Friday Follies

COLORFUL: Annabelle was scheduled to have her favorite Art 2 Go class this morning, compliments of Gage Art Academy, but when the class start time came and went, she hadn't been sent a link (via email) to the Zoom meeting yet. That was upsetting to her, so we started working the angles (fortunately I was on a short break from work at the time).

Annabelle tried calling Gage, but there was no answer. I suggested she email the person who has been sending her the links. She did that, while I sent them a message via Facebook Messenger. 

Lo and behold, within about 5 minutes, we'd each received a response, and she was emailed a link, so that was great. 

Today's class was creating a colorful pattern with watercolors. When I saw it, I said to Annabelle, "That would be really pretty on the front of a card." Turns out that's just what the art instructor said she does from time to time. My photo above doesn't really do the painting justice. In person, you can see a lot more variation and depth in the colors.

WITH MY EYES CLOSED: Once a week, for his Japanese 3 class, CJ has to submit an oral test. He has to answer pre-recorded questions from his professor. This week, he got extra credit if he did it with his eyes closed/covered.

The questions he answered this week were

• What do you want to have for dinner tonight?
• Where do you want to go for summer vacation?
• What did you want to be when you were a kid?
• Have you ever been to Japan?

His answers were salad, Seattle, musician, and no.

When I saw the video, which Christian filmed, I couldn't help but ask them both, WHY WOULD YOU COVER YOUR MOUTH FOR A SPEAKING TEST? Yes, CJ was supposed to have his eyes covered to prove he wasn't reading the answers, but his mouth?! He doesn't see with his tongue, he speaks with it. I mean, based on this video, for all the professor knows, it's not even CJ. Geez.

SWEET STREET: We've been taking quick walks during my lunch break this week. On today's walk, we found this message on a patch in the road on the dead end a block to our north.

It's a little hard to read (it rained last night), but it says Stay Safe Seattle. 

We're trying. 

Going Up

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

ROCKET WATCH: New photos from the Space Coast ahead of the historic manned mission set to launch in less than a week now!

Below, you see the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped by the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft as it's carefully tipped into a vertical position on the launch pad at historic Launch Complex 39A ahead of the May 27 Demo-2 mission, sending a manned spacecraft heading to the International Space Station. Lift off is scheduled for 1:33 p.m. Pacific time.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

These two astronauts,  Robert Behnken, left, and Douglas Hurley, will be the pioneering people inside the Dragon capsule. Hurley was also on board the very last space shuttle launch, in 2011.

                                                                Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

We can't wait to watch!

TO DO LIST: While we've managed to cross off a good number of things on our home improvement to do list 'thanks' to the pandemic, there's still plenty to do. In fact, the mail brought foreshadowing of two future projects.

One thing that showed up was a flooring sample I'd ordered. Check out the bold pattern below. It's called Madison Avenue Green & Grey.

And no, I'm not talking about the filthy, aged, mustard colored icky print original to the house. I'l talking about the geometric-printed square atop it. There are things I like lots about it, but I'm not 100 percent sold. I need to go online and see what it looks like in a full sized room.

Speaking of patterns, some fabric I ordered over two months ago finally showed up today. I *love* it!

Right now it's just draped over this chair's cushions. It will be placing plain brown corduroy. 

My mask making might have to take a back seat for a bit while I get the cushion covers sewn up!

In Brief

MORNING WORK: While I was in training for the new job, CJ and Annabelle were busy in classes. First up was Japanese. There was a video lecture and then some workbook pages to do. 

A bit later, Annabelle had an art class. The theme was painting your pandemic (pet) buddy.

So, yeah, we have two of our own dogs she could have painted, but Annabelle went with the best boys, the Dobie brothers, Pretzel and Strudel. First there was a sketch.

And here's the photo that inspired it. Yes, both of the Dobermans (Dobermen?) are on my bed in the picture. It's from a couple of years ago - I was doggy sitting while Christian and the kids were off chasing a total eclipse of the sun!

Anyway, Annabelle wasn't real happy with the class. She said the teacher was going way too fast, and she wasn't happy with the final product, especially Pretzel's face. 

I told her not to sweat it - not every at bat is a home run, that's for sure! And I'm sure she learned something(s) during the process. 

Changes

WHOLE NEW WORLD: Well, because we here at MPA don't have quite enough going on, I thought it would be a great time for me to get a full time job. (What was I thinking?)

