The Commentators

YTVotD - Missing Yosemite

2012-01-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

This timelapse video of various locations around Yosemite is really nicely done. I especially like the nighttime sky-scapes. Makes me miss Yosemite a bit, though I'm lucky enough to be able to recognize most of those locations. Enjoy, and watch in full screen if you can.
Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

PDX pix - November 2011

2011-12-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

On to November... a momentous month here in Stumptown. Not only did it include Tom's birthday, visits to friends and family in Seattle, Thanksgiving, and the beginnings of ice-scraping weather, but we bought a house! (or rather, are in the process of buying one still, to be accurate.) On to the photos...

Playing darts at the Lompoc Sidebar

At the Tillamook cheese factory, on a weekend trip to the coast. Wow, they make a lot of cheese. It was fun to watch the assembly line and see how all the machines and people work here. And to taste the cheese.

And to take silly photos.

Haystack Rock, the most iconic part of the Cannon Beach landscape. A beautiful beach and fun, artsy town. We had a nice stay. Banjo loved running around on the wide beach.

Visit to Seattle, where we saw Steve, Sarah, and Frank. Here's Ellie about to launch herself off the dock in hot pursuit of the elusive tennis ball.

Banjo was content to sit and watch. No cold water for him, thank you very much.

Seattle nightscape

Two-Man Gentleman Band, thanks to Anonymous for the prodding to go see this group, they did not disappoint! We even got to swing dance a little bit (as much as Kate could convince Tom to do).

At the Olympia state capitol building area. Rest stop on the drive to Seattle for Thanksgiving.

Playing games (Catacombs) with the family in Seattle. This one was a favorite because you get to flick the pieces around the board.

Our pies! Apple cranberry on the left, and pumpkin.

And last but not least, here's what will hopefully be our house in January! This is us at one of our early investigative visits. It's definitely not the prettiest one, or the fanciest, and it will involve quite a bit of remodeling and updating work, but we're happy with it and are excited to start working on it! It's in the Bridlemile area SW of Portland - only about 10 min to downtown, in a nice neighborhood, and has a big dog-friendly yard and a community pool in the summer. Come visit, there will be plenty of space!

PDX Pix - October 2011

2011-12-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

We're back. Hopefully to at least continue with some monthly photos. Here are some from October, stay tuned for November shortly as I try to get back up-to-date...

Here's Kate with Herman the Sturgeon, at the Bonneville Locks and Dam up the Columbia. Who knew these ancient giant fish were swimming right near us in the river!

Also during that visit to the locks we got to see the salmon running. They were just flinging themselves at these wooden doors trying to get upstream. Pretty amazing.

Got a visit from Wen, Claire, and Dad (not pictured) in NC while I was there for a work trip!

Sunset in Beaverton

Some goofy "hats" at the Saturday Market with Kate's family

Ground Kontrol - quite a selection of pinball and retro arcade games

A view of Mt Hood from the Rose Garden on one of the last bike rides home during daylight!

Fun outdoor games at Sky and Sarah's wedding in Rochester! We braved the cold to play bags, bocce, cowballs, and other games. Good wedding!

See- we are smiling! We had a good October, whether it was in Portland or elsewhere on our travels...

PDX Pix - September 2011

2011-10-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

One month into our new Portland adventure! Here are some selected pix from September in the Rose City.

Open-top fermenting at Upright Brewing! A fun, semi-hidden spot right on my way home.

A German choir singing at the Mount Angel Oktoberfest celebration. We also saw a master yodeler, an alpenhorn group (that was cool), wiener dog races (somehow I lost the pic of that, oops), a functioning glockenspiel, and lots of folks in leiderhosen and dirndls. A very culturally authentic Oktoberfest, which was a welcome change from the frat-boy fest at Widmer Brewery.

A Timbers game! They tied. The Timbers Army (at left behind the goal) certainly lived up to their billing.

Watching the Vaux's Swift nightly roosting ritual at the Chapman School with Ari and Dustin. This was quite an amazing experience, and I encourage you to experience it for yourself by watching a video such as this or this.

Kate on one of the many art bike racks in town

From the Portland Art Museum. The name was the most interesting part of the piece.

Portland game store during a Magic: The Gathering tournament. Whoa!

Tasting at Hair of the Dog. Mmm!

At the Polish Festival with Ari

The Captured By Porches beer bus on Alberta. Bring your own cup for 50 cents off!

On the train. Just seemed like a quintessential "Portland" shot.

Stay tuned for October's update!

Biking by Breweries

2011-09-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

My (bike) commute passes lots of breweries. Portland is so far living up to much of its reputation! I think I'll stop at Upright Brewing on my way home today...

View Breweries on commute in a larger map

PDX Pix - Aug/Sept '11

2011-09-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. So we are now in Portland! We've been a good mix of busy and frazzled getting settled into our new city, new jobs, and new surroundings so far but here are a few pictures I've taken to semi-document some of what we've been up to.

With my first week here before I started my job I spent a lot of time biking around the city since the weather is great this time of year. There are so many good bike paths and routes. Here's the Steel Bridge looking west across the river to downtown. Bikes cross on the lower level and cars/MAX (light rail) go up top.

It really is quite a bike-friendly and conscious town. This sentiment perhaps is a little extreme, but there are plenty who take it seriously!

I rode up to the Rose Garden, one of Portland's more famous tourist landmarks. We don't have the Santa Cruz Mountains here for riding, but there are still some nice hilly areas with scenic destinations.

A cute house I found on a bike ride with crazy dahlias blooming all over.

T+K at the Deschutes brewery tap room in downtown. We went with friends from CA here to visit. Neat to get to try some of their uncommon beers not available in stores. They have some wild ones! I've decided I draw the line at Flanders Sour Ales. Can't do it.

This is the newly renovated Jen-Weld Field, where the Portland Timbers play (MLS). I like it because it's neat to have a local team with a rabid fan-base. I hate it because the team displaced Portland's AAA baseball team. :(

Banjo isn't the only dog in the house any more! Rufus is on the left.

Kate and I went to the Widmer Oktoberfest at their Brewery near our place. Aside from the beer and sausages it was not very Oktoberfesty but we found a good performance by a band we liked.

The Columbia River Gorge. We went up for a hike on Saturday morning. It's nice to have a natural area with great hiking just a 20-40 minute drive away. So many waterfalls everywhere!

And this is one of them. Can you see a Kate and two dogs? The trail here went behind the falls - kind of fun.

Tom, Dustin, Kate at the Captured By Porches beer bus. That's right - in Portland not only do we have food carts, but we have beer carts too.

SparrowCam

2011-07-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, we have some sparrows nesting in the nook between our house and an exterior light fixture, under the eaves of the roof. We've been noticing them building a nest for a while, and upon returning from our trip to the east coast we heard lots of chirping coming from the nest. Turns out there are three babies in there and mom and dad are popping in and out every couple of minutes to feed the hungry kids. I set up a webcam to watch (and share) the action without disturbing the birds, you can watch for yourself here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sparrowcam

Be patient if nothing happens for a few minutes, but during the day, pretty reliably they get fed every few minutes. Busy job!

