problem afterward.

FINALLY

ON THE HUNT: The COVID. It's so damn overwhelming. We're almost a year into this.  Our only way out is letting it run like wildfire killing those susceptible to a bad out come, or science saving so many. I opt for the latter. 

To that end, vaccines have started to roll out, and the first doses are rightfully intended for the most vulnerable, people age 75 and over. What's really awful though is that individuals are almost entirely left to resource those doses on their own. Not sure what it's like where you are, but in these parts, you need to be online hardcore, network, and have a fair amount of luck.

I have been working all the angles since vaccines came online in hopes of finding my parents an inroad. I was thrilled when I secured them first dose shot spots for late February, but still researched for a better option. I searched independently and built up a data base and some potential inroads, but I quickly realized that there must be others like me trying to do the same thing, and who were willing to share resources. That's how I found this site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/findacovidshotwa/about

It's such a wonderful spot, where good-hearted people are sharing leads on places to secure an immunization opening. I have been on Facebook hours and hours a day looking for a lead and on last Saturday, in a moving car, using my cell phone as a hot spot, I spied a lead on that site and was able to book my parents a slot on Monday. WHAT A RELIEF. Booked them!

What was less of a relief was waking up Monday morning to snow on the ground. Sigh. However, it was a clear 45-minute drive to Mukilteo, but as I approached their place it was snowing like crazy. And as we made the half hour drive to the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, we had sleet, hail and all the things. Never a dull moment.

However, once we were there (an hour early), things went so smoothly. A little too smoothly, IMHO. They never even asked for a photo ID or checked their names against a master reservation list. Your average Red Robin has a more secure check in process for getting a table, I do believe.

Anyway, we made the way too lax security check in and were in line to get the jab. So exciting! It is a drive thru operation and we creeped our way toward the vax tent. When it was our turn, the medics gave J&E the shots in short order.

We stopped for a celebratory chai tea on the way back to their place.

Thank gawd #1 is done and here's hoping they actually get #2 in a timely manner. Won't sleep well until that happens.

STUDIOUS: The kids are plugging along with winter quarter. It's a bit of a bear, truth be told. The English 102 class is super scholarly in a good way. Hardcore how-to-write-a-research-paper stuff which will be so beneficial for them going forward. But it's a LOT of work. Intersesting aide: There was a whole class Zoom call on Tuesday this week and CJ was the *ONLY* student who showed up. That blows my mind. But I think it's also a by product of this whole pandemic/everything online time. There's an abject lack of engagement.

The math class CJ is signed up for is terrible. The math is great/important, but there are ZERO lectures. Absolutely NO teaching whatsoever. It's, "Here are your problems. They're your problems," and that's it. We (after the fact, unfortunately) read reviews of his 'professor.' They're horrible. They all talk about how lazy and unresponsive he is. I'd say guilty as charged based from what we've seen. Despite this, CJ and Annabelle (she basically audits all his classes) will meddle through, because they have to. 

CJ also has a film studies class. Not gonna lie, he signed up for it thinking it would be a pretty easy going class. WRONG. Not that it's bad - it's not - it's GREAT! But, it's a ton of viewing, analysis, reading and writing. Lots of hours of work if you're trying to do it right. We've really enjoyed the movies he's been assigned to watch, however. We'll post a list of them all at a later date.

So all in all, it's a handful, plus we're still filling out all sorts of scholarship apps in hopes of scoring some $ support for CJ's next chapter. Busy times!

And I'll definitely post more about CJ's must-watch films soon!

HEAVY METAL: A big change on the home front this week - The Flair is in the house - literally!

We're big mid-century modern fans from a design aesthetic. We love atomic/space age stuff. In our last place, we had a great old vintage Hotpoint dual oven with a pull out cooktop. We had to leave it behind when we sold the place, and almost certainly it wound up in a landfill. :( 

Ever since we moved to our current mid-century modern house, I have hoped to have a vintage stove to install in our kitchen. Not just *any* appliance, but a Frigidaire Flair - the Cadillac of MCM cooking options.

I found one on Craigslist a couple of years ago. We drove two plus hours in a horrific storm to pick it up. And by pick it up, you need to know that's no small feat. It weighs over 300 pounds. Anyway, we managed to get it home and it has sat in our garage for two years, waiting for its moment.

That moment is now. :)

But getting that 300+ pound beast into the house is easier said than done! It took a lot of talking. More talking than doing, really.

I suggested we take our super heavy duty hand truck and turn it into a cart, almost horizontal on the ground, and then we put one of our kitchen cabinets atop that, with the Flair on top of that. (I didn't want the Flair too low. I thought it would be too heavy to move.) Christian improved this idea by putting 2x4s underneath it all to help act as a level to help move it all. I have no photos of this phase because it was really scary moving it from the garage up and around the house to the back door. It took all four of us, but it went really well. Yay. 

One of the hardest parts was getting the beast up our three stairs to the dining room on the main living level. We did some back-and-forths, but figured it out.

Once it was inside, we had to figureout a way to raise it up onto its base. That was a multi step process, but we talked and talked and then did and got it done.

We  got it up from the lower lot, up the stairs and into the dining room

 

Can't wait to clean it up and start cooking in it !

Bits & Pieces

UPS AND DOWNS: Another busy week here at MPA. CJ's Film Studies class is keeping us surprisingly busy watching a number of movies and analyzing them, his English class is very demanding (in a really good way), and his math class is a bad joke (no lectures whatsoever, just complicated problems and you're on your own). We're also striving to get some exercise daily via "Just Dance" on the Nintendo Switch, continuing baby steps on kitchen remodeling, getting Annabelle enrolled in college for fall, and spending a couple of hours a day online chasing COVID vaccines.