It's kind of ironic - at a time where unemployment is at an all-time high in my lifetime, I somehow landed a job. I'll be helping process unemployment claims for the state. I used to work for the Employment Security Department back in the day (early 2000s), and a former manager told me about the need for help now, so I applied, interviewed, was offered a job and yesterday I drove down to Lacey to pick up my equipment. Annabelle rode with me and we made a fun little trip out of it. After getting the gear, we headed a half hour further south and picked up some Papa Pete's pizza - a favorite of ours when we lived in Southwest Washington. We had a little time to kill before the pizza parlor opened, so I had Annabelle do an Internet search for a nearby park. Turned out there was one just a block away. 

It was a really pretty spot. Nice big playground (closed due to COVID), pristine softball fields, a 44,000 square foot skatepark, paths, enormous trees, and . It's called Rotary Riverside Park.

The 4.5 acre park is along the banks of the Skookumchuck River. This park is now home to the city’s 44,000-square-foot regional skatepark and provides a wide range of active and passive recreational opportunities

The best part about the park? It had a bathroom that was open!

So, these are things you have to think about these days, when you're road tripping during a pandemic. Where can you use a restroom? I was not wanting to go into a Walmart or similar to use a public bathroom. Too many people, too much air-borne ick (picture a COVID volcano every time a toilet with no cover flushes).

I was actually thrilled to see the 'normal' bathrooms were closed and portable toilets were on site. No flushing. No COVID volcano! That, and we drove back into the park and found a toilet that appeared like it hadn't been used at all. Plus, we were prepared with paper towels, a spray bottle of disinfectant, hand sanitizer, gloves, etc. 

The trip was brief - we left home about 8 and were home by 12:30. I went right to work, filling out all kinds of 'paperwork,' checking the technology, reading about the agency, etc.

Today was hours of mandatory training videos (everything from ethics to harassment to mental health). Tomorrow, I get to learn about the actual work I'll be doing. In an 8-hour Skype meeting. :0

THE LOOP: The kids each had online classes this morning (Japanese for CJ and Annabelle, and then a writing class for Bee), but we all had a little break around noon, so we did the loop around our neighborhood.

I want to take this moment to say how beautiful the shrub along our driveway is. It's absolutely exploding with papery pink blossoms.

I'm going to have to use Google lens to try to find out what it is. Or, does anyone out there know?!

We were also surprised by these orange beauties. We have some other orange poppies, but I think these are California poppies, from what I've seen on a couple of gardening lists. 

I honestly don't remember having these before this year. But they're all over they neighborhood. Glad some wound up in our yard.

One of our neighbors has a showplace type yard. These pink pretties were blooming there today.

Do you see the blurry bumblebee in the foreground?

And then had this flower tower. At a distance, I thought it was foxglove/digitalis, but it's some crazy spire of purple flowers. I need to research this one, too. 

Somehow, MPA has turned into a bit of a gardening blog. Guess that's what happens when we can't go meet astronauts and go to concerts and ball games and so on.

Forty

POP TOP: May 18 ... If you lived in the Pacific Northwest (US) 40 years ago, that date is forever etched into your memory. It's the day Mt. St. Helens blew its top. Even a hundred-plus miles away, the ground shook. The plume that shot up was both magnificent and terrifying. Fifty seven souls were lost that day. 

When I came across this vintage ash tray made from ashes from that eruption a few months back at a local Value Village store, I just had to have it, even though the last thing we need is an ash tray. 

Last night, shortly before the clock struck midnight, ushering May 18 and the 40th anniversary of the eruption in, I posted a photo of it to a wildly entertaining and engaging Facebook page,  "Weird Secondhand Finds That Just Need To Be Shared." 

The response? Phenomenal. Wow ... As of this writing, over 900 people shared their St. Helens stories on the post. It was so educational. Living in Southwest Washington when it erupted, we had not exactly a front row, main level seat, but front row first balcony. ;) And in those pre-Internet days, the news we read and saw, was very locally-focused. In reading the comments on my post, I learned the ash carried far and wide (there were reports from Wisconsin to Arkansas and beyond). And the sky changed all over Europe. 

St. Helens isn't sending plumes of ash 50,000 feet into the air right now, but it's also not dormant. 

This website contains really interesting data about the current state of affaris on St. Helens.
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/st_helens/monitoring_map.html

OLD SCHOOL ENTERTAINMENT: So, there's still a pandemic, and we're still mostly staying home. Fortunately, we have a couple of new-but old school-things to help keep us entertained.

My sister and I spent hours and hours playing a water-based 'arcade' game when we were kids. You push a button and a jet of water moves little balls around in a vessel. It sounds stupid, but it's really pretty engaging. Relaxing, even.

 Last Thursday this was delivered to our doorstep. A turquoise manual typewriter!

It was a Mother's Day present from Rick and Rachel. We set it up on the dining room table and started to plunk away at its keys. I forgot how physically hard it is to use a manual typewriter. You have to really pound those keys.

When I opened it, I realized that for Rick, some of his very earliest memories must be of sitting on my lap as I balanced him and tapped typewriter keys whilst working on college papers. That was a bit ago. ... Sweet memory. :)

BIG BEE: Saturday afternoon, Christian and I were running an errand that took us by the Renton Municipal Airport. As we were stopped at a red light nearby, I glanced over at the planes parked there (as I always do) and saw yellow and black stripes. I asked Christian to pull into a parking lot overlooking the airfield so we could get a better look. 

Well I'll be - it was a bee plane! 

According to Wikipedia, Buzz was "a British low-cost airline operating services within Europe. It operated from 2000 until 2004 as a subsidiary of KLM and then Ryanair."

So wow, seems like we spotted a really rare plane - especially for these parts! 

Freddie Friday

BECOMING: In the never-ending effort to get the kids off screens and outside, today I handed Annabelle a book and told her to find a sunny spot to read the preface and the first chapter.

She didn't protest at all, and I found her out on the swing, reading Michelle Obama's "Becoming." So, yay for that.

We took the dogs for a loop around the neighborhood around lunch time. The Jerusalem Sage at the bottom of our driveway are starting to blossom. Such strange plants!

WATERCOLORS: This morning, Annabelle had yet another Art2Go session compliments of Gage Academy of Art. The theme was watercolor leaves, and the instructor was Willow Heath.

I thought these leaves were pretty lovely! (The photo doesn't do them justice!)

EMPTY NESTERS: Two days ago, CJ and I were on the back patio, dragging a hose around to water some of our started-from-seed vegetable plants that now live outside. During this, a cute little brown bird was watching us carefully, at close distance. I predicted to CJ that the bird was either hurt and couldn't fly, or that it had a nest nearby, and it wanted us gone.

The next day, Christian and I were on the patio, and I saw that same little bird. With straw in its mouth. It landed on a railing next to me, then flew up under the eaves, and to the nest it was building on ... on top of our folded-up ping pong table. Silly bird. 

We decided we could forgo ping pong for a couple months (or however long the birds would be around), but the other major drag is that the spigot for our hose is behind the table, and turning that on and off without jostling the nest would be dicey.

I've been watching for the birdie all day (including when I was working with the hose), and it seems to have flown the coop, so to speak. Maybe it realized that a nest perched on a ping pong table wasn't its best bet. 

Meanwhile, downstairs, the plant start situation is kind of out of control. We keep separating and transplanting starts as their size requires. It's like they're multiplying, though. I finally had CJ count them today. Are you sitting down? ...

We have 93. Yes, you read that right. Oops. Hope the neighbors and our friends are up for some. Only a portion of the plants are pictured here.

THEY WILL ROCK YOU: Midday, the kids and I sat in front of the TV. That's not something we do very often during a 'normal' school day. However, this was a special occasion. On the band Queen's official YouTube page, they were streaming "The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness" as a fundraiser to help anti-COVID efforts.
At first, it felt pretty self indulgent sitting there watching a Queen concert when there was schooling and work to be done. However, after just a few minutes, I realized that it had turned into a history lesson for the kids, as I was continuing to offer factoids about who and what they were seeing.

They saw a parade of rock legends, from Roger Daltry to Robert Plant. I pointed out people not familiar to them, but who were pivotal in the rock music world, like Ian Hunter and Mick Rock, to name two.

I told CJ that the historic concert took place on his birthday, April 20, but in 1992, long before he was around. The kids were wowed by the size of the crowd. A sold-out Wembley Stadium had 72,000 in attendance, but over a billion people watched the concert as it aired live around the world. That was a record for a live television broadcast event at the time. (And it was back before shows could be live-streamed on the Internet.)
I told them that the tribute to Queen's Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS on 24 November 1991, raised over $38 million dollars, and the funds were used to launch The Mercury Phoenix Trust. To this day, the trust is a core part of Queen and Freddie’s legacy and, over the years, the nonprofit has helped support over 1,000 projects in 57 countries in the ongoing fight against AIDS worldwide.
I told them that none of us knew it at the time, but that concert would be the last one Queen's John Deacon would play with his band mates. (Drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Brian May are still touring to sold out arenas. We've been fortunate to see them three times!)

