UPWARD SPIRAL: There was an estate sale in the neighborhood today. There were the usual items (Christmas ornaments, kitchenware, and garden tools), none of which we needed. But stacked on a shelf in the living room we discovered a gem - a "new" Spirograph. Incredibly the 50 year old set was complete, right down to original papers and pens.
The kids test drove it straightaway once they got it home. No surprise, the ink in the half century old pens was dried up. However, the rest of it was good to go.
The kids started with some of the simpler designs.
It took a bit to get into the groove (literally) of the art tool. Playing with it sure brought back fond memories for me!
YOU SAY POTATO: A few weeks back, Bee planted her Martian (yes, really, in a way) potato. In this BREAKING NEWS announcement, the Earthbound potato is growing. The signs of life above the surface are about the size of a dime.
Stay tuned for further developments.
BACK TO THE BARD: Come Monday, we'll be checking out Shakespeare's First Folio at Seattle Public Libraries' Main Branch. Given that, we brushed up a bit more on the Bard today by watching a couple of videos. We started with good ol' BrainPOP, which the kids always love. https://youtu.be/uxPVVEq0E5I We also checked out a video, "Draw His Life," posted as part of a school project by ErikHFilms on YouTube.
PAROLED: Looks like an airport gate waiting area, doesn't it? In my case, it ended up being a ticket to nowhere - "it" being the juror pool holding bunker at the King County Courthouse.
I call it a bunker because it's completely devoid of any windows, skylights or natural daylight of any kind. And it's full of bad carpet and upholstery and 'inspirational' posters. I spent hours and hours here this week, along with hundreds of other fellow citizens. During that time, only 20 were called to potentially be jurors. The experience (which paid a whopping $10 a day, which is ridiculous) left me wondering how long it's been since anyone did the math regarding how potential juror pools are summoned. Anyway, we did our part and won't have to go back again for another year, at the least. Happy to serve, truly, but not happy with the process, whatsoever.
DOING THE DUTY: Today was not normal. It was not normal in the sense that I spent it encased in an unfamiliar building, in a room with ugly carpet and no windows, surrounded by a 100 plus strangers and doing NOTHING. Welcome to jury duty.
I've actually kind of always wanted to be called to serve. But today changed my mind about that, LOL. I knew it wouldn't be the courtroom drama one sees on TV, but I was hoping for something more than, well nothing. Out of the enormous pool of dozens upon dozens of potential jurors, not a single person was actually called to potentially serve on a panel. I explained my experience to the kids and Annabelle recreated it in this sketch.
I purposely sat in a far off corner of the room. My nearest seat neighbor was about 20 some years my elder and he was also purposely sitting in a remote corner of the room, I'd guess. About every 28 minutes he'd mutter something under his breath to no one in particular, and it would always be peppered with profanity. When the Person in Charge of the jurors' pool announced we were released for the day, the gentleman turned to me and said, "I missed my bridge lesson for this?!" I commiserated with him and he went on to mumble that he was too old to learn bridge anyway. At that, I actually disagreed with him, and said science has proven that games like bridge are very good for the brain. I had my "I Heart NASA" bag over my shoulder, so hopefully that gave me some kind of scientific street cred. Can't wait to go back tomorrow! In other news, random shot of pretty tree against cool main branch of Seattle Public Libraries.
While I was doing NOTHING, Christian and the kids did the daily something at MPA. I trust their day was more entertaining than mine.
SATURDAY SONGS: On Saturday afternoon, we headed to the heart of the city, destination Town Hall. Our reason for going was to see a concert by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter-illustrator Morgan Taylor, creator of Gustafer Yellowgold, an intriguing character who immigrated to Earth from the sun. We were a little early thanks to uncharacteristically light traffic and no trouble finding parking, so we checked out a park across from the venue for a few moments. It was our first visit there.
Surrounded by skyscrapers, it's a good-sized urban oasis. We bet it's full of office people on break during the work week.
Eventually, we wandered back across the street to the concert venue. Taylor was standing near the merch table and recognized the kids as soon as we walked in. CJ and Annabelle were fortunate enough to spend a week last summer in a songwriting workshop with him. Taylor told Annabelle he still has the Gustafer Yellowgold art she made him (a melted Perler bead project) as a thank you for the workshop. In fact, the gift is on his fridge! How high an honor is that? Having your artwork on an artist's fridge - that's the big time! :) We talked to Taylor for awhile, including about a book project CJ and Annabelle just finished. During the show, he shared that his third grade report card complained that Morgan is often in the back of the class, drawing and singing to himself. I'd say that turned out OK. ... The concert was fantastic, as always. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fc93VQ87hNk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> ART DEPARTMENT: As always, our days have been filled with arts and crafts as of late. CJ is a campaign manager/strategist for a local school girl running for class president, so he worked on some promotional materials.
Annabelle worked on posters, too, but also created some original characters, just for fun. At one point she needed just the right brown, but had none in her supply bag. She asked me if perhaps I had something that would work. Lucky for her, I like brown lipstick. ...
It worked just great for Tuffy the Teddy Bear.
She also created a character that embodied trepidation.
SNOW ZONE: Friday we took a far afield trip to Crystal Mountain, about 2.5 hours southeast of Seattle, in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. As we walked up to the ski area from the parking lot, harsh winds pelted our faces and sucked the air from our lungs. We feared we wouldn't be able to manage a day on the mountain. Fortunately, within a half hour things had settled substantially.