On Tuesday, we had a busy lunch time. At noon, we tuned in to a live presentation by David Buerge, author of "Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name" as part of the Lunch-and-Learn program by the Holocaust Center0 for Humanity. His book is the first biography of Chief Seattle intended for adults.

A biographer and historian, Buerge spent more than 20 years researching the Duwamish Tribe and Chief Seattle. One interesting fact we learned from him is that Seattle is the largest city in the world named after a Native American. 

Chief Seattle was multi-faceted. He was a warrior, an orator, and a creative visionary, and Buerge gave examples of each ... but part way through, we cut away to a SpaceX test flight of SN9, a big silvery rocket. Because, well, rocket launches are SO COOL. 

We'd watched the SN8 flight few weeks back, which was also SO COOL until the fiery landing.

Unfortunately, this go 'round was an example of history repeating itself. SN9 crashed even more spectacularly. 

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Back to the drawing board!

Meanwhile, back in Seattle, we tuned back in to the Chief Seattle presentation after the SpaceX launch and crash. But truth be told, we didn't stick around for the whole presentation. All three of us (CeeJ, Bee, and I) were having trouble following along with the kind of freestyle fact sharing by the presenter. But I have to tell you, he really lost us when he TOOK A PHONE CALL during the presentation. I mean, it's one thing to forget to turn off your ringer, we've all done that, but it's another to actually answer the phone (it wasn't an emergency) while you're in the middle of a presentation. 

SAVE THE DATES

The year 2021 is shaping up to be a busy one for spaceflight enthusiasts. 

On the agenda: Boeing and NASA have their second uncrewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, tentative launch date is March 25. This Orbital Flight Test-2 is a critical milestone for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, as NASA works with commercial partners to safely deliver crewed missions to the International Space Station.

Technicians observe Boeing’s Starliner crew module being placed on top of the service module in the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 14, 2021. The Starliner spacecraft is being prepared for Boeing’s second Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2). As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, OFT-2 is a critical developmental milestone on the company’s path to fly crew missions for NASA. Photo credit: Boeing/John Proferes

NASA and Boeing are targeting no earlier than Thursday, March 25, for the launch of Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2, or OFT-2, is a critical developmental milestone on the company’s path to fly crew missions for NASA to the International Space Station.

About a month later, SpaceX has a launch date for Crew-2, on April 20. This second crew rotation mission with astronauts launching to the International Space Station. This mission is carrying a pair of NASA astronauts, as well as two international partner crew members.

Members of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station participated in training in Hawthorne, California, on Jan. 11, 2021. Pictured from left are ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. Photo Credit: SpaceX

Back from Beyond

THERE IS ANOTHER: A Sunday stop at our mailbox brought a double dose of good news. "There's a purple envelope in there!" I told CJ as I peered in the box.

We pulled it out and the envelope was from the University of Washington Tacoma. The flap had "CONGRATULATIONS" in all caps.  That was encouraging.

Sure 'nuff, he opened it up and there was a letter letting him know he'd been accepted for admission for the school year starting this September. 

That was really good news, because CJ is keenly interested in attending UW-Tacoma, as they have a history major and a museum studies minor.

There was also a nondescript #10 (business) envelope from Eastern Washington University in the box. CJ opened that up and found a letter letting him know he'd been awarded a (renewable!) $3,000 annual scholarship, should he choose to attend there. (He's looking at the EWU at Bellevue College program.)  That was some nice news.

So now, he's heard from every school he applied to, and received a 'yes' from each. Now, we wait for financial aid/assistance offers from each. We're not sure when those will show up, but hopefully sooner rather than later. It would be nice if he could make a decision.

One thing I did toward that decision day end today was make a spreadsheet listing his five options, the tuition rate there, financial aid offers, scholarships offers, location and what getting there would look like, degree programs he's interested in at each, and notes. It took me about three hours to chase down and compile all that info, but it's good to have it all in one place.

DOWN TIME: There was a dearth of posts last week, in large part because I made the terrible mistake of getting a flu shot and the shingles vaccine on the same day.

I don't think it was the flu shot that did me in. I've never had a reaction to one before. But that shingles vax, yowza. I had the immunization on Wednesday, and Thursday morning woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. I started Googling side effects of the shingles vaccine on the Shingrix site.

Check, check, check, check, check, check and check. I had ALL the things. Bummer. Thursday is a blur. Friday I was still puny. By Saturday I was pretty OK. It would have been good to have that information about the side effects before I got the shot, because I'm here to tell you, if I had to work on Thursday, I would not have been able to, no way.

SNACK PACK: Today's special delivery was a box full of treats from South Africa.

The gift was part of a SnackCrate subscription Kennedy got for CJ for Christmas. CJ is looking forward to a taste of South Africa, a destination a little more than 10,000 miles away from us, as the crow flies.

RED PLANET READY: We're just a couple of weeks away from a really big deal, spaceflight wise. NASA's latest mission to Mars is set to touch down on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, with a rover named Perseverance on board. "This robotic astrobiologist will search for signs of ancient life, pave the way for human exploration, and collect rock and soil samples for future return to Earth," NASA noted in a press release.

                    Illustration: NASA

NASA is inviting people to a virtual NASA Social event due to track the mission's big milestone. It happens on Thursday, February 18, from 11:15 AM to 1:30 PM PST. To participate, you can follow this link: https://fb.me/e/cKrbdHVXG  It takes you to a Facebook page where you can ask questions and get answers from NASA experts, connect with other space enthusiasts, watch live as Perseverance lands, and you even get a NASA social badge to share online or print out.