Friday Fun

MMM, DONUTS: If you were on the Internet or watched the news today, you probably already know that it's National Doughnut Day.

The kids have enjoyed Doughnut Day for several years running now. 

However, it wasn't until today that we learned there's actually a pretty neat story behind the 'holiday.'

Turns out it started in 1938, with very noble intents. According to an article on TIME magazine's Web site, during World War I, women volunteers for the Salvation Army made doughnuts to send to soldiers serving overseas as a way to help boost morale.

The Chicago branch of the Salvation Army launched the first Doughnut Day as a fundraiser for their organization, and as a way to raise awareness of the women volunteers doing what they could to help with the war effort.

During World War II, the American Red Cross picked up the doughnut campaign.

You can watch TIME's short video about Doughnut Day here: http://ti.me/1RQ6r3v 

LAST NIGHT:  With the days getting shorter this time of year, it seems like the International Space Station is only visible in the dead of the night lately. Fortunately, last night was not one of those nights. It was the bottom of the ninth, and as we watched the Mariners lose their sixth (or is it seventh?) game in a row, there was a lovely, six-minute fly over of the ISS.

Next Thursday (June 11), three of the people who zipped cross the sky over our house will be coming home. NASA's Terry Virts and Flight Engineers Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) and Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos will have been in space 199 days and traveled more than 84 million miles since their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 24. 

photo: NASA

LAFF O' THE DAY:  Did you know you can't run through a campground?  You can only RAN, because it's past tents. 

Not far Afield

BACK AT IT: Another day, another post from Safeco Field. Tis the season, I suppose.

Wednesday we were at the field earlier than ever - by 10:15 a.m. - for a special event. It was the Mariners' annual Weather Education Day. About 5,000 kids bused in from local schools for the event. 

Weather experts from KOMO were on hand, including Steve Pool.

The event started with a Trivial Pursuit-style game show, with all the questions being about the weather, of course.

There was also a segment on life jacket safety, featuring some Coast Guard members and a local swim team. 

KOMO's weather writer and blogger Scott Sistek showed a cool video all about weather, with clips ranging from beautiful to terrifying.  

After the weather program, we went and warmed ourselves by the fire for a bit. It was a chilly morning!

Annabelle, as always, had her sketchbook with her and produced lots of artwork. 

The game itself was (yet another disappointment).  Annabelle's moose face says it all when the last out was recorded.

Ms were swept at home, by the blasted Yankees. Ugh.

SUMMER COMING:  Today was the kids' last day in a couple of their classes (art for Annabelle and social studies for CJ).  They have really enjoyed the classes and are sorry to see them ending. 

While at the learning center, we dropped off some summer-forever inspired cookies for a travel-loving teacher who is retiring. 

THROWBACK THURSDAY:  Check out this lovely snapshot of our home planet, taken on this day (June 4) in 1965 by an astronaut on board Gemini IV. 

Image Credit: NASA

The photo is of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank. It was taken the day after astronaut Ed White's historic first American spacewalk. 

Bronx Bombers

DAMN YANKEES:  Monday evening, we decided (kind of last minute-sh) decided to go to the Mariners' game. King Felix was going to be pitching and the Yankees were in town. The Ms had a special - a $20 ticket in the "King's Court," complete with t-shirts and "K" (strike out) towels.

We got there a bit early and watched batting practice. We stood right by the Yankees' bullpen and watched their starting pitcher, former Mariner Michael Pineda warm up, and visited with a family from Alberta, Canada, and a Yankees fan from NYC. 

While we were watching and waiting for the game to start, I told the kids the long, sad story of Alex Rodriguez, a whiz kid with the Mariners back in the 1990s. I told them how Alex was so naturally gifted, and he had a reputation for being a hard worker and polite. And then ... something happened. He left the Mariners, saying it wasn't about the money (it was), and his personal downhill slide started in a big way. His ego was a runaway train, and he, at some point, decided to start cheating, taking steroids. He was caught, repeatedly, and defiant rather than apologetic. He became one of the most hated men in the game, unpopular even with his own team, now the Yankees.

