Nationals Stadium Tour

As part of my trip out to the DC area for work, I got the very exciting opportunity to take a tour of the still-under-construction new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, courtesy of a friend of a Goddard colleague who works for the architectural firm building the 41,000 seat venue in southeast DC, near the Navy Yard. It was right up my alley, getting to see a lot of the behind the scenes parts of a large, baseball related building, and in addition to being a nice escape from the work atmosphere of Goddard, was very very cool. That picture at the top is myself and Chad, our Goddard friend who arranged the tour via his friend.

Despite this picture-heavy post, I have a few more up on my Picassa page if you want to check them out. On to some of the cool things that I thought were worth mentioning here.

First off was the training room and hot-tub area. Check out the 5-foot deep hot-tub with the treadmill at the bottom. I guess it's for rehabbing leg/knee type injuries while eliminating the impact of actual running.

The showers were kind of amusing too - in that they were no different than the showers in your high school's gym locker room. We at least expected something a little more luxurious.

Can you guess what this room is? That's right, it's the Chapel. Yep, a chapel. I guess many teams have rooms for pre-game prayer, meditation, mental preparation, etc. Not exactly what I expected to hear when I asked what this empty windowless cell of a room might be. Also, I guess chapels need a lot of bandwidth these days.

The clubhouse itself was, not surprisingly, a highlight. Just think, the locker I sat in could be occupied by Ryan Zimmerman or Lastings Milledge in just a couple months! This room is oval-shaped by design, to avoid relegating any one player to a corner and fostering a sense of team equality and continuity. Note the nice touch of the Louisville Sluggers accenting the dividers between lockers. The carpet in the center has a big Nationals "W" logo under the paper, and those little cubbies at the base of the two big columns will soon hold each player's fan mail.


After the clubhouse, we moved onto a tour of all the super-fancy lounges and suites. This particular one is for the real big-wigs, and opens out to seats right behind home plate. It's (or will be) pretty swanky, and has a wall that looks right down into the Nats' underground batting cage area, kind of like a glass-walled racquetball court. Those wooden things that look like hanging shelves will have backlit etched glass letters hanging in them to spell "Nationals" when they're done in there. It was dark because the power was off for some construction related reason, and the workers were all walking around with headlamps. Definitely not going to see the inside of this room ever again, unless I win the lottery.

Moving outside, we walked around the stands and down to field level, but didn't go on the field because it does have the grass on it now, protected from the cold by the white sheeting (no, that's not snow). The press box behind home plate seems relatively bland to me, except for the garish hue of red paint they chose to emblazon it with. I'm told most of that red will be covered with banners/ads/logos/etc soon, but our guide agreed that it's pretty bad and told me they have asked that it be changed to a better shade.

The jumbotron in right field is supposedly the biggest one in any stadium now, and after seeing it I believe it. It totally dwarfs the field, to the extent that I can imagine it being somewhat distracting. Sitting along the first base line that thing would look as big as the rest of the field. The "W" logo hanging off the right side of the scoreboard structure is a clock, and the black part of the right field wall is another screen that will display nightly game scores. Unfortunately the intended view of the capitol building from the first base side is now blocked by a big ugly parking garage. Bummer. But it is cool how all the seats are angled to face the infield for a better view.

The design of the concourses seems to have drawn from AT&T Park (Giants) and the other neo-vintage stadium designs in that they are pleasantly open on the inside and outside, giving them an airy feel and maintaining great sightlines down to the field all the way around, except nearer to home plate. The Anacostia River is immediately across the street on the first base side, and is visible from the concourse there. The view will be improved when the concrete plant used for the stadium is torn down after construction ends (you can see it in the "Erin" picture). One interesting peculiarity of the stadium can be found on this metal grate at a park entrance. Can you see what's different?
Humorously, someone in our group noticed this, and it's the only one that's backwards out of about 20 of these gates. Our guide hadn't been aware of it and took some pictures to take back and report it to the appropriate people. I wonder if it'll get fixed. If you go to a game, you'll have to look for it and report back.

Thanks to our great guide, Erin, for a wonderful tour! I'm sure if I ever get back to see a Nats game I won't have quite the same level of access, but it will be cool knowing a little about what's underneath the seats.
You're Welcome!

