Secret Garden

DIG IT: We're totally enjoying a warm welcome to Spring 2019. 

Yesterday, we visited a "Pea Patch" (community garden) in West Seattle. It's a small spot, easy to miss. But what a treasure! We had a picnic dinner and enjoyed it at a park table and benches. There were ornamental cherries in bloom. So pretty!

And there were lots of beds in baby steps, ready to start producing produce. Cool that part of the garden bolsters an area food bank.

AWESOME OPPORTUNITY: Thursday morning, we tuned into a live STEM in 30 webcast. It featured National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution curator Tom Lassman, who was ready to answer questions and talk about the future of commercial spaceflight. We watched via the STEM in 30 Facebook page, and viewers were encouraged to submit questions as a comment under the video feed post.

We were about 5 minutes late to the broadcast, but late was better than never. I was kind of mortified to see (per the Facebook graphic) that only TEN people were watching. :(

Fortunately, one of the 'ten' was an entire classroom somewhere. But still, seemed like under 50 people for such a cool event. :(

Anyway, we totally took advantage of the situation. CJ is currently enrolled in the Washington Aerospace Scholars program, and his next essay is supposed to be about what kind of aerospace-related career he might be interested in. CJ loves research and history, and is a really strong writer, so he's interested in museum curating and communications as it pertains to aerospace. We were watching via my desktop, so I posted the following question: "My son is interested in working as a museum curator in the future. Any advice from Mr. Lassman about college classes to take or pathways to pursue toward that goal?"

His question was answered post haste, and you can see it in the video below (fast forward to about 17 minutes in). Pretty cool to have access to ask Mr. Lassman a question, and CJ quoting that answer in his essay for Washington Aerospace Scholars will probably look pretty legit. 


Also worth noting: During the webcast, the host pointed people to a Smithsonian website: ISS Science. 

I gave it a brief look and, Wow! We'll definitely be visiting it in the future. Lots of great resources for teachers and engaging information for students of all ages. 

Something Fishy

BIRTHDAY BASK: Tuesday, one day short of spring, the temperature was nearly 80 degrees and it was Ivar's birthday. Both causes to celebrate. :)

If you live in or around Seattle, you know of Ivar's, a chain of seafood-focused fine dining and take out cafe restaurants. March 19th is the birthday of Ivar Haglund. This excerpt from the Ivar's website sums up the genesis of the Ivar's legend. ... 

The story of Ivar's Seafood Restaurants began in 1938 when 33-year old Seattle native Ivar Haglund opened his city's first aquarium on Seattle's Pier 54. Droves of people lined up and paid a nickel to view the sea life that Ivar had collected from the surrounding Puget Sound. Noticing that his patrons often came with an appetite, Haglund began to sell red clam chowder and fish n' chips from the site—an instant success that began his career as a restaurateur.

Smart guy, that Ivar. :)  All of the restaurants in the chain offered buy one (full price), get one entree for $1.14. Great deal! Count us in.

So, the kids (and the dogs!) and I went down to the Renton waterfront Ivars for lunch on Tuesday.  Seems like we were not the only ones with that idea. ;) All totaled, that venture was 45 minutes between waiting in line to order, and waiting for the food. While the kids did the line/food stuff, I managed the dogs, who were pretty unmanageable.

However, the food was good and the sun was delightful and we felt bad that Christian missed it so we went for Round Two when he got home. I stood in line and ordered and waited while the kids and Christian took a lakeside walk.

There is a big deck repair project going on outside of Ivar's.

The work included a patriotic crane. ;)

We checked out the Boeing plant, of course. 

And we thought this 'island' looked like a perfect spot for a future picnic.

EJECTION: Interesting news from asteroid Bennu. Would you believe it's spewing particles from its surface?  Check out this photo, taken on Jan 19, 2019, by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft:

(Image: © NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin)

NASA reports the 1,650-foot-wide Bennu "is one of just a dozen or so known 'active asteroids' — and the only one to be observed up close." 