It struck me watching the show how many of the people on that stage are now gone. David Bowie and George Michael, to name two. Bowie's performance of "Under Pressure" with Annie Lennox was exquisite.


And George Michael? That concert was perhaps the zenith of his performing career. His performance of "Somebody to Love" was shockingly good. It brought the house down. (Michael's own body of work was so fully of cotton-candy songs, who knew he could actually SING like THAT?!)


One thing I did not understand in 1992 when the concert first aired, and I still don't understand 28 years later, is why Robert Plant wore his mother's blouse and scarf for the show (ha ha).


Another thing I pointed out to the kids was how terrified Axl Rose of Guns 'n Roses looked when he took the stage alongside Elton John. I told them the back story to that, which involved Axl's homophobic comments on more than one occasion. But rather than reject him, Elton reached out to Rose, educated him, and helped Rose shed at least some of his ignorance. But how would Freddie fans react to Rose on stage? They graciously accepted his presence, likely mostly because he was alongside Elton John, a champion for those suffering from AIDS, from the very beginning. 

As I sit here typing this, there is an ad on TV right now for treating HIV, the cause of AIDS, so effectively that it's not detectable in one's system. We've come a long way, but sadly it wasn't here soon enough to save Freddie.

Ups and Downs

LAUNCHIVERSARY: On this day 10 years ago, we four were sitting on the ground on the Causeway, waiting for the thrill of a lifetime, the launch of STS-132, a space shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

We'd flown down to Florida with tickets and high hopes, as launches don't always go off as scheduled due to weather, technical difficulties or any number of things that can go wrong.

However, Lady Luck was on our side and the went off without a hitch. It was such a sight to behold!

Today, we watched the video I filmed during the launch. It's not the greatest footage. I was concentrating on watching the launch with my own two eyes, plus taking some photos and shooting some video. That said, I'm glad we have it as a keepsake. 

Speaking of manned spaceflight, the SpaceX launch of two astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station is just two weeks away! I'm a part of a Facebook group counting down to that launch, and everyone is so excited! Multiple people posted links to a 'game' they're playing online right now. It's a simulator where you try to dock the Dragon capsule to the ISS. The site allows you to familiarize yourself with the controls of the actual interface (!) the NASA astronauts will use to dock. "Movement in space is slow and requires patience & precision," the site notes. Pretty cool!

INSIDE JOB: Yesterday evening, CJ cracked open his computer's case and gave it a good dusting. (Boy, was it dirty in there!) Also, under Christian's tutelage, CJ installed a new WiFi adapter card in the box. 

It's good to get to know your computer's guts!

TRYING FRYING: Our pandemic kitchen adventures continue. A new tool in our arsenal is a shiny air fryer that I received for Mother's Day.

Last night we tried homemade fries in it for the first time. They were crisped up and gloriously golden within 20 minutes. 

After dinner, we did some old fashioned frying, oil and all.

Annabelle had stumbled across a two-ingredient recipe for donut balls. How easy does that sound? What could possibly go wrong?

The recipe called for a cup of self-rising flour and 6.5 ounces plus 1/2 tablespoon of plain Greek yogurt. We didn't have self-rising flour, so made our own by adding a little baking powder and salt to all purpose flour. We stirred that and the yogurt together and got our first indication that this wasn't the greatest recipe. The dough looked terrible - way too stiff and flour-y. We decided to give it a go anyway.

We were instructed to heat our oil to 325 F. It seemed to be taking a loooong time, and the thermometer was just in the high 100s. I finally did the old school test where you drop a few droplets of water into hot oil to see if it starts sizzling. It about leapt out of the pan at us. I think it was about that time Christian appeared in the kitchen with a fire extinguisher. ;)

Knowing that the oil was *plenty* hot, we started dropping dough balls (well, lumps, really) into the oil. The first ones burned in less than two seconds, I'd say. 

I removed the pan from the heat, and we dropped some more. Eventually, they got lighter, which was good. 

What was not good was their taste. They were just ick, even with chocolate and strawberry icing on them. 

So, we won't be making these again any time soon!