NASAdventures

I'm out at Goddard (in Greenbelt, MD) again for work, and I thought I'd post some pictures showing what my days are like. We are out here to replace a couple parts on our telescope, and then re-mount it onto the satellite, which is shown tilted down 90 degrees in the photos below. The big blue table that the spacecraft is mounted on can rotate it between vertical and horizontal, and also rotate it about the long axis so the different instruments can be put on or taken off, worked on at human height, etc. The next three pictures show the SDO spacecraft (in it's current non-final state) before, during, and after rotating.

First, here's the spacecraft with the AIA instrument (that Dustin works on) on the bottom (but you can't see it very well because it's bagged), the EVE instrument at the top right, and HMI (my telescope) on the top left just after we put it back on the satellite after doing our work. It gets lifted on with a crane and some straps from the top, and we have to stand on scaffolding and a man-lift cart to manually guide it into where it bolts down.

Next up is a mid-rotation picture, as the spacecraft is rotating so we can reach HMI while standing on the floor. It's pretty amazing that this whole thing is cantilevered out some 25 feet, especially with all the important stuff way out at the end. Sometimes it seems like it should just bend over and hit the floor. The wires you see running along the floor are ground straps, so whenever we're working on something we can clip a grounding wrist strap onto one to make sure we don't shock any electronics with static electricity.

Lastly, here it is having completed a 90 degree rotation. HMI is the one on the bottom left, not covered in bagging. The red items are covers that protect certain parts that we don't want to accidentally bump; they get removed before launch.

Anyways, I'll keep this post short as we've been working long hours out here and it's past my bedtime. Hope you enjoyed getting to see the inside of a NASA cleanroom without having to wear the annoyingly stifling bunny suit, booties, hood, gloves, wrist strap, and facemask. And in case you were wondering, that's the holiday beard on my face mostly hidden behind my face mask, not a giant mud smear. We'll see how long it lasts.

Geocaching

Tom and I decided to try something new last weekend and go geocaching. Generally speaking, geocaching is a game of hide-and-seek using GPS coordinates as a map. When we started researching this online (geocaching.com), I was expecting to find only a few of these caches around, but was stunned to see thousands within easy driving distance of our house. Every nearby park had a couple of them, and the larger wilderness and recreational areas had between 10 and 50. We decided to team up with our friends Adam and Ashley and check out some caches at an area near their house in Fremont called Quarry Lakes.

The prizes in this game are "caches", which are usually small containers (tupperware or mayo jars or the like) that are camoflaged and hidden at the specified coordinates. Inside each cache is a log book with the entries from everyone who has found the cache and some little trade-able or collectible trinkets that each visitor will leave. If you find a trinket you would like to keep, you leave something in exchange. The picture above is Tom with one of the caches that we found under a bush, and the picture below is of one of the stranger trinkets we found - "Organs in Goo". We left that one for another visitor, though.
One of the cool things we found was a "digitalfish", which is a trinket with a code on it so you can track its travels online. Some of these have destinations, so when you pick them up you are supposed to try to move them closer to their goals. The fish (8376) that we picked up had just been spawned, so it will be up to us to move it somewhere interesting. We're thinking about taking it to Phoenix with us in a month or two when we go down there for spring training. It is in the packet next to the organ goo in the picture above, but you can't really tell.

Incidentally, Banjo loves geocaching, too. I thought the picture caught a really fun, joyful moment.
One last picture from our adventures. This "rock" was actually a cleverly disguised cache. It inspired us to start thinking about ways to hide caches of our own, so maybe you'll hear about that sort of adventure in the future!

Christmas in CO!