During a March 19 news conference, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said the discovery "is probably the biggest surprise of the early stages of the OSIRIS-REx mission and, I would say, one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career," 

The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in September 2016 and arrived in orbit around Bennu on New years Eve, 2018. In mid-2020, the probe will descend to the asteroid and collect a sample, which is supposed to be returned to Earth in 2023.

Sunny Days

HOT STUFF: Spring has sprung! ... 

OK, not technically, yet, but Monday was the warmest March 18 on record at Sea-Tac Airport, according to  the National Weather Service.  It was also the warmest winter day on record (spring doesn't really start until March 20), and it was the earliest day in the calendar year to hit temperatures this high. And Tuesday was even hotter, with some thermometers registering 80 degrees!

The daffodils have been pushed out of hibernation and into full bloom. The one below is from a a pair of bulbs I dug up and we brought with us when we moved. I wanted to take them with, because CJ and Annabelle planted them when they were super young, and I couldn't bear to leave them behind.  

The sunshine felt delightful, for sure. The weather definitely spurred us to get our garden going. We planted dozens of wildflower seeds along our driveway, hoping they'll be food for our future bee hive. And we sowed some leek seeds for fun.

The seeds were all a couple of seasons old, so we'll see what happens. We figured putting them in the ground was better than chucking them in the compost bin!

We also got our indoor starts started. Here's hoping we have some pepper, tomato and sprouts soon!

INVESTIGATION: The past couple of weekends, we've spent a few hours getting to know our "new" oven. 

Actually, it's not even close to new. It's an old beauty - a 1962 Frigidaire Flair Custom Imperial.

I think I first saw one in the mid-1960s, on the television show "Bewitched." 

The one "Samantha" is standing at is *just* like the one we now own.

We bought it months and months ago, from a private party on the Olympic Peninsula. The woman said she was told everything worked on it. We had no way to test it (it has a funky old plug), so we had to take her word for it.

It has been sitting in our garage for months now, but we think we have our kitchen remodel pictured, and before we committed to that and built it around this old stove, we wanted to make sure the thing worked. Christian managed to make an outlet for it in the garage. We fired it up and there was good news and bad. The good news was the two front burners and the left/small oven worked. The bad news? The big oven didn't heat up at all. Neither did the back burners. 

Naturally, Christian saw this as an exciting challenge. ;) He dove right in, and I jumped online. 

One thing we learned from the Internet is that these units have a switch in them that won't allow the back burners to turn on unless you have the cooking surface pulled out all of the way.  We made sure that we had the burner unit slid all the way out. It still didn't work. We still suspected it was a switch issue and Christian located the two switches. Lo and behold, one of them was badly broken.

Christian fashioned a splint for it, sandwiching it between two Popsicle-type sticks and secured it with hardcore glue. After the glue dried, he reinstalled the switch, and guess what? It worked! Woo hoo!

There are still a few things to check out on the unit, but overall, we're thrilled that it works as well as it does.

 On one peek inside the unit, I noticed a wiring diagram on its 'ceiling.' 

 That diagram might come in handy in the future. 

The oven needs a super thorough cleaning, but now that we know that it works, we can move forward with our kitchen plans. 

Super Saturday

CEREMONIAL: On Saturday afternoon, we headed to the Rainier Beach Community Center, for an awards ceremony for a t-shirt design contest Annabelle had entered a couple of weeks prior. 

When we arrived, we found Detective Cookie's Chess Club was underway in a room at the center. We all joined in the fun. CJ and Annabelle played against other kids. Christian and I played head-to-head. Playing chess was a nice way to kill time while waiting for Detective Cookie herself to arrive. She came about 1:30, and the awards ceremony began shortly thereafter.

Since January, a contest had been running where people of all ages from all over were encouraged to submit designs for a t-shirt to promote the under-construction Detective Cookie Chess Park.

There were lots and lots of entries. Here are just a few. ... 

And then here was the winning one ...

It was drawn by none other than Annabelle! 

Detective Cookie said she and a couple of other people were judges for the contest. She said they loved that the shirt depicted that chess was for all ages, and that it is about helping people. 

It's worth noting that for her design, Annabelle's chess pieces were inspired by a couple of cool statues in the park by artist Peter Reiquam. 

COMEBACK KIDS: Right after the awards ceremony, we had to race north to Magnuson Park, where Annabelle had an Ultimate (Frisbee) game. The league she plays in has rather atrocious "organization," so, as usual, the field they were supposed to play on at 3:45 was being used by other teams.  Fortunately, Annabelle's team and their opponents were able to find a patch of grass to play on. At one point, Bee and her team were down 5-1, but they managed to fight their way back, and the final score was 5-6. It was a sweet victory! 

WORDY: We play tabletop games all of the time, but it seems like I can almost never convince the family to play word games with me. However, they finally relented and were good for a round of Bananagrams this weekend. It's kind of like Scrabble, in that you make words connecting crossword style. Each player starts with 21 tiles, and makes and many words as they can on the table in front of them. You can reject one of your letters and throw it back in the pool of tiles, but you have to draw three more, then. When you run out of tiles, you 'peel' another letter from the pile, and everyone else has to 'peel,' too, The winner is the one who uses all of their letters and there are only a certain amount of tiles left in the pool (three in our game with four players).

Here were a few of CJ's words.

 And below are some of Annabelle's.

It's a fast, fun game. 

Slice of Life

PI DAY: 3/14, or 3.14 is now recognized as Pi Day. A kind of fun holiday for math and science minded folk. The photo above was posted by Canadian Space Agency Astronaut David-Saint Jacques from on board the International Space Station. Pi Day just happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday, as well. 

Pi, as Wikipedia describes it is "a mathematical constant. Originally defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, it now has various equivalent definitions and appears in many formulas in all areas of mathematics and physics. It is approximately equal to 3.14159."

Here's a fun video about pi


Today, we took a a hundred-plus forks and plates and a big ol' apple pie (thanks, Costco) to a Pi Day celebration. It was impressive listening to some kids who had memorized Pi to the nth (like dozens and dozens) of decimal point number! It was also impressive looking at the dozens of pie plates, with pumpkin, key lime, apple, marionberry and more up for grabs thanks to donations. Super sweet!

UP AND AWAY: Great news from the Soyuz. Today a cosmonauts and two NASA astronauts successfully lifted off from Kazakhstan, destination International Space Station. And thanks to the speedy route that is the norm these days, they've already successfully docked with the ISS!

Two of the folk on board, NASA's Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, were on the mission just a couple of months ago that had a kind of hard fail and rough landing. So glad they were safe and got another shot.

Soyuz MS-12 arrived at the International Space Station at 9:01 p.m. ET, 255 miles just west off the coast of Peru. Image Credit: NASA TV

Calculating

COLLEGE PREP: We're gearing up 'round here for CJ to start Running Start (a state program where high school juniors and seniors can take college courses for free). One part of that is making sure you can qualify for college, and that involves placement tests. Therefore, today we concentrated on was a practice test pertaining to college math placement. (We found it on the Highline College website.)

Let's just say the test was a good reminder that practice is important. It's not that the kids didn't know how to do a lot of the problems, it was just that they hadn't done anything like s few of the test questions in awhile, so some rust needs to be knocked off. And practice can help that, right? For instance, we couldn't remember what the "FOIL" method is for solving an equation.

A quick Google reminded us that it's Firsts Outsides Inner, Lasts. This diagram from Wikipedia helps demonstrate the approach.

None of the math was particularly 'hard,' it was just a matter of familiarizing oneself with some terms. (After all, how often in real life do you calculate the area of a circle? Oh, and if you need to it's π*r-squared.

PARTING SHOT: Likely you already know about the dearly-departed Opportunity rover. Its mission on Mars was declared complete on Feb. 13, 2019, after NASA scientists could no longer communicate with the rover (following an historic dust storm on the Red Planet).

Right up until 'the end,' Opportunity continued to conduct important science operations. For instance, over the span of 29 days last spring, Opportunity documented a 360-degree panorama from multiple images taken from its final resting spot, Perseverance Valley. The photo is now known as "Opportunity Legacy Pan."

This image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018. The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU 

Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward on the inner slope of the western rim of Endurance Crater. The valley is about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavor's rim to its floor.

"This final panorama embodies what made our Opportunity rover such a remarkable mission of exploration and discovery," Opportunity project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a press release.. "To the right of center you can see the rim of Endeavor Crater rising in the distance. Just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent from over the horizon and weave their way down to geologic features that our scientists wanted to examine up close. And to the far right and left are the bottom of Perseverance Valley and the floor of Endeavour crater, pristine and unexplored, waiting for visits from future explorers."

In all, Opportunity spent nearly 15 years on the surface of Mars, exploring. 

Wildlife Walk

ON THE PROWL: Yesterday, we took advantage of free tickets available through our local library system to visit the Woodland Park Zoo.

We haven't been there to see the animals in ages. (The last time we were at the zoo was for a "Zoo Tunes" concert featuring Adam Ant.)

It was chilly yesterday, in the low 40s, when we were walking around the zoo. We weren't sure how many animals would be 'out' given the weather, but were happily surprised to see a good number up and around. Case in point: We stood and watched the lions for several minutes. 

 This guy was lumbering slowly around the savanna exhibit. 

 The lioness was lounging on a large boulder. 

 Eventually, the male approached her.

 He spent several minutes grooming her. 

 They were a pretty pair, to be sure. 

 We also enjoyed an aviary full of colorful birds. Talk about a redhead!

 The penguin enclosure is always entertaining. This guy was a half second away from jumping in the water.

This is our first visit to the zoo since the elephants were sent away (rather awfully), and some rhinos were brought in.

 There is a pair of two-year-old males at the zoo now.

 Their skin looks so much like armor! 

A pair of squishy hippos were laying in the mud, alongside a ducky friend.

This pair of giraffes seemed keenly interested in me. Annabelle speculated it was because I was wearing khaki green, and perhaps they thought I was a zoo keeper.

 We watched warthogs from on high.

This beautiful jaguar paced his enclosure.

 He did the exact same thing last time we saw him. I wonder how much of the day he spends doing that.

I'm always sad when I see the apes at the zoo. It hits too close to home.

 One orangutan was walking around the enclosure shrouded in burlap sacks!

 Somehow, she got her hands on a paper cup. She proceeded to eat it while we watched. Afterward, she draped herself in the burlap again. She looked just like a human putting a shawl on. It was a strange sight to see.

The male silverback gorilla didn't seem too pleased yesterday. Right when we walked up to his enclosure, he jumped toward the crowd and gestured in an aggressive way. Kind of a 'get off my lawn' message, it seemed.

While we were there, a zoo keeper started throwing food (carrots, oranges and sweet potatoes) down to the gorillas. At one point, the gorilla closest to the wall threw food back at her!

 The largest gorilla was such a beautiful, impressive creature.

Truth be told, I'm always a little depressed after visiting the zoo. I know that many of the animals wouldn't be alive if they weren't in the zoo, but it still pains me to see them caged, in effect. The Seattle zoo has nice enclosures, to be sure, but still ... 

It is heartening to read about successful conservation efforts, including the new rhinos at the zoo. 

At the zoo, we were able to 'vote' for the conservation project we were most interested in. We chose saving the gorillas.

 Here's what Annabelle had to say about our zoo visit ...

Yesterday, my family used some free tickets from Seattle Public Library to take a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo. We don't usually visit the zoo due to the ticket prices, so this was a welcome treat. The first thing we noticed was that the grounds themselves seemed a bit lackluster, especially in comparison to similar places such as Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, but besides the subpar landscaping the atmosphere was pleasant.

The animals were remarkably active and noisy despite the cold weather, notably including the lions and the zoo's two brand new rhinos (Taj and Glenn). It was interesting to watch the rhinos explore their exhibit, even attempting to eat off the various stumps and logs scattered throughout.

The other exhibits had little activity, most likely due to the time of day and season. The animals we did see only walked around a bit, though ones in heated enclosures (such as birds in the tropical rainforest segment) were obviously in a better mood. Overall, the zoo visit was a good way to get ourselves out of the house in walking, but somewhat disappointing in terms of visuals and animals.