The kids heard A-Rod roundly booed with each at bat. Annabelle, who always has a sketchbook with her at he game, drew an A-Rod inspired pony.

Unfortunately, the Mariners' pitcher struggled mightily Monday night, and the game was a runaway about mid way through.  We decided to leave our lofty seats and make our way down to the concourse.

Imagine our surprise when we happened upon a group of gentlemen who were My Little Pony fans (some articles of clothing gave them away).  Annabelle gave the Bronies (male MLP fans) a couple of her drawings. They were THRILLED!  They thought her Pay-Roid pony was hysterical.

At the end of the game, we wound up visiting with another Yankees' fan. There all by himself, he was in the midst of a multi-city dream trip, following the Yankees on the road. 
He was impressed with all of the hubbub surrounding King Felix and the King's Court shirts and asked how he could get one. We told him he would have had to buy a ticket for the King's Court for the game ... and then proceeded to give him one of our shirts. He was VERY grateful for the cool keepsake from Safeco Field. 

So, overall, though the game was miserable, we managed to have a lot of fun and a memorable evening. 

FIT TO BE DYED:  CJ attended a pizza and tie dye party last Friday evening, and this weekend, he undid the rubber bands cinching the shirt up.  

We washed it (alone, of course, with some vinegar to help set the colors), and boy was he happy with the finished product!

Sunny Friday

LIVE! IN CONCERT!:  Tonight, after what seemed like weeks and weeks of practice, the kids finally got to perform in public. Just one short song - less than three minutes. "We are Going to be Friends" is the name of the tune, a sweet little ditty by Jack White of White Stripes fame.  

The performance was in a small commons area at the learning center where they take a couple classes a week. It was a really fun variety show - lots of talented kids doing everything from fiddling to animation, reading poetry to dancing. 

Here's a (rather crappy) cell phone video (from me) of their performance. The resolution is so low, you can't really tell they looked terrified a good part of the time, ha ha. 

https://youtu.be/LFuKlgOoa3s
They felt really great afterward, though. They performed without music and were happy they remembered all their lines and kept on time. Good for them. Practice might not make perfect, but it sure helps!

HOT STUFF:  When we were walking the dogs this afternoon around 2 p.m. we were all feeling the heat. 

We later learned that on this day in history in 1724, Fahrenheit invented a precise thermometer.

Thanks to a thermometer, we can measure the heat here in Seattle 77 degrees today, and even some place much, much hotter - our sun!

By doing a little reading on NASA's Space Place Web site, we learned the surface of the sun is almost 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Yowza.  And its corona, a hazy layer of hydrogen gas encircling the planet, is even is over 200 times hotter. 2,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit, by our math. 

Credit: NASA/European Space Agency, 1999

For fun and education, we played "Solar Tricktionary" -  a quiz about different science terms involving the Sun.  Get all the answers right, and NASA seems you a "Space Place Solar Weather Guru!"

In keeping with our sunny thoughts, we listened to (a very young sounding) Marvin Gaye singing "Sunny," and Donovan's "Sunshine Superman."  (Donovan is celebrating his 50th anniversary as a recording artist this year, incidentally.) Love his music!

Coincidentally, both "Sunshine Superman" and "Sunny" were released in 1966, apparently a very good year for sunny songs. 

Open for Business

GRAND OPENING: Today was the Big Day - time to open shop at a micro craft fair (10 tables or so, I'm thinking), in an off-the-beaten path (no general public) spot. (In other words, pretty much the crafters were just buying stuff from one another.) Probably a perfect debut for MPA's maiden voyage. 

We had quite an assortment of items. We had sunflower strawberry cupcakes and 'fossilized' cookies, with bake sale proceeds benefiting No Kid Hungry. 

We had spirit gloves (pom poms on the ten fingertips), and 'crayondoliers' - crayon carriers you can wear, like a sash or an ammunition belt (Bee's wearing one in the photo at the top - some of the others are displayed on the middle of the table in front of her).

And last, but definitely not least, were Annabelle's community of pet rocks. 