Between nine a.m. and noon, the hill in the background of the photo below became CJ and Annabelle's 'home.' (It's looking east, toward the still rising sun.)
Below is a view to the south. So many pretty peaks!
The kids spent about 2.5 hours in a lesson. Some of the time was better than others. Below CJ was doing OK on the barely-downhill-decline.
And below, Annabelle wound up in a mound on the conveyor belt 'lift' for the hill. Oops.
And then her hair got caught in the instructor's zipper. :/
But they caught on before long, and were ready for the chairlift by noon. Bee is with Glenn below, while Christian and CJ are bringing up the rear.
GREEN SCENE: OK, so it's not the Breakfast of Champions (TM, I'm sure), but what could be more appropriate for a St. Patrick's Day morning meal than special shamrock-themed Lucky Charms with a side of gold coins? (We'll go back to kale smoothies tomorrow, really!) Predictably, we had corned beef going in the crockpot before 9 a.m., right after finishing the 'magically delicious' breakfast you see above. (And yes, the milk did turn green, for the record.) The golden Oreos were an experiment of sorts. We'd seen a 'recipe' for them online (spray Oreos with golden food coloring in a can), but tried our own twist. For starters, we started with Golden Oreos instead of the traditional brown ones. I knew that had to make our task easier. Here they are in their "natural" state.
On some, we used Wilton's "Color Magic" spray. On others, we used a less-widely available product, "Edible Gold Spray" by Chefmaster.
On some, we applied superfine gold dust (suspended in clear vanilla).
On others, we sprinkled on edible gold flakes for extra bling.
In the end, we decided we really liked the color of the Chefmaster spray better (it was more gold, as compared to the Color Magic's more orange tone). We also decided to try our hands at making Irish soda bread.
We found a highly-rated recipe on the Food Network, by chef Ina Garten. We followed the instructions carefully, but found them lacking. For instance, the ingredient list calls for currants, but it doesn't say what to do with them (how to prep them or when to add them to the mix). We did have instructions regarding when to add the orange zest (or Clementine, in this case, since that's what we had on hand).
Also, the recipe tells you to "dump the dough onto a well-floured board and knead it a few times into a round loaf." Well, OK, but it would have been nice to know how many times she meant by 'a few'. "Few" is standardly thought of as five, but kneading the dough just five times seems like that wouldn't be enough.
Also, she didn't say how big around or thick your raw round loaf should be. Should it be 5x5 or 12x2 or? Pretty big omission, IMHO. Fortunately, our loaf turned out OK. Actually, it was delicious.
When we took our walk past the neighborhood's Irish pub this afternoon, I told the kids that in Chicago, they dye the river running down the middle of their city green. They'd never heard of such a thing, so when we got home, we found a YouTube video (by Dan O'Leary, courtesy of ChicagoStPatsParade.com) showing the process.
We could see men in a boat tossing an orange-y powder into the water, and immediately wondered what it was.
I had the kids do some research, and they learned that back in the day (the 1960s, when the tradition started), fluorescein was used to get the job done. For environmental considerations, years later, the dye was changed to a vegetable-based product.
WOODSY WALK: It was beautiful (these days, that means it wasn't torrential rain or gale force winds) this morning, so we decided to go a bit afield for our walk. We headed just a couple miles west of home, to Discovery Park.
Knowing there's a not-much-used full court basketball court in the park, we brought a ball along. The kids played one-on-one for awhile, but then they switched to just shooting. I explained the game of H-O-R-S-E to the kids, and they gave it a go. I think they each got an H and an R before calling it quits.
I also demonstrated the unique underhand free throw technique, and was proud of myself for remembering it was Rick Berry who shot that way in the NBA. And before anyone starts making fun of Berry's 'granny' style, you should know that in his 14 years in the NBA he made 90 percent of his free throws. Nothing to snark at, is it? (In case you're wondering, about 75 percent is the average rate of free throw success in the NBA.) If you want to see the keys to Berry's success, check out this oldish tutorial on video:
The beloved zip line the kids have screamed along on for the past 9 or so years is long gone. Oh no! They were sad pandas, for sure. A sign filled in a couple of blanks for us.
However, we still have questions. First of all, obviously construction of the new zipline isn't complete (it's a month past Feb. 15). Second, we're wondering how in the world we never heard about the play part of the park getting a renovation. I'm pretty plugged in to social media sources in these parts and we've not heard a peep about it. We did spy this little sign, giving us an online opportunity to give us some input, and we each took the survey this afternoon.
I sure hope that somehow we are notified about the public hearing when it happens. We're happy they're putting another zipline it, but we're also fairly certain the new one is not going to be anywhere near as big, and it surely won't have that same exciting 'is this old thing safe?' feel about it, ha ha. ABSOLUTELY: Our math homework this afternoon left us wondering, "why does anyone even care about or use absolute values?" Fortunately, we're able to hop into the Internet and quickly learn that there's more to think about rather than just stripping the negative off a number. Really simply put, absolute value is about how far a given number from zero on a number line. We watched this catchy video, from Shmoop, first.
WAY BACK MACHINE: On this day (Mar. 16) in 1966, NASA pulled off an important first.
Photo: NASA
Neil Armstrong was command pilot when he and pilot David Scott
successfully docked their Gemini VIII spacecraft with the Agena target
vehicle, marking the first time two spacecraft were linked together in Earth orbit.