The day after Christmas (after some flight cancellations, reschedulings, recancellations, etc), we made it to Denver to spend a couple days with my family and friends. The upside of the snowy weather that canceled our flights was that we had a ton of beautiful white snow to romp, dig, ski, and play in. Much of the family time was spent making snow forts and sledding down the hill near our house. The kids below are my niecephews Maya, Owen, and Connor (and Banjo, of course).
A couple days after Christmas we went to hang out with some of my playgroup friends from growing up. This group wasn't really tight through high school or college, but we've found a lot in common in our adulthoods and always have a good time and laugh a lot when we get together. My friend Katherine is the first of the group to have a baby - little Hannah. The rest of us (Becky, Erin, and I) all have dogs instead.
My sister Beth, my brother Mark, and their families headed up to the mountains for a day of skiing at Copper Mountain, and a night staying at the family condo in Frisco. Davis, my oldest nephew, is the most accomplished skiier amongst the kids (still mostly on greens, though), but we had a good time skiing together. Davis enjoyed following his dad and Tom through the trees and over jumps. We fully expect to be passed up by him within a year or two.
The kids enjoyed the snowy outdoor hot tub after the day on the slopes. I went in later and was able to freeze my hair into a very crazy spiky mohawk.
A couple days later, our friends (Kaitlyn, Erin, Ari, Dustin, Steve) started to arrive to spend New Years at the condo. We had some adventures trying to get back up into the mountains, and it turns out the second car (all the boys) just barely managed to squeeze through the Eisenhower tunnel before it was closed. Tom skiied four days overall (two at Copper, one at El Dora, and one at A Basin) and I logged one day at Copper (it was Freezing out there!). The snow was fabulous and the crowds were small due to the tunnel closings.
We had a great time on New Year's Eve. We played lots of games, drank some champagne, and spent a fun-filled hour or two trying to call up any greenmen we could get ahold of. We also upheld the annual NYE tradition of the Yankee swap. Dustin ended up with this very stylish light-up Rudolph nose. I got a hand-knit hat (by Ari), that I coveted, and it kept my ears nice and warm over the next couple of days.
Banjo didn't appreciate the intrinsic beauty of the snow and cold weather. He spent the first couple of days trying to figure out how to balance on two feet because the snow was freezing his little toe pads. He became remarkably adept at doing his business extremely efficiently and then practically dragging us across the snow back inside. We finally took pity on the little guy and got him a pair of booties. Little did we know that the booties magically turned him into a high-stepping fancy-pantsy circus dog! Watching him prance around and try to shake the boots off had everyone in hysterics.
A final picture of the group, showing our finer side. We missed everyone that wasn't with us and hope that there will be a bigger group next year, wherever it may be!

Christmas in NC!

Getting motivated on this lazy Sunday (although I did play two hours of soccer this morning and yesterday was most certainly NOT lazy) and catching up on some of our goings-on. This is a quick post with some photos from our fun Christmas in NC this year.
The prime attraction this year, of course, was our new niece, Claire. She cracked us all up - her favorite trick was peering at you very seriously until you looked at her and then smiling at you with her huge toothless grin. She's also getting very good at "reading" (chewing) on books, and loves to play with tags on anything. Tom's mom got a kick out of re-wrapping and giving Claire her Christmas present over and over every morning while we were there - Claire never got tired of pulling the tissue out of the gift bag and was always excited to see her new bibs and toys. We all agree that she will have a BIG personality!We were also looking forward to introducing Banjo to his feisty dog-cousin, Lucky. The two pups are just about the same size, but while Banjo is a white-brown terrier mix of questionable origin, Lucky is a black-brown hound mix. These two guys should be the poster-dogs for the humane society, both sweet, smart, and very loving. Highlights included some coooold morning walks, watching them both kick dirt furiously to "mark" their territory, barking in anticipation of tasty kibble, and a circular toy exchange where they would alternate which toy or bone they were working on. A success overall, and if we're invited back, Banjo promises not to pee on the easy chair next year. While we were there, some of the members of Tom's old youth group got together to reminisce. We had a great time (and a late night) catching up with everyone, but the best part was when Marki (the former leader of the group) brought out a big box of photos from when they were all in middle school. There were some really hysterical pictures of everyone, complete with braces, glasses, and funny hair styles. The next day, the whole Nichols family went to the "Moravian Love Feast", a Christmas Eve service that their old church has been holding for over 15 years. It included lots of singing, eating buns and drinking cider, and everyone got to "pass the candlelight" while we sang Silent Night to close out the night.
Some fun events from NC that we didn't manage to get pictures of included bowling with Tom's mom (who is a ringer), hiking in Duke forest in the rain with Tom's dad, going to the Carolina Inn to see their annual installation art rendition of the twelve days of Christmas, walking through downtown Chapel Hill, going to a very bizarre concert (although I almost bought a t-shirt because it said "Banjos are Neat"), going to a show at the planetarium, playing board games, and basking in front of the fireplace.