Here's mom:

And dad:

And the three kids as dad flies away:

Any suggestions for names?

iPhone Pictures, part deux

2011-07-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Tom here with some iPhone pictures myself! Consider this an update from the past 8 months...

Group bike ride to the coast and back

Golden Gate Bridge in the fog while riding back from Marin

Niners game!

Pretty SF sky and Marin Headlands from a SF trip for the Halloween BANG puzzlehunt

Parents visit and hike in Arastradero Preserve

Monterey coast after my SCUBA class

Thanksgiving - Ann made a pie. Yum.

Kate selecting the most odiferous Christmas tree in the Santa Cruz Mts.

Sleepy dogs

Mission Peak hike

Kate coaching basketball for her HS. That's her in the white sleeves on the bench.

Neighborhood tree in winter

Sunshine and fog on bike ride up above Saratoga

Christmas with Claire and mom in NC

Tom and J in the Dean Dome for a UNC game

Muddy, wet Banjo.

Double rainbow!

Kate at a beer and cheese tasting event we went to. Very fun!

Cupcake making party for our friends who set off to hike the Appalachian Trail in April

A's game in Oakland

POTUS visiting Palo Alto - I rode out here on my bike to see him on his way to Facebook HQ

Kate making, or trying to make, carnations glow for physics

Hiking in Coal Creek

Riding part of Day 1 of the AIDS ride from SF to Santa Cruz with Mei-Yen and Glenn

At the water sculpture near the Ferry Building in SF - can you spot the Kate?

Alcatraz visit with all of Kate's family. This is the old warden's house.

There you go! Hope that wasn't too many pictures in one sitting.

iPhone Pictures

2011-07-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, Tom and I decided to get rid of our rotary-dial "mobile" phones and upgrade to the clean, slick iPhone. While we do get the occasional dropped call and have to turn off our 3G service at home in order to get a stronger signal, they've been mostly fantastic. One thing that is fun is that we always have a camera at our disposal, so we end up taking more random pictures and videos than we used to. I downloaded all of my pictures yesterday and had a fun time looking through them and remembering when they were taken. Thought I'd share a few with you all.
1) iPhone photo #1! Speaks for itself, I think. Still my screen saver.

2) Probably the most dangerous Physics doohickey I have built - an electric hot dog / pickle cooker. It is essentially like plugging the pickle directly into the wall. Did you know that pickles glow bright yellow whilst being electrocuted?

3) My pop holding a balloon. This is from last week - Ebel family reunion out here in the bay area.

4) 4th of July cupcake platter. We had an epic weekend with a bunch of our friends from out here. We may be in our thirties, but we can party like we are 28!

5) Fantastic seats at a Giants game with Adam and Ashley.

6) Banjo being his usual slothful, immodest self. Hahaha.
7) The two of us at a swanky symposium reception for science teachers at the Cal Academy of Sciences. The martinis were swizzled with glow sticks, soup was served in test tubes, and there was a live penguin display behind the bar. Yep, being a teacher is quite the extravagant lifestyle.
8) My student teacher, Ryan, holding up a massive solar balloon we made out of trashbags after school one day.
9) Swing batter! Tom's softball team wins the league championship!

10) Fresh hops beer festival in Portland. We're looking forward to more events like these...

11) Curling with the Dartmouth Alumni of Silicon Valley. Harder than it looks...

And that's it for now. Maybe I'll download some from Tom's camera later on and add to the story. Cheerio!

Ahoy!

2011-06-29T12:56:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone!

Well, I am officially on summer vacation, which will hopefully mean a return to the semi-regular blog postings. I still can't quite believe that one of the "perks" of this new job of mine is getting 10-12 weeks of completely unrestricted free time in the middle of the summer. Not to make you year-rounders jealous, but it's fantastic.

Anyways, I had a great school year. It was my first time teaching AP Physics, and it was truly a delight to have such mature, motivated students. They definitely challenged me to stay a step ahead of them, and I really just feel like I'm learning more and more Physics all the time. 42 of them took the AP exam in early May, and they seemed to feel like it went well, so we're all crossing our fingers until we hear the scores in July. After the exam was over, we all took some much-deserved leisure time in class, building projects and just spending time playing with things we hadn't had time to investigate earlier in the year. We launched rockets and tennis balls with air pressure, froze all sorts of stuff with liquid nitrogen, blew up a watermelon, did a photo scavenger hunt, watched funny short Physics videos from youtube, rode on a student-built raft in the pool (and all ended up swimming), and had several potluck breakfasts. Apparently high schoolers love nothing better than eating corn dogs at 7:25 AM.

My "regular" Physics classes were also super this year. I would often sit back and marvel at what nice kids I had - always willing to help each other out, never bullying or picking on anyone, and showing up each day ready to work hard in class and have some fun as well. Their final projects are always a yearly highlight for me - this year I learned what a "talk box" was, how to program an arduino microcontroller, how to build-your-own electric guitar and telescope, what sorts of household chemicals are fluorescent, how to build a motorized skateboard, and, probably most importantly, that it takes 30 lbs of cornstarch to fill a kiddie pool with oobleck. Incidentally, no one stopped to think about how we would get rid of a kiddie pool filled with oobleck - apparently that is part of my job description.

Anyway, school's out for summer, as they say. I celebrated by putting some neon pink highlights in my hair (as seen above). I think it is a good look for me, but the photo is out there now so you can judge for yourself.

In big Tom-and-Kate-and-Banjo related news, we've decided to move to Portland, Oregon at some point during this summer. We've had a wonderful 7 years here in the bay area, but we're just not sure it is where we really want to settle. It's a pretty big city here, and property prices are still just outrageous (900 sqft houses in our neighborhood tend to start around 700k). Portland has a lot of what we're looking for... a great outdoorsy culture, affordable houses, lots of funky people, dogs everywhere, microbrews everywhere, a mountain, trees, Dustin and Cara, and a short drive to my sister and her family in Seattle. Of course, what it doesn't have a lot of is jobs. I managed to snag the only Physics position I've seen posted there - teaching freshman Physics at a Catholic school in SE Portland. On the upside, I'll have small classes, don't have to teach to any standardized tests, and will still get to teach all Physics (I have a much-regretted Chemistry certification, as well). On the downside, I'm a little worried that freshmen won't find my particular sense of humor (aka Sarcasm) as funny as my seniors do. Also, I have to lead prayers for every single period of the day. I was thinking something along the lines of "Jesus leaves Bethlehem on a camel traveling 3 meters per second. If Jerusalem is 4000 km away, how long will it take him to get there". Amen.

Tom is still looking for a job, although he has a full-day interview next week, so we've got our fingers crossed that he loves the place. We often question the wisdom of quitting jobs we like and leaving a place we're happy for the unknown, but we also know that we could always come back. We got lots of good advice from both of our sets of parents, and eventually decided that it was worth a shot. We'll be living with Dustin and Cara for a while, until we decide for sure that we want to stay and jump into the housing market. But they've assured us that their house is our house too (commune!) so feel free to come visit any time you're in the area!

I think I'll stop there for now - save some stories and news for another post. Come to think of it, I'm not sure anyone is actually reading this blog any more except Tom's youth-group friend Charity who not only checks it but could actually quote the date of our last blog post. Hi Charity! And hi anyone else too - hopefully we'll be around a lot more this summer.