They were a last minute addition to our lineup. On Tuesday afternoon I suggested she make some personality-plus rocks for the event. They cost nearly nothing to make, and I knew she'd come up with some cute ideas just using found items in our craft scrap drawer.

People LOVED them. Specifically, the adults at the fair loved them. It was so funny watching them squeal with delight and figure out which rock spoke to them.

One of the things that helped sell them was that each came with a birth certificate.  We quickly took mug shots this morning and Annabelle and CJ pasted them onto a certificate Annabelle designed.

All in all, it was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. 

AIRPLANE AFTERNOON:  We ducked out of the craft fair early because we had to head to Pacific Science Center for a sneak preview of "Living in the Age of Airplanes," a documentary about how air travel has impacted humankind. 

Narrated by Harrison Ford, it was a gorgeous, thought-provoking documentary.

 I'll let the kids tell you a little bit more about it, CJ first. ... 

On May 28th, 2015, we went to the Pacific Science Center to see Living in the Age of Airplanes, a documentary about the history of transportation, more specifically, aviation.

I expected the movie to be more about the technical aspects of aviation, but it turned out to be more about transport's history, especially that in aviation. The film pointed out that for the vast majority of human history, walking was the only form of transportation. During that time, there was no infrastructure, which meant no cars, no trains, and, most importantly, no planes.

The film featured a quote by Bill Gates stating that the airplane was like the original World Wide Web, in that it shared ideas and values all across the planet. The film also points out that when there were no means of long-distance transportation across land and sea, several civilizations around the world rose and fell without ever knowing of each other's existence. Living in the Age of Airplanes also states that the wheel was only invented around 5000 years ago, and during that time, we attached wheels to some animals so we could go at three miles an hour, which is still a relatively slow speed.

Last, but not least, the film states that although in the (19) thirties, flying was considered an amazing experience, today, we often get bored on flights and look to pass the time with in-flight entertainment.

Here's what Annabelle had to say ... 

On May 28, I went to a movie called “Living in the Age of Airplanes”.  The movie was about how airplanes have changed the way we travel. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. I’ll tell you a little bit about it.
 The movie starts out talking about how humans’ only transportation up to about 5000 years ago was walking. After that 5000 years, there was another 500 years where we used the wheel. Before planes there were some places in the world that were virtually unreachable by land or sea. After planes were invented, the top speed we could go at jumped from 10 miles an hour from 500 miles an hour!  The planes revolutionized the way we travel. Nowadays we take flying as a drag instead of an experience that humans weren’t even meant to experience. We really should look back and see how much flying has done for us, from connecting societies to almost acting as a time machine and letting us see history like never before.

A couple of things that struck me were the notion that at any given moment 250,000 humans are airborne, flying somewhere. The movie also hammered home the point that flight has made our planet a global market. Lovely roses cut in Kenya today can be in a vase on a mantle in a home in Alaska in under 72 hours. 

Remarkable. 

Here's a trailer for the movie. 

Living in the Age of Airplanes — Trailer #1 from Living in the Age of Airplanes on Vimeo.

Going and Going

SO SERENE:  If you look at this photo (above), you might think we spent a glorious day, relaxing along the shore, soaking up the sun, kicked back with not a care in the world.

That is not how we spent our day. Our trip to the beach was work - picking up a couple of rocks for a craft project. 

Today, we made two dozen or so intricate fossil cookies, around 20 sunflower and ladybug cupcakes, 18 custom pet rocks, and finished up some spirit/pom pom gloves and colorful wearable crayon holders. Our house looks like a craft store exploded.

Tomorrow is a craft fair at the kids' learning center, and the kids have been keen on participating. We're as ready as we're going to be. Wish us luck.

FINAL:  This afternoon, we watched the last lectures for our short (four-week) geology course, 

"The Dynamic Earth: A Course for Educators," from the American Natural History Museum via Coursera.  We also took and aced the final test, so now, pending getting passing grades on the field trip reports the kids filed about local geological features, it's just a matter of waiting to get the "graduation" certificate. 

INSTRUMENTAL:  Big news out of NASA over the past couple of days. They have selected the instrumentation that will be on board a probe headed to Europa, the intriguing, icy moon of Jupiter which is suspected to have an expansive saltwater ocean under its frozen crust. 

The NASA/JPL-Caltech photo above is a view of Europa's surface from NASA's Galileo mission. Pretty cool, no?

A new mission to Europa is still in the formulation stage.  The nine science instruments selected for the future mission were listed, as follows in a NASA press release: 

Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) -- principal investigator Dr. Joseph Westlake of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland. This instrument works in conjunction with a magnetometer and is key to determining Europa's ice shell thickness, ocean depth, and salinity by correcting the magnetic induction signal for plasma currents around Europa.
Interior Characterization of Europa using Magnetometry (ICEMAG) -- principal investigator Dr. Carol Raymond of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. This magnetometer will measure the magnetic field near Europa and – in conjunction with the PIMS instrument – infer the location, thickness and salinity of Europa’s subsurface ocean using multi-frequency electromagnetic sounding.
Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) -- principal investigator Dr. Diana Blaney of JPL. This instrument will probe the composition of Europa, identifying and mapping the distributions of organics, salts, acid hydrates, water ice phases, and other materials to determine the habitability of Europa’s ocean.
Europa Imaging System (EIS) -- principal investigator Dr. Elizabeth Turtle of APL. The wide and narrow angle cameras on this instrument will map most of Europa at 50 meter (164 foot) resolution, and will provide images of areas of Europa’s surface at up to 100 times higher resolution.
Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) -- principal investigator Dr. Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas, Austin. This dual-frequency ice penetrating radar instrument is designed to characterize and sound Europa's icy crust from the near-surface to the ocean, revealing the hidden structure of Europa’s ice shell and potential water within.
Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS) -- principal investigator Dr. Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe. This “heat detector” will provide high spatial resolution, multi-spectral thermal imaging of Europa to help detect active sites, such as potential vents erupting plumes of water into space.
MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX) -- principal investigator Dr. Jack (Hunter) Waite of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), San Antonio. This instrument will determine the composition of the surface and subsurface ocean by measuring Europa’s extremely tenuous atmosphere and any surface material ejected into space.
Ultraviolet Spectrograph/Europa (UVS) -- principal investigator Dr. Kurt Retherford of SwRI. This instrument will adopt the same technique used by the Hubble Space Telescope to detect the likely presence of water plumes erupting from Europa’s surface. UVS will be able to detect small plumes and will provide valuable data about the composition and dynamics of the moon’s rarefied atmosphere.
SUrface Dust Mass Analyzer (SUDA) -- principal investigator Dr. Sascha Kempf of the University of Colorado, Boulder. This instrument will measure the composition of small, solid particles ejected from Europa, providing the opportunity to directly sample the surface and potential plumes on low-altitude flybys.

TASTY!: We thoroughly enjoyed today's new-to-us produce experience. It might not be much to look at (my bad, blurry cell phone photo doesn't help), but the golden nugget mandarin is delicious, and definitely a new favorite!

SHE'S GONE:  This weekend, we were sad to learn of the passing of Nina, the beautiful gorilla who lived in Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo since 1968.  

We had seen Nina many times over the years, and it was always a melancholy experience, really, seeing such an intelligent creature forever captive. 

This photo I took of her a couple of years ago reminded me a bit of "American Gothic."

We're sorry she's gone, but I guess she's finally free, in a sense.

SALLY:  Late last night, I was helping CJ with some homework and we pulled up Google and the doodle was the Space Shuttle and its Canada arm.  CJ quickly grew annoyed with me because I kept playing with the doodle, saying, "Canada arm! Canada arm!"

Today, we learned the doodle was one in a series honoring America's first female astronaut, Sally Ride. A victim of pancreatic cancer, she would have been 64 today. 

This morning, we tracked down the story behind the doodle. Doodler Olivia Huynh explains it all here: 
https://youtu.be/AvfpnyRW8Io

PARTY PARK:  There are many, MANY things we already love about Seattle Center and now there is another - the awesome new playground for kids young and old!

I'll let the pictures do the talking ...

AMAZING.