Burrito Madness!

In case you were wondering, here's what we did on Sunday morning (happy birthday Frank!):

In case you can't tell, that's approximately 40 burritos ready to be frozen. Some breakfast, some normal. The idea is we mass produce a bunch of burritos one day and freeze them, then they make tasty, healthy, cheap, and easy lunches (or breakfasts) for weeks and months (hopefully not years) to come.

And, in case you were wondering, here's what goes into 40 burritos:

• 40 flour tortillas
• 3 chopped onions
• 1 big jug of salsa (24 oz)
  
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 3 cups broccoli
  
• 2 chopped carrots
• 2 small summer squash
• several cloves diced garlic
  
• 11 smoked chicken breasts, shredded (just done slowly on the grill with lots of wood chips and the top on)
  

"Regular" burritos only:

• 2 lb of grated pepper jack cheese
• ~2 cups (uncooked) of cooked rice with cilantro
• 3 cans of refried beans
• 2 cans of black beans
• chipotle or green tabasco, to taste
• 1 diced red pepper (on Tom's only)

And for breakfast burritos only:

• 1 carton egg beaters
• 1/3 bag potatoes o'brien

We'll report back on when we start seeing burritos in our sleep or get so sick of them that we start using them as Kong filler for Banjo.

Obama and McCain: Same Difference?

I found these two interestingly opposing headlines in the news today:

NYTimes: Two Hopefuls Share Little but Youth Appeal

Slate: The Surprising Similarities of McCain and Obama

I think I tend to agree with the NYTimes one more, as beyond the fact that they both are somewhat "anti-Washington" candidates, appeal to independents and young people, and have written popular books with the word "Father" in the title, they would operate pretty differently as president.

As an aside, there is a picture of some Dartmouth students looking through the windows at Alumni hall at a McCain event as part of the overflow crowd - that was me 4 years ago at a Dean speech. How time flies...

Gingerbread Pirate Ships, redux

Look! Another pirate gingerbread boat! OK, maybe not necessarily a pirate ship, but pretty impressive, a little more seafaring perhaps, compared to ours. We'll let you decide which is better. This one does have nice railings, dolphins, and ginger mer-man on the bow, but it's lacking in cannons, peg-legged pirates, and solar panels. It's from the annual gingerbread house competition at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill. There are some pictures of some of the other ones we liked up on my Picassa page.

Also, there are some pretty ridiculous, Food Network-caliber examples in the video below, showing some winners from the National Gingerbread House Competition at Asheville, NC's Grove Park Inn. Pretty amazing, but still no peg-legged pirates, treasure chests, or malicious septopuses.

Live Nativity

Whew, Tom Banjo, and I are back from an action-packed holidays! We've accumulated quite a bit of blog backlog, so hopefully you won't mind reading about some pre-Christmas activities.

A couple weeks before Christmas, one of my co-workers told me about a live Nativity scene (Bethlehem SC) in which she was participating. I had never been to one before, but Tom was familiar with the "3 people sitting in front of a hay bale" live Nativities from his childhood. At any rate, Bethlehem SC was an entirely different beast.

The congregation of the church begins construction and preparation in early October. Instead of just a single scene, an entire town is created in the 45,000 square foot church parking lot (which is covered with 150 tons of sand especially for this event. There is a cast of 100 and they get crowds of up to 4500 people per night.

When you first walk through the gates (past the grazing sheep and donkeys), you are ushered to the "Census" where you sign in under the watchful gaze of some well-armed Roman Soldiers. Then the seas of people are parted and Mary and Joseph appear riding a donkey. They gradually make their way up to the manger-stage (after some conversations with various innkeepers), and baby Jesus is born. A huge spotlight Star of Bethlehem is turned on (visible from all over Santa Clara County) and assorted shepherds and kings come to pay homage. One of the kings rode on a litter carried by servants, and two came in on honest-to-goodness Camels.

After the show, there were a bunch of booths exhibiting various period trades and goods. My co-worker was at the wool spinning booth, but there was also a cool woodworking booth, a booth with perfume-making, period games, and many more!

At any rate, Tom and I were both very impressed and surprised at the wonderful production. We'll be sure to get it on our calendar for next year, too.