Happy Camper

IN THE FIELD:  Yesterday, CJ and I took a trip to the Kitsap Peninsula. Our mission was to pick Annabelle up from outdoor school at Camp Seymour, a YMCA facility, in Gig Harbor. Annabelle and her classmates were there Monday midday through Wednesday midday.

Below, she can tell you a bit about her first day there. ...

During my first day at YMCA Camp Seymour, my school group had a number of athletic-focused "classes" across the campsite. The first class we attended among arrival was a high ropes course featuring two wooden structures for campers to climb up with the help of a belay team holding their rope and securing their place in the air. The two climbing structures were Madrona Perch (an old Madrona tree stump that had a very small platform at the top) and Giant Jenga (hanging sets of wooden bars that resembled a massive Jenga tower if you took out every piece except the middle ones). My climbing team only managed to get about halfway on each structure, though I was still proud of myself for continuing even when the sway structures caught me off guard.
The second "class" we had was rather brief. We took a small hike to the campground's zipline, which was reportedly about the size of a small football field. I myself didn't go down the zipline as the large amount of slack in the cord intimidated me, but all of my classmates seemed to have plenty of fun. After returning to the camp and having lunch, we continued with a few smaller tours of camp and familiarizing ourselves with the facility. 

The final activity that day was after dinner, where we headed down to the dock for a canoeing session. This was rather low-key and calm, and even though the seats were a tad cold and wet from earlier rain the canoes were comfortable and easy to use. Since I was in a canoe of three people it was difficult to go in a straight line, though we still managed to go rather fast and devise systems for switching sides at the appropriate times to turn. Overall, the first day was very fun if a tad physically stressful.

Sounds like a fun - and busy - first day at camp.

During my short visit there, I didn't get to see the ropes course or the canoeing, but I did notice some cool light fixtures made using paddles. 

Here's a short video Camp Seymour has posted about their Challenge Course, which Annabelle described above.


And here's a link to a virtual tour: https://www.campseymour.org/about/virtual-tour/

FURTHER AFIELD: Looking for adventure. How about hopping on board a mission to Mars?

OK, so it's in name only, but hey, that's better that than nothing!

Right now, you can sign up to send your name on a microchip that will be Red Planet bound next year as part of the Mars 2020 mission.

The mission will have a new 2,300-pound Mars rover on board. It's scheduled to launch July 2020 at the earliest, with a touch down on Mars in February of 2021.

The rover will be looking for signs of past microbial life, as well as making observations about Mars'  climate and geology. It will collect samples return to Earth at a future date.

From now until Sept. 30, 2019, you can add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars here: https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Pass

Per NASA, "The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to etch the submitted names onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be inscribed on a single dime-sized microchip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover."

You can find out more about Mars 2020 here: https://www.nasa.gov/mars2020

Tuesday Musings

THRIFTY: Today, we popped into a suburban Goodwill for a short treasure hunt. As always, we checked out the vinyl records they had on hand.

It was the usual (STACKS of Glenn Miller, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond, and Barbra Streisand, to name a few 'regulars' in the record bins). I did find one "gem" that made me laugh out loud. ...

I immediately thought the album would make the "best" present for a White Elephant gift exchange at Christmastime. Surely anyone would be overjoyed upon opening it!

CJ found a semi-famous record that you don't usually find at Goodwill. I'll have him tell you more about it.

In 1973, Mike Oldfield, a then-19-year-old English man, composed and recorded Tubular Bells, an album composed of two (mostly) instrumental songs (each of which take up one side each of the album). After a part of Tubular Bells was sampled in the 1973 film The Exorcist, sales of the album skyrocketed, and it hit #1 on the UK album chart.

Today, I got the album at a nearby thrift store, for $1.99. Though it had some scratches, I was able to play it in its entirety.

Musically, Tubular Bells is rather dated to the 1970s. This is probably a consequence of prog-rock falling out of fashion in the wake of more commercial genres such as new wave, as well as less commercial genres such as punk rock. The album features a wide array of instrumentation, nearly all performed by Mike Oldfield. I enjoyed Tubular Bells, but parts of it felt "empty" compositionally, for lack of a better word.

Here's a photo of the album's back, where the instruments are listed.

AWAY: It's a littler quieter than usual around here. Annabelle is away for a couple of days, attending eighth grade camp, at Camp Seymour, near Gig Harbor on the Kitsap Peninsula.

Monday morning, she caught a ride to camp with one of the chaperones. Her schedule for yesterday was as follows: 

Out in the outback for Sack Lunch followed by an afternoon of High Ropes and Dual-Zip
4:45 Walk back in to camp, and move-in to cabins.
5:30 Everyone line up outside the dining hall and take the "FOOD WASTE CHALLENGE!!!"
5:45 DINNER/CHECK IN
7:15 Evening Canoeing led by a Seymour Naturalist
8:30 Return to cabins for Skit practice & cabin time supervised by the Cabin Leaders
Skit practice, camp flags, camp games
10:00 LIGHTS OUT!!! GOOD NIGHT!!!

Here was her schedule for today (Tuesday) ...

7:55  Everyone line up outside the dining hall
8:00 BREAKFAST 9:05 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
9:10 CLASS 3: Sustainable Systems
10:30 CLASS 4: Ornithology 
11:45 Everyone walk together to the ball court. 
11:50 Wash hands for lunch with your cabin groups in the dining hall or shower house
12:00 Line up outside the dining hall
12:05 LUNCH 
1:10 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
1:15 CLASS 5: Beach Ecology
2:35 CLASS 6: Skit Planning in cabins supervised by the Cabin Leaders and Teachers
Self portrait
3:50 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall
4:00  Class 7: Orienteering
5:15 Meet on the stairs outside the Dining Hall to regroup. Once cabin leaders have all of their campers, return to cabins to wash hands for dinner.
5:40 Everyone line up outside the dining hall
5:45 DINNER/CHECK IN     
7:15 Skit Night Campfire led by the School Adults
8:00 Archery led by a Seymour Naturalist
9:00 Return to cabins. Start packing up for tomorrow’s departure!
Camp bracelets, camp t-shirts, camp games
10:00 LIGHTS OUT!!

So it looks like they keep them plenty busy. Too bad the weather isn't a little nicer. At least she won't come home sunburned, though! 

Here's a video about the camp.

IT'S A WRAP: This morning, CJ and I headed over to Birthday Dreams' headquarters. We usually have a cake on board when we do that, but this time, we were answering a call for volunteers to wrap presents.

Neither CJ nor I consider ourselves particularly gifted at wrapping presents, so I was kind of relieved when we were given a stack of gifts for a 1 year old's birthday. I figured a 1 year old would be pretty forgiving about the quality of the wrap job. ;)

Birthday Dreams had lots of cute paper to choose from, and we spent about a half hour wrapping, until there were no more presents to wrap (because a bunch of volunteers answered the call for help). 

Sporty

GIRL ON THE RUN: Sunday morning, Annabelle and I headed down the hill to Renton Stadium. It was the starting point for the Girls on the Run 5K event. Annabelle and others have been training for about 10 weeks for the event. 

I dropped her off at about 8:30 for a start time of 10 a.m. Then, I went home and rousted Christian and CJ, and the three of us went down to a hillside just west of the Renton Municipal Airport, as racers would be passing by on both sides of our lookout spot.

CJ was the first one to spy Annabelle. We waved and shouted encouragement as they headed north up the road running along the west side of the airport. 

Once they had passed, we switched our attention to the opposite direction, as the runners would be looping back by, this time running on the sidewalk and street (which was cordoned off). 

FINALE: On Saturday afternoon, Annabelle played her last Ultimate (Frisbee) game of the season. She got to be one of the team captains and go out for the coin toss before the game. 

The other team was really fun to watch - great passers and catchers, really good at moving the disc down the field. 

I think Annabelle and her teammates finished at a little below .500 for the year. That's actually pretty darn good for them, considering the first year, this group had exactly zero victories. Last year they had a couple, and this year they definitely were competitive most of the time. 

CHECKING IN: Sunday afternoon, it was time to check on the health of the hive. 

The bees have been busy, of course. There's even propolis (that waxy looking stuff) on the top grid of the hive now.

We have two beekeepers' suits. Bee and CJ take turns donning them. This week was Annabelle's turn. CJ and I kept a close watch. Below, Annabelle removes one of the racks from the top portion of the hive. The bees really haven't done anything with that part of the hive yet. They're still filling out the bottom racks. 

 Can you see the honey glistening in the combs?

 These little plugs are mostly future drones.

 We caught a glimpse of our queen. 

Check out this corner chock full o' honey! CJ stuck a finger in and sampled some! He said it tasted like honey. :)  So that's good news. 

DIRTY WORK: This morning we tackled a nasty project. Probably my least favorite housekeeping job. But I was tired of swearing every time I opened the fridge. 

That's right. It was refrigerator cleaning day.

CJ was *super* helpful in the endeavor. He's actually a really excellent cleaner overall. I always tell him that he has the cleanest room of any teenager I've ever known.

Anyway, here are a few of his tips for cleaning out your fridge. 

Cleaning refrigerators is important because it is important to organize one's consumable products in an easy-to-find manner. Often times, if a refrigerator goes long enough without undergoing a cleaning or examination, the contents can become disorganized. Disorganization makes it easy for food to rot unnoticed. Needless to say, it is wrong for food to rot when it can be consumed instead - leaving perfectly good food to rot constitutes a waste.

In order to clean a fridge, a large number of the fridge's contents need to be brought outside of the fridge, and determined whether or not they are still good (this is usually determined by checking the "Best By" date printed on the package). Food that is past its "Best By" date should usually be composted, and containers of food that is still good can be combined into the container of the older product (for example: Two cans of Vegenaise were combined into one during our recent fridge-clean, with all the Vegenaise being put into the older container).

Lastly, it is important that food be organized by category (examples: Dairy, beverages, "pickly stuff", et cetera).

Here's hoping we can stick to our new-and-improved refrigerator process.  

I honestly think there could be a successful business model for a company that just cleans fridges. 

Around Town

DONE DEAL: It occurs to me that while I published some work-in-progress photos of our mermaid-inspired cake for Birthday Dreams, I never posted photos of the finished product.

Above is a frontal view of the two-tiered cake (chocolate brownie on the bottom with chocolate crunch filling, custom confetti on the top tier, with four-berry filling).  The blank white spot on the front is where the birthday girl's name went.

And here's the backside of the cake.

The seaweed and shells and coral were made out of home made modeling chocolate. The mermaid scales were marshmallow fondant. We used a combo of brown sugar and coconut sugar for the "sand."

This was a fun one, and we sure hope the birthday girl loves it!

DOWNTOWN:  Yesterday afternoon, I had the opportunity to be part of a focus group for a potential future video game. My appointment with Fieldwork Seattle was on the 26th floor of a tower on Pike Street. I had a nice view while I waited. 

Fortunately for the kids, who were along with me because we'd just finished up appointments for them at the dentist, GameWorks was only a block away from where I'd be for a couple of hours. So they enjoyed a pizza lunch and 1.5 hours plus of video gaming. 

RIDING HIGH: A couple of nights ago, a photo of a 'high bike' popped up in our local "Buy Nothing" group. I commented, "We'd have fun with that!" I didn't even really ask for it. But ... we got it.

I had to pick it up Tuesday morning. Imagine how thrilled I was when I found out our SUV had a dead battery. That meant we had to try to get the big bike in the Honda Fit. Fortunately, I brought some ropes and we didn't have to go far.

Christian wasted little time in pumping up its tires and hopping on for a test drive.

Somehow, Google magically made a collage of three photos I took of his maiden voyage.

Building Blocks

CLASSY: Today was the very first day one could sign up for classes at CJ's college of choice, South Seattle. So, of course, we were on top of it and had an appointment for 8 a.m. on the first day of sign ups! That guarantees all the class options are still open.

We met with a friendly and competent admissions counselor. She asked CJ a number of questions about his aspirations. He shared that at this point he's interested in library science, and so she helped him chart his course.

As of now, he's officially signed up for three classes (worth a total of 15 credits) this fall. The classes are Japanese, a history course (Renaissance) and a humanities class (film studies with a historical bent). I think he'll really enjoy all three of them.

Above, CJ signs on the dotted line for the classes. Below, he tries to get an ID card to no avail (technical difficulties). We'll give the card a go another day.

WORK IN PROGRESS: So, it's been a whole week or so since the kids made a cake. They're overdue.

We recently perused the Birthday Dreams' website in search of a fun cake project that fits our timing and skill set. The kids picked a mermaid-themed cake for a local 18 year old. 

Today, CJ baked a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake, and Annabelle worked on modeling chocolate accents.

Below, CJ adds an extra touch - some mini chocolate chips in the mocha chocolate filling. 

The top tier of the cake is a custom vanilla confetti cake with 'dazzleberry' filling. Yummy!

Busy Week

CAREFUL CUTTING: As you can tell from this portrait of Kirby, our lawn was overdue for a mowing, so the kids and I got on it first thing Thursday morning.

While cutting our eastern side yard, CJ stopped in his tracks. I asked him what was up and he said he thought he saw a bee fly into the foliage of a dandelion and he didn't want to run over it. 

Good job, CJ!

Without hesitation, Annabelle went over and brushed the leaves with her bare hands and out flew a bee. They repeated this process a few times. 

I love that they are such devoted protectors of the bees! 

You can see our hive in the the background of the photo below, behind Annabelle.

HEAD OF THE CLASS:  On Wednesday night, we headed to the Seattle Pacific University campus. The kids had been invited to speak to a class full of future teachers. The topic was inclusion and equity in education. They (and three other students) each talked about times they saw good and bad examples of each in school settings. 

IN APPRECIATION: Another big project we've had this week has involved appreciating faculty and staff at the kids' former learning center. Tuesday, we were in charge of hosting a luncheon for them. We were expecting a couple dozen guests, and had decided on a garden party theme.

We rolled some napkins into roses for the occasion.

And we baked three kinds of cupcakes (vegan, gluten free, and 'regular').

We hauled half of our house to the school on Tuesday morning. This was less than half of the pile. 
Would you believe we even brought all of our plates and silverware? I wanted to serve the lunch on real plates, with real silverware, instead of paper or plastic. Not only does it feel fancier, it's better for the environment.

We got to school at about 10, and hauled our carload of stuff into school to the room we were assigned to hold the event in. Once in the room, the first thing I wanted to do was set up the folding tables that are "always" stashed in a cupboard in that room. Except for that day. There wasn't a table to be seen! 

I come to find out someone had taken ALL of the tables out of that room. Hmm. How to do a sit-down lunch and a big salad bar with no tables? That wasn't going to happen. So we had to scrounge tables from elsewhere in the school, and that set us back about 40 minutes in our two hour set up time. Needless to say, things got a little hectic.

Once we had tables, we covered them in grass-print table cloths, and decorated them with huge floral arrangements (that another mom generously brought). We put out our rose napkins and also lined the middle of the tables with about 30 tomato, peppers and herb plants the kids and I had started from seeds weeks ago. The plants' pots all had little 'adopt me' signs stuck in them. 

We'd asked the community for donations for the salad bar, and boy did they deliver. It was amazing the amount and quality of the ingredients. Lots of lettuce, three kinds of meat, three cheeses, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, olives, garbanzo beans, corn, croutons, sprouts, bacon bits, cottage cheese, potato salad and more. They all had a hearty lunch, and I even had take out containers so they could load up another meal for later. 

We even put together a 'Garden Party' playlist of music (songs about flowers, mostly). 

All in all, it was a nice event, if I do say so myself.

Clean up was kind of a bear, even with some great help. The kids and I and our dirty dishes managed to be back in our car by about 2:30. Of course, none of us had eaten any lunch, so we scrounged from a couple of leftover bags of stuff we had donated. 

Nothing like a fist full of bacon bits for lunch, right CJ?

Checking In

ON THE INSIDE: A couple of days ago, we opened the hive to take a peek. 

Boy, have our bees been busy!  Below is what the top of the racks looked like. The bees are even putting comb on top, and you could see some honey (right side of photo)!

 It's cool to see their new constructs.

And man, of man, there are so many more bees now than there were when we first picked up our hive! And many more are to come, based on the larva cells we could see. 

Spy the holes covered in gold below? That's capped brood (future bees - in metamorphosis stage between pupa and adult bee). 

They're so crowded in there, I don't see how they do their work! I certainly wouldn't enjoy such cramped working conditions.

Look at these four bees in the center of the photo below. It looks like some sort of teamwork, doesn't it? They're drawing new comb, which means they're building the actual honeycomb by exuding wax from their wax glands, chewing it up and then depositing it. 

 See the little button like formations below? Those are future drone bees. 

And note the bright yellow 'plug' in the comb below. That's pollen - the bee's pantry, if you will. 

CJ and Christian were the beekeepers for this visit. I questioned their clothing choice. Shorts seemed like a bad idea to me. ... 

And sure enough, bees started crawling all over Christian's legs. I admire his self control to not start freaking out, and I appreciate the fact the bees didn't sting him. They were just going about their business.

This coming weekend we'll take another peek. Can't wait to see the changes between now and then.