Belize!

2011-01-09T18:07:00.000-08:00

Short post to announce that I've put a selection of photos from the first part of our holiday trip to Belize with our good friends Dustin and Cara. We took advantage of Kate's break from teaching to take a trip to Belize to do some adventuring, exploring, relaxing, diving, and whatever else we could come up with while down there.

The first part of our trip was spent inland near the Guatemala border near the town of San Ignacio, where there are lots of Mayan ruins, spectacular caves, and mountain/jungle rivers. The highlights included lodging at two unique and memorable locations, catching the lunar eclipse on our first night there, a visit to the expansive Mayan city complex of Caracol, the amazing wet cave and Mayan ceremonial site of Actun Tunichil Muknal, a fun canoeing trip down the Macal river (with a stop at the botanical gardens), and an exciting tour called "Black Hole Drop" where we rappelled 300' down into a sinkhole in the middle of the jungle.

(click on the slideshow to go to the larger pictures on my Picasa page)

After a week in the jungle we went to the coast and spent a week in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, one of the prime scuba diving destinations in the world due to the large and very close to the island barrier reef (2nd largest in the world to Australia's I believe). I'll put photos from that leg up soon too including some good ones of Kate with sharks, along with (if time permits) a post with more details about our adventures!

YTVotD - Hanukkah Edition

2010-12-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends out there. Crammers - will we get to have Latkes and play dreidel in Belize? We will miss the annual Christmakkuh party...

I know this goes against my general dislike of a cappella music, but I thought it was timely and amusing. And at least Kate will like the song, too.

You can't see me because I'm wearing camoflauge!

2010-11-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since a post but I saw this on MSNBC's week in pictures today, and wondered if it was a joke:

In case you can't read the caption, it says:

"Saudi special forces display some of their skills and equipment during a ceremony as they prepare for the influx of people in the annual Hajj, in Arafat, nine miles outside of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Nov. 10. Security is a major concern during the pilgrimage by Islam's devout to the holy sites of Saudi Arabia."

Now I have never been to Saudi Arabia, but I think it looks something like this:

Note the conspicuous lack of green stuff. Up close I imagine a lot of it looks like this:

But upon further research I guess areas around Arafat can look like this:

And Mt. Arafat itself has some vegetation too:

But still, the image of those three guys at the top trying to be stealthy while hiding in in a featureless brown desert made me chuckle. From the last image it seems like wearing a full-length white robe (aka Islamic "Jubba") would provide more cover for special forces during the Hajj.

And now I've just learned my interesting fact for the day - the definition of 'Jubba,' which is also the name of the Somali restaurant Kate and I went to on my birthday last weekend!

Rocket Car!

2010-11-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

When your somewhat technologically-challenged parents start commenting on your lack of blog posts, I suppose it is time to get back on the interwebs and post! Fortunately, I have just the thing - a Physics demo that I've been wanting to do ever since I went back to teaching. The idea isn't mine - I have to credit my college prof Delo Mook, who was certainly an inspiration. It (obviously) still needs a little work, but boy was it fun!!!

The Daddy of 'em All

2010-10-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

As promised, I finally have a much-belated post about going to Cheyenne Frontier Days as part of our summer trip to Denver. "The Daddy of 'em All," as it's informally called, is the week-long rodeo/fair that serves as the central summer gathering for southeastern Wyoming. I guess as far as rodeos go, it's one of the bigger ones. We went on a whim after reading about it in the paper that morning, and Erin and Ari joined us. After a scenic drive up through Ft. Collins and lots of dry plains country, we got to Cheyenne and eventually found our way over towards the fairgrounds. The crowds were descending on the place from all directions but not only did we find a parking place close by, Kate snagged us 4 great tickets from the officially designated scalpers' area (saving us at least 30 minutes in the slowest moving line of all time).

The events were varied but generally were either the bucking style - where a cowboy is trying not to fall of some type of thrashing and leaping and gyrating beast, the roping style - where a cowboy on a horse will try to lasso and/or wrestle to the ground and tie up a calf, or the racing style - where a cowboy or girl will try to race his horse around a set of barrels or the like. It was not only an interesting cultural experience, but an engaging event. What struck me most - well, aside from the sheer insanity of it all and how there was only one injury that seemed serious as a result of it all - was how the announcer in the stadium really added to my enjoyment of the experience by offering a continuous narration of the events along with little nuggets of wisdom, insight, commentary, and humor. Unlike most impartial and sterile-sounding announcers at typical events like baseball or football games, the guy here was a chatterbox who wasn't afraid to call out a rider for bailing off a bull early or inciting the crowd to boo the judges for a set of low scores awarded to a popular rider. And as a novice observer I appreciated when he offered explanations of the intricacies of calf-roping scoring or rules. For example - when you jump off your horse to "bust" a calf you have to 1) stop before wrestling it to the ground (can't just knock it over) and 2) you have to flip it to a particular side. Kind of refreshing.

Here's some photos from our great vantage point in the crowd:

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! The day's events ended with the "Wild Horse Race" which I found out later is somewhat controversial among the PETA types (as is the whole concept of rodeo events) due to the rough handling of the horses that I guess has led to many equine injuries each year these things are held. Anyways, in the wild horse teams of 3 cowboys are given a never-before-ridden bronco on a 30 food lead, and the goal is to "reel" it in, get a saddle on it, and then ride a lap around the track on it first. It is insane. And they start if off by blasting a cannon, which does little to calm the already frenzied wild horses that are trying to figure out why they have a bridle on and why someone is tugging on them. Mass chaos ensues for the next fifteen minutes or so.

Also, if you let go of your horse at any point your team is out of it, which led to the highlight of the day for us - watching this poor, stubborn guy get dragged a few hundred yards through the dirt as his team's horse decided he had had enough and was ready to split:

Kudos to the guy for holding on while the crowd cheered him on until just after he went out of sight. Anyways, I think I'll stick to softball and road biking for my sports.

YTVotD

2010-09-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

Brief interruption from Colorado adventures for a YTVotD...

We saw this interesting "light sculpture" exhibit by Leo Villareal at the San Jose Museum of Art last weekend. I think we both liked many of the pieces, but some more than others. Kind of like our college digital electronics projects on LSD. Given the artist's history of Burning Man installations that might not be too far off, but the art was definitely mesmerizing and intriguing. All in all an enjoyable exhibit that was very apropos of a Silicon Valley art museum.

I know it's kind of crazy long, but you can skip through to see the different pieces. Which ones do you like? It's more engrossing in person, of course (and without the neo-zen soundtrack) but I think my favorites were the ones at 4:30, 8:10, and 18:10 (which doesn't seem as cool as I remember it on the video). The big wall of diffuse light at 9:45 also seemed much more fluid and engrossing (to me) in person than the video reflects.

Brewing Beer and Bucking Broncos

2010-09-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, writing the title of this post just now made me think "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica."

But back to Colorado...

As you probably know, we like to brew beer. In fact, this is what our kitchen looked like Sunday night:

and what Kate's closet has in it right now:

So while in the area, we thought visiting the Coors brewery in Golden, CO would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. It's a massive concrete and plumbing-filled complex, and was interestingly different than the micro and craft breweries we've toured before. For example - there are train tracks leading directly into the building so the loads of grain coming from the fertile midwest can be delivered literally straight into the mash tuns. And instead of one or two or maybe a handful of fermenters, they've got a forest of giant copper kettles for brewing all the varieties Coors makes.

The self-guided audio tour was pretty fun, and gave a good, simple overview of the brewing process. At one point, however, there was a display showing how Coors uses "only the freshest, natural ingredients" for their beers or something, and had some bins of said ingredients for tour goers to touch/smell. The bins contained 1) Barley, 2) Hops, 3) Corn. Eek! Corn! They're advertising that they throw a bunch of corn in their beer to get the sugar needed instead of getting it from malted grains like real beer is supposed to!? Yechk.

Soon after the fermenting area we came to a little serving window. We thought this was the only tasting opportunity, but it turned out only to be a "mid-tour" tasting room with the selection limited to two choices. Kate opted for "bad" while Tom picked "slightly less bad." Mmmm... taste that corn!

Fortunately there was more after this refreshing pit-stop. We were lucky to see the packaging room in action, with cans of Keystone being mechanically corralled into 12-packs and then being whisked every which way on a maze of conveyor belts and tracks. Pretty cool to see from an operations perspective. A lot of technology in that room to make sure college students around the country have cheap beer with which to play pong.

Finally we arrived at the tasting room, which was basically a bar. We had wristbands that entitled us to 3 drinks each (!), and these were good 8-10 oz. glasses too! After getting here we realized why they mention at the beginning, "Please, only one tour per day" (it's free). To their credit, they had a couple of reasonably interesting Colorado-only smaller batches that were more craft-style beers than the watery Coors Light most people associate with the brand. And despite their corporate overlords, I still enjoy Blue Moon and much of that family. And they do have a lot of neat sustainability efforts going on in the giant Golden, CO plant. I think overall the best part was arriving at the facility and realizing that, although we were outside on a windy summer afternoon, it smelled like our kitchen does on brewing day.

Well, that got longer than I had intended! The bucking broncos will have to wait another day...

July Colorado Trip

2010-09-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

OK, yeah, my attempted blog resurgence kind of failed. But I figured if Amanda can blog and raise a baby at the same time, and Emily can uproot herself and start a cross-country road trip, I should be able to post every now and then...

So first order of business is to catch up with some pictures from our trip out to Denver to visit Kate's family in July. It was great to visit Colorado in the summer, as much of our past visiting has been over the Christmas holidays. While the skiing is better in January than July, we got to take advantage of a lot more of the great Colorado outdoors during this trip, including:

Hiking along a creek in Morrison (above)
Swimming and sailing in Bow Mar Lake
Mountain biking amongst the flatirons in Deer Creek Canyon
Fun family soccer and wiffleball games in the backyard
Camping out in the backyard with the nieces and nephews after having s'mores and a campfire
Climbing Longs Peak!

I had previously attempted Longs with reader Marc and his friend from Longmont, but we were turned back about 2/3 of the way by snow and ice on the some of the more treacherous terrain. Fortunately this time the weather was perfect, and I got to summit a Colorado 14'er! It's a great hike if anyone ever has the opportunity to do it. Despite being pretty strenuous and requiring a super-early start to avoid thunderstorms that often roll in after noon, it's one of the most (if not the most) climbed peaks in Colorado (however that's measured). We hiked on a Friday and were joined by Anonymous, which was fun. There are 4 distinct portions to the "standard" Longs hike: 1) The early hike through the woods following a creek, 2) Alpine zone where the trees give way to the rocky mountainside, 3) the boulderfield leading up to the keyhole, and 4) after the keyhole the majorly exposed spiraling traverse/climb up the rocky flanks of Longs to the summit. This last portion is commonly subdivided into aptly named sections such as "the ledges," "the narrows," "the trough," and "the homestretch." Instead of dumping a whole lot of pictures here, you can watch this slideshow with captions if you'd like, or you can see the pictures on my Picasa page (if you haven't already seen them).

In addition to family, we got to spend a couple fun nights with Erin and Anonymous. Was great to see you guys. Anon even gave us the grand tour of his castle, which was very nice. We are jealous of your status as a homeowner. Glad the smell is gone, though.

Stay tuned for more posts about our visit to the industrial yet entertaining (and surprisingly generous) Coors Brewery in Golden and an impromptu sub-trip during our Denver visit north to Cheyenne, Wyoming to go to Cheyenne Frontier Days (rodeo) - "The Daddy of 'Em All" as they call it...

Notes from School - Day One, 2010

2010-08-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hi folks!

So I'm back being a teacher again! The beginning of school is always a blur, with learning kids' names, trying to get a rein on classroom behavior, and jumping right into material.

Anyway, I always ask students to fill out a little questionnaire about themselves. It has some standard-fare questions, and then things like "what are 2-3 careers you might enjoy", "what's your favorite dessert", and "got any good jokes?" I got some funny answers to these that I thought you might enjoy. You can probably figure out what questions they are supposed to go to.

1) What do you call a bee with a low hum? A mumble bee. What do you call a bee that gives milk? A boobee. (From one of my brightest and quietest female AP students - didn't know she had it in her.)

2) The Sahara

3) An astronaut, a pilates instructor, or a rapper. (And yes, this is answer is from a single student).

More tales from the classroom as I get them!

July 4th at Loon Lake

2010-08-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Kate and I spent Independence Day 2010 up in the Sierra Nevada mountains at Loon Lake, just outside of the Desolation Wilderness at the southeast corner of Lake Tahoe. Thanks to some good organizing by Alex, we had 3 adjacent campsites for the long weekend, enough to accommodate our large group of assorted friends and friends of friends coming from various places around the Bay Area, California, and Reno.

At about 6,400" elevation, the Loon Lake area is just on the border of the high alpine above-treeline type Sierra backcountry that is so fun to explore. There are trails leading into the wilderness areas, up to the nearby peaks, around the lake, swimming (brrrrrrr!), biking (or 4WD jeeping, but we don't have anything like this) on the world-famous Rubicon Trail that starts here, and plenty of enjoyable plain 'ol hanging out around the campfire. Thanks to the large amounts of late-season snow we got this year in the mountains, this was amazingly the first weekend these campgrounds were open! There was no snow on the ground at lake level, but plenty up higher and on north-facing slopes.

One of the noteworthy activities was a nice hike up to Tells Peak (8,872'). Here's some annotated photos from that adventure. And yes, it was a little more of an adventure than we had planned...

Here's our group about to head out from the campsite. It's about a 15 mile loop, we think. Maps are inconclusive. Enormous flag courtesy of the Wequasset Resort, via Mr. Dad. Thanks!

Hiking through a marsh early on. It was clear a lot of ground was seeing sun for the first time this year, and was still very swampy in the meadows from snowmelt.

We stopped for lunch at Forni Lake, about 900' vertical shy of the summit. Here's Adam and Scuba doing a Spaceman. In case you were wondering, a "Spaceman" involves filling a plastic astronaut with 3 1/3 beers and consuming it as quickly as possible. In case you are wondering about more things now, yes, they toted 8 beers into the backcountry to perform this ritual. In case you are still wondering, yes, they started regretting both the fact that they inadvertently were using 6% abv "Simpler Times Lager" and that they were at 8,000' feet soon after starting. But amusing, and well documented.

Reached the ridge! Lots of snow still on the North side. Looking SE toward Mt. McConnell.

Dustin, Rufus, and Taylor.

Alex contemplates the map, as we start to realize the trail down may or may not exist, and also may be buried under several feet of snow for the next few miles.

Group on the ridge.

Hiking up to the summit.

Conveniently Adam's dog Jameson bonked right about at the halfway point. Good timing, Jameson. But it was nice to know that dogs other than Banjo wimp out on hiking trips.

The views from the top.

The way down. Got to glissade the first few hundred yards, which is always a blast! Glad I brought the gaiters. Note - the footprints were ours, we saw exactly zero other people on our hike...

Which may explain why the trail was so hard to find on the way down, leading to some semi-stressful routefinding (or routelosing) and the eventual decision to "bushwhack" over the open granite and scrub towards our destination to where we knew we'd eventually cross a real trail. This cut off some distance but bushwhacking always is much slower going than you think. Fortunately over half of this part of the hike was exciting hiking over open granite, much more interesting than numbly following a trail. The downside came once we got low enough to have to fight our way through thick scrubby bushes for a couple miles after an already-long day. Suffice to say the pictures became sparse during this tenuous period but we all made it back in one piece, more or less. Jameson the dog wasn't all that good at walking the next day, but I'm told he made a full recovery.

Aside from hare-brained wilderness bushwhacking adventures, we played lots of campground games, including:

Jungle Speed, our new favorite quick board/card game (it's great, you should totally get it)

and Bags! We had a full 15-person double-elimination bags tournament! Kate almost won (2nd place, I think?)

Rufus and Banjo hope you had a good 4th too!

Avett Bros. at the Mountain Winery

2010-08-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

Ever since our 2006 wedding at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA, we had been wanting to go back for concert at the beautiful outdoor venue. Last month we finally made it happen!

Right after our wedding, the Mountain Winery underwent a significant renovation to the whole concert bowl and grounds in general. While it's turned what was a cute but a little outdated venue into a beautiful and very classy concert venue complete with several upscale (read: overpriced) dining options and luxury boxes (to cater to the wealthy silicon valley types), I was a little nostalgic for the simpler, less "shiny" Mountain Winery that I remembered from our wedding. For example, the nice stone courtyard, benches, and little fountain beneath the giant redwoods where we had our ceremony has been completely redone and I think not all the trees survived the construction. Still, much of the appeal of the place is the wonderfully sweeping valley views it provides, and those were still there in abundance. Also, they got rid of that ridiculous swimming pool that used to be there, and the concert bowl (even if it dominates the property now) is really nice. Not a bad seat in the house.

So on to the show - I got lucky with Craigslist again and snagged some great seats for a cheap price that included some pre-show hors d'oeuvres. The Avett Brothers are an energetic folk/rock group from North Carolina that somehow Kate had managed to see once before already (Merlefest)! They put on a good show and as the sun went down we put on all our layers and huddled for warmth (and reminded ourselves of how we were glad we decided to have our reception indoors!) and enjoyed the light show on the historic facade of the Paul Masson winery building. A nice summer evening - we were happy to get back there finally!

Shark Week!

2010-08-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Yikes! Stay out of the water in Chatham! (at least the ocean water)

In case you don't feel like watching, the Great White shark infestation off the coast of Chatham, MA continues this year, and was featured on ABC's Good Morning America. They are attracted to the area by the "buffet" (as the ABC narrator calls it) of grey seals that life there. Thanks for the tip, mom - hope those kayaks are sturdy!

Santa Barbara

2010-07-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

We've explored a lot of California in the six years we have lived here, but until recently we hadn't ever been to Santa Barbara. So, when Dustin and Cara invited us to take a weekend trip there to visit some of their friends and family, we jumped at the opportunity!

We stayed with Cara's friends from her days as UCSB, Vince and Susan, and their children Emma and Asher in their very cute house surrounded by delicious fruit trees. Every meal was supplemented with fresh-off-the-tree apricots or plums. Even Banjo liked them. Mmmmm!

We went hiking up in the Santa Barbara hills in an area that had been completely burned from the wildfires last year. It was really interesting to see how much early growth had come back and covered the hillsides. The trees weren't there yet, but lots of wildflowers and brush had taken root. At our turnaround point we had some great views over the town to the Pacific as well as up to Cathedral Peak.

Our group on the trail

Aside from the Santa Barbara backcountry, we stopped at the Mission and took in some of the amazing chalk-art that was there, and explored downtown with all it's trendy shops and beautiful Jackoranda trees.

Kate with her favorite chalk drawing

Kate meeting Asher's pet snake

Downtown skate park action

Our next night was spent a little ways down the coast in Ventura with Cara's sister Shonna, generous enough to put us up for the night, and her parents. We had a great time hanging out with good friends as well as meeting new ones on this trip - and those apricots were delicious! I have renewed motivation to care for our 10" tall sprig of an apricot tree we are nursing in our backyard now...

Some more pics

Babies!

2010-07-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

Before getting into the summer, I think I never posted about our April trip back East to see family and some of our recently-parentified college friends! A belated congrats to Andrew and Jess, Erin and Brian, and now Gordie and Amanda! It was fun seeing all of you and now we look forward to getting to meet Willem in person, now that you've finally joined the world! Here are some highlights:

Visiting with our NH/VT friends and hiking along the creek in Gordie and Amanda's backyard

Andrew and Tyler

Group at Andrew's house, in the apple orchard

Tom and Donovan the horse

Gordie changing his first diaper (I'm sure he's got plenty more under his belt now!)

Us and fuzzy baby Zoe in Boston

Trip with the parents to P-town

Kate goes whale-riding

More pictures

Summer Fun

2010-07-26T23:19:00.000-07:00

We've been decidedly negligent in posting recently, but that's not for lack of exciting activities. Kate has been enjoying her first real summer vacation as a teacher, and we've had some enjoyable trips recently, both near and far. Stay tuned for some catch-up updates on our summer soon!

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

2010-07-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

Advance preparation

3 to 8 hours for marinating the meat (optional); also, allow yourself 4 to 6 hours cooking time

Special equipment

6 cups hickory chips or chunks, soaked for 1 hour in cold water to cover and drained

For the rub (optional)

1 tablespoon mild paprika
2 teaspoons light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons hot paprika
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons ketchup
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar, or more to taste
5 teaspoons salt, or more to taste
4 teaspoons hot red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

For the barbecue

1 Boston butt (bone-in pork shoulder roast; 5 to 6 pounds), covered with a thick (1/2 inch) layer of fat
10 to 12 hamburger buns

Preparation

1. If using the rub, combine the mild paprika, brown sugar, hot paprika, celery salt, garlic salt, dry mustard, pepper, onion powder, and salt in a bowl and toss with your fingers to mix. Wearing rubber or plastic gloves if desired, rub the spice mixture onto the pork shoulder on all sides, then cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours, preferably 8.

If not using the rub, generously season the pork all over with coarse (kosher or sea) salt and freshly ground black pepper; you can start cooking immediately.

2. Set up the grill for indirect grilling and place a drip pan in the center.

If using a gas grill, place all of the wood chips in the smoker box and preheat the grill to high; when smoke appears, reduce the heat to medium.

If using a charcoal grill, preheat the grill to medium-low and adjust the vents to obtain a temperature of 300°F.

3. When ready to cook, if using charcoal, toss 1 cup of the wood chips on the coals. Place the pork shoulder, fat side up, on the hot grate over the drip pan. Cover the grill and smoke cook the pork shoulder until fall-off-the-bone tender and the internal temperature on an instant-read meat thermometer reaches 195°F, 4 to 6 hours (the cooking time will depend on the size of the pork roast and the heat of the grill). If using charcoal, you'll need to add 10 to 12 fresh coals to each side every hour and toss more wood chips on the fresh coals; add about 1/2 cup per side every time you replenish the coals. With gas, all you need to do is be sure that you start with a full tank of gas. If the pork begins to brown too much, drape a piece of aluminum foil loosely over it or lower the heat.

4. Transfer the pork roast to a cutting board, loosely tent it with aluminum foil, and let rest for 15 minutes.

5. Wearing heavy-duty rubber gloves if desired, pull off and discard any skin from the meat, then pull the pork into pieces, discarding any bones or fat. Using your fingertips or a fork, pull each piece of pork into shreds 1 to 2 inches long and 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide. This requires time and patience, but a human touch is needed to achieve the perfect texture. If patience isn't one of your virtues, you can finely chop the pork with a cleaver (many respected North Carolina barbecue joints serve chopped 'cue). Transfer the shredded pork to a nonreactive roasting pan. Stir in 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the vinegar sauce, enough to keep the pork moist, then cover the pan with aluminum foil and place it on the grill for up to 30 minutes to keep warm.

6. To serve, mound the pulled pork on the hamburger buns and top with coleslaw. Let each person add more vinegar sauce to taste.

Southern Light Cornbread

2010-07-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

Vegetable oil spray
1 c Quaker yellow cornmeal
2 t sugar
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/3 c boiling water
3/4 c buttermilk
1 large egg
1 T butter, melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 450, spray 9 inch round or 8 inch square baking pan with spray

Measure 1/3 cup of cornmeal into a bowl. Whisk remaining 2/3 cup, sugar, salt, powder, and soda into small bowl and set aside.

Pour boiling water into the 1/3 c cornmeal and stir to make a mush. Whisk in the buttermilk gradually, then whisk in egg and butter. Stir dry ingredients in until just moistened and pour into pan.

Bake roughly 20 min.

YTVotD

2010-06-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

If anyone needs to know what I'd like for Christmas, one of these video projection systems would suffice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXvmDaY29xg

Totally Awesome Science Experiment

2010-06-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

OK. You need a bowl, a little bit of milk (say 1/4 inch in the bowl), food coloring (the watery kind, not the gel kind), and some liquid soap.

Put the milk in the bowl. Put a drop of each color of food coloring around the outside of the bowl. Put a single drop of soap in the bowl, and prepare to be amazed. You may have to wait a minute or two, be patient. If you're absolutely sure nothing is happening, you can put another drop in, near the side .

You should go do this right now. Really.

SDO on KQED

2010-05-26T14:12:00.001-07:00

Is everyone sick of SDO-related posts yet? No? OK good, because here's another video featured on our local PBS/NPR station. Oh, hey, who's that cool guy at around 6:29? Also, I think some of those fancy computer models with green lines going every which way were probably reader and commenter Marc's handiwork. And if that red wall at around 7:00 was transparent, you'd see me diligently working away.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Here's the link if you want to view it from the KQED page:
http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/journey-into-the-sun

Tour of California, Stage 3

2010-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

I won't blame you if you haven't heard of it, but the Tour of California is the biggest bike racing event in the USA, and yesterday it rolled through our backyard, basically! This year the Stage 3 route took them through the hills just west of where I work, and Alex and I took a long lunch break to ride out and watch the race go by. I had never seen a major bike race in person, and while it all blew by incredibly quickly, it was really pretty cool to experience all the excitement and activity - lots of hardcore biker fans braving the cold rain and mist lining the sides of the road in the forest, dozens of police and official vehicles clearing the route ahead of time, the cowbells cheering on the lead group of racers, the 100-strong peloton churning after them up a "King of the Mountain" stretch, and even the wet ride back to the valley with all the other people that had the same idea as us. Most of the major names in cycling (that you'll also see in the Tour de France, for example) were here, and I'm sure I was about 3 feet from Lance Armstrong at some point, I just couldn't tell which extremely fit white guy with wraparound sunglasses, a helmet, and skin-tight RadioShack jersey he was out of 5 or so. I even had some freebie bags of Jelly Bellys tossed to me from the team car as I cheered them on! Alex took a couple pictures, and there's some other representative ones from our vantage point below.

Here's the peloton, led by Team RadioShack, heading through the hills

Here's me waiting in the drizzle on the La Honda uphill

Here comes the throng of racers blasting through...

... followed closely by the throng of support cars that were inches apart (from each other and from the riders they were busy handing Gu, Cliff Bars, and water bottles to) while winding up the narrow mountain roads. Yikes.

And here's a video Alex took of the lead group going by. These guys finished the day in Santa Cruz having averaged an insane 23 mph over 113 miles, including 4 major hills. They'll keep riding for the next week (eight stages total), ending down in LA. I'll definitely head back to see this again next year!

YTVotD, musical edition

2010-04-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why so many pop songs sound familiar? Or feel like you subconsciously recognize that song on the radio but don't know how? Australian comedy band "Axis of Awesome" has this pretty, well, awesome skit to demonstrate to their audience that pretty much every pop song ever is really just based on the same four chords, played over and over in order. The songs are labeled on-screen, but it helps a lot if you have a reasonable knowledge of bad pop songs going into it to better enjoy the mockery. Well done guys, despite the fact that it kind of makes me want to vomit. (Warning, one curse word at 4:58, so NSFW or sensitive ears)

SDO is live

2010-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

At long last, the Solar Dynamics Observatory is live and the data is publicly available! After a month or so of on-orbit checkouts and calibrations, the instruments that I worked on (HMI and AIA) are now streaming back tons (well, terrabytes really) of data each day in the form of high-resolution pictures of the sun in different wavelengths and properties. There's a lot online that can explain it better than I can, so I'll limit myself to just posting a few of the amazing pictures from the press conference event yesterday. It's exciting to see the pictures finally, and to see that so many other people (around the world) are excited too! Here's to a good 5 (or 10) years of working telescopes.

Physics Poetry

2010-04-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Today as part of an exam review, I had my students make up Haikus, Limericks, and Nursery Rhymes that had to do with Physics. Some are great, some are... welll... different! Here are some of my favorites:

The ball on the edge
Waits in anticipation
Full of potential

There was an old man from Maine,
Who fell from a flying airplane
His Kinetic Energy soared
While his Potential was floored
When he hit the ground he had no brain.

Potential is fun
Kinetic is very fun
I'm not good at this!

Lumpy Humpty sat on a wall
Lumpy Humpty had a great fall
Lumpy Humpty did not realize
That momentum and collisions
Would be his demise

More velocity
And my KE pwns yours, ha!
Yes for energy.

Twinkle twinkle little star
Started falling down so far
Used to be up there so high
Took a plane right out of the sky
Twinkle Twinkle, little star
Now there's a hole in the earth because of an inelastic collision.

I love kinetics
They involve lots of motion
Refrigerator

There once was a girl at the park
On a teeter totter above all the bark
She was making a Physics Rap video for class
But because of her potential energy she fell on her....
Face.

This morning the rain
made me slip and fall, oh no!
Friction, I hate you.

And one kid wrote a rap - you'll have to provide your own beats:

Collisions - kaboom!
Objects fly by like zoom zoom zoom.
When collisions are elastic,
It's quite fantastic.
They go bump-a-bump
And push away, not together like a clump.
Inelastic collisions are also cool
I'm not being sarcastic, or a fool.
They stick
And energy is released with a kick
Explosion!

Now let's talk about momentum.
It's a property of an object in motion
Like energy but a different proportion
P = mv,
Vector in the same direction as velocity.

Word.

YTVotD

2010-03-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Two in a row! Heard about this in Newsweek, of all places. Who would have thought obsolete printed news media would be informing be about viral videos on web 2.0 sites? Anyways - I think it's Ben Folds but could be wrong. Warning, when they say "may contain curse words" at the beginning, they mean "does contain (one or so) innocuous curse words."

YTVotD

2010-03-06T09:28:00.000-08:00

Time for another YTVotD, this time it's Dog Edition!

If only Banjo were coordinated enough to catch anything in his mouth, we could have shown him instead. As it is, treats tossed to him usually bounce of his face and then he sniffs around for a while until he finds it. My favorite parts are at 0:44 and, in what is a typical Banjo-face, at 1:08.

Performance Evaluation

2010-03-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

While this may not exactly be a extensive scientific sample, I think this is pretty cool and I'm proud of my favorite physics teacher for doing such a good job (at least according to two students) in just her first year! Being a teacher might not be the best career for getting promotions and all, but you do get some opportunities for unsolicited feedback, which seems pretty rewarding. See below or follow the link HERE.

Hopefully Kate doesn't mind me posting this...

Visit from Anonymous

2010-02-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

Just before I took off for Florida and the SDO launch, we were lucky enough to get a weekend visit from everybody's favorite anonymous blog commenter, down from the Canadian tundra for some time off in CA. We had a good time playing board games and poker.

Unlike last time he visited, Ari did not take all our money in poker (on the contrary, actually). It wasn't all bad though, he did win $1 for accepting a whimsical challenge to drink a gulp of sludgey beer yeast trub. Apparently it wasn't as completely and utterly disgusting as it looks. I guess. I didn't taste it. Are you kidding?

Banjo definitely was happy to see Ari, so I guess he forgives you for taking him on walks in Frisco last December when it was less than freezing outside and he was forced into the indignity of wearing those booties. Thanks for visiting us, Ari! Sorry if I blew your cover.

SDO Launch!

2010-02-17T15:15:00.000-08:00

Belated but still interesting - the Solar Dynamics Observatory, with two instruments I worked on (HMI and AIA), finally launched last week from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I got to see it in person with the parents and many other Lockheed folks, and despite the one-day delay it was quite an exciting experience! It worked out great for me, as I got to visit parents, grandparents, and my aunt and uncle, not to mention catch the final night launch of the shuttle ever*. Here's a couple photos and links to many more:

* - Final shuttle launch in July may well end up being a night launch if it gets delayed more than a couple days.

Links:

Official launch video (Media Player)

Youtube showing cloud ripples from shockwave blasting away sundog

Spaceflight Now page
SDO NASA page

Encapsulation!

2010-01-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

SDO is (almost) encapsulated! Only a few weeks until the Feb. 9 (or more likely Feb. 12-16) launch. Cool picture from yesterday:

HMI (which I worked on mostly) is the one with the two wedge-shaped white radiators visible in the top right of the spacecraft. EVE is next to it on the left, and the 4 AIA telescopes are opposite them and not visible.

1/26/10 - a couple more pics as SDO is now sitting on the truck waiting for the ride over to the rocket...

Avahontas, or maybe Pocatar?

2010-01-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

Kate and I decided to succumb to the Avatar hype with some friends last night and saw the movie in its full IMAX 3-D glory, and yes it was pretty breathtaking. I agree with all the people who are saying the amazingly lush and creatively designed visuals - especially in 3D - make all the difference here. The plot was, well, predictable, as pointed out by this pretty funny FailBlog bit. (Warning - Spoiler alert I guess, not that you wouldn't know the story after the first 5 minutes of the movie anyway.)

Haiti Earthquake Relief

2010-01-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for a way to help with the Haiti earthquake relief efforts from afar, here's a charitable donation option that I think is a good way of doing so - Doctors Without Borders.

They have been working in Haiti for 19 years and are providing some of the much needed medical services that is one of the most urgent of a long list of the country's needs right now.

Is this necessary?

2010-01-06T17:17:00.000-08:00

Really? Is this actually necessary to be a front-page headline on MSNBC.com? Sheesh. That is kind of depressing. Well, on the bright side, maybe some people will read it.

SJSU Master's Program

2009-12-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

I have unofficially started my master's in science education at SJSU. I figured I would probably want to get another degree some day and SJSU is nice enough to let me transfer a bunch of credits from my credential program, so although I wouldn't have minded a little time away from school, I jumped right back into the pool this fall and took another class.

Lest you think it is all sunshine and roses here at the tommenkate household, it basically took all my willpower to make it through this course. The professor was incredibly confrontational - it seemed like she took every opportunity to antagonize each of the four students (myself included). She routinely wrote comments on our papers along the lines of "No one cares what you think", and "why bother?" One of the women in the class broke down crying a couple of times.

At any rate, it's over now and I passed the class, which is a relief. I did learn a few things along the way, and picked up a bunch of pointers about how not to teach. And all four of us provided plenty of constructive feedback on the evaluation forms, so hopefully this class will improve in future semesters...

SDO has a launch date!

2009-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

Old news for those that follow this sort of thing, but it's exciting that the Solar Dynamics Observatory (the satellite that holds the instruments I worked on) has a "definite" launch date now after a year-plus of delays and schedule shuffling! It's supposed to blast off on Feb. 3rd from Florida. Hopefully I will get to go see it in person.

There's a neat video of the project with sound bytes from a lot of the NASA people I worked with over the last couple years on the SDO website. Look at the right under "SDO Engineers Create What Never Was" because I guess that's what we do. (?) The video direct link is here. Bonus points for anyone who can spot the 2-3 occurrences of yours truly in the video. I think I'm pretty obscured in a couple of them (ie @ 0:53 I'm behind the red metal piece).

Here's a cool picture of SDO's ride (an Atlas-V) arriving at the launch pad for vertical integration. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed the thing doesn't blow up while getting the thing up to 7,000 mph...

New Party Games

2009-12-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

We learned a few fun new party games. You all probably know that we play a lot of board games, but every now and again we like to shake it up by playing something a little less competitive. Thanks to Cara and Alex for these two suggestions…

1) The Telephone-Meets-Pictionary Game

Everyone sits around in a circle and gets a blank piece of paper and a pen. Each person writes a sentence on the top of their paper, and then passes it to the person on their left. The new person “illustrates” this sentence, then folds the paper so the original sentence can’t be seen and passes it on. The third person writes a new sentence based on what they see in the drawing, folds the paper again, and passes it on. This continues until the paper gets back to where it started, by which point it is probably unrecognizeable. Much laughter ensues when the paper are unfolded.

2) “Babbies”

This game is kind of like a group-think version of Taboo. Before the game starts, each person writes 5 objects on small slips of paper and puts them in a hat. Then, people divide into two teams. On each turn, one team nominates a “guesser” who will have 2 minutes to guess as many of the clues as possible. The rest of the team collaborates to give a clue. This is the tricky part - each person on the team can only say one word at a time, and the team must create a complete, gramatically-correct question for which the answer is the object on the slip. So one person will start with "What", the next person will say "animal", then the next person says "smells", then "the", then "worst", then "Question Mark" to end the sentence. After the sentence has ended, the guesser can guess "skunk", of course. The challenging part of this game is coming up with a cohesive sentence - usually different group members will have different ideas of how the clue should go, so it gets derailed several times.

Anyway, we've had a great time playing these games in the last couple of months and thought we would share them in case anyone is looking for a fun evening activity with a large group!

Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt Redux

2009-12-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

Last year was the first annual Tom's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt. It was so successful that we expanded this year and made it the 1st annual Tom and Dustin and Adam and Mikey's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt, since all four of those guys have birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other. The rules are simple - each group has 3 hours to come up with a photo entry for each of 15 open-ended categories. This year we had four groups competing, and each group submitted some gems. Without further ado, the winners* in each category were as follows:
1) Best interpretation of a song title
2) Best Oxymoron
3) Most unusual Perspective
4) Do something naughty
5) Best use of a balloon animal
6) A wild critter
7) Spell something (and no, we don't have any announcements... we just thought this photo would terrify our respective spouses)
8) I can't believe we all fit in here
9) Most likely to be picked up hitchiking
10) Can you find us (and no, the person in the middle isn't the one hiding...)
11) Best use of a beer
12) Best re-creation of an Olympic sport
13) Friendliest stranger (I believe some monetary funds were involved in this transaction)
14) Most Holiday Spirit

15) Freestyle!And so, a good time was had by all! Looking forward to round 3 next year!

* Note that some of the winning pictures cannot be shown on this 'family' blog... although they may make an appearance as blackmail at some point in the future

Fizziks Projects

2009-12-23T15:47:00.000-08:00

I let my Physics students design their own final semester projects. It was a pretty open ended assignment, which meant I got a wide variety of products. Some memorable ones included a discussion of how medieval armor was designed to absorb impact, an analysis of a Korean badminton player fracturing a watermelon with a 300 km/hr birdie, a video of two kids towing a truck (in park) with a rope, a "rap-off" between five kids (with the whole class joining in on the refrains), an amazing yoyo demonstration, and a trebuchet (although not this one).

Several groups made some pretty amazing/hysterical videos for their projects, as well. It really makes me feel old when I see how adroit they are at manipulating digital media - I shudder to think how long these videos would have taken me to make. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

The Giant Orange

The Physics Rappers

Happy Christmakah

2009-12-22T10:00:00.001-08:00

Four of the greatest Judeo-Christian themed holiday traditions are celebrated each year at Dustin, Cara, and Karen's annual Christmakah party: gingerbread houses, potato latkes, garish displays of Christmas lights, and the game of dreidel. This year we had a big group and made 5 houses, with only one burn from the scalding molten sugar used to structurally bond the house pieces together (ask Kate to show you her blister).

After building the houses and attaching them to boxes, we spread out about 90,000,000 calories worth of candy on the table and started to decorate. The 5 boxes took different themes: a gingerbread dog-house, a fashion show runway complete with gingerbread models, a holiday horror-show, a ramp for santa on his sled, and ours, which was a farmhouse theme. Here's some pictures from the action.

The candy carnage during mid-decoration. You'll also notice people wearing the festive"yarmuclaus." And Banjo, who was ever searching for dropped bits. I think he gained 2 lbs that night.

Our house! Check out Kate's farmer and tractor, and the rooster on the roof! I also liked Mikey's hay bales.

Some of Bailey's particularly morbid handiwork, part of the "garden of mutilated gingerbread men."

The finished products.

The dreidel action, and...

The two winners with their prizes.

Catching up on Thanksgiving

2009-12-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's almost Christmas and everyone is busy hanging their stockings by the chimney with care, but I never posted about the nice visit we had with my parents over Thanksgiving. So, before it officially loses its status as most recent holiday, let's get caught up.

Banjo celebrates Thanksgiving too! He even ate his green bean this year.

Since we are only going to be attending the Denver family gathering over Christmas, my parents were nice enough to come out for a Thanksgiving visit. We had a great time, great weather, great food, and some good laughs. I think mom checked off nearly of all the activities on her "to-do" list, which took up most of a sheet of paper! Aside from having a standardly delicous and plentiful Thanksgiving feast, we:

Went on a good long hike in with Banjo, followed by a period of tick removal (despite the preventative medicine he gets)
Played lots of frisbee in the field
Mass-produced some delicious biscotti and homemade granola - yum!

Took a rain-soaked day-after-Thanksgiving trip to get our traditional, misshapen discounted Christmas tree, followed by some festive decorating (we like to get our tree early so we can enjoy it all month before we go away for the holidays

Went up to San Francisco where we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and along Crissy Beach, then North Beach for some yummy Italian lunch, and finally a stop atop Twin Peaks to take advantage of the clear skies for the sweeping city views.

Played a variety of board games, always a Nichols favorite
Went to the Stanford Art Museum and especially enjoyed the piece there by Duane Hanson
Had some quality time with Banjo on the sofa

We were all sad when they finally had to go! Thanks for the visit!

On the first day of Tomandkatemakus

2009-12-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

We made a resolution to get somewhat caught up on this blog. Stay tuned for some major blogging action over the next 11 days!

Perhaps the dorkiest costume of all time

2009-11-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

I really can't (or won't) claim that too much thought went into it, beyond finding my old graduation cap and gown in a trunk and thinking that was too boring to wear alone and pondering how I could spruce it up a bit for a few minutes. I'll let those of you who don't already know what I was guess in the comments. Keep in mind I'm married to a science teacher...

Kate went as an astronaut, and even Banjo got a last minute cape to transform him into Underdog!

Did anyone else have a good costume?

Beach Birthdays

2009-11-03T21:44:00.000-08:00

We're a little behind the times on the blogging - oh well. But we have had some fun times recently! Two weekends ago we took a trip up to Dillon Beach, north of San Francisco on Tomales Bay, with our good friends Dustin and Cara to celebrate Dustin's 30th birthday (and mine too, coming up). Cara has relative who let us stay in his house right on the beach (read: rocky cliff) there, which was really quite nice. We had a relaxing weekend of walking on the beach, cooking and eating delicious food (Kate and I made Coq au Vin for the first time ever, Cara and Dustin made German Chocolate cake), playing games, and hiking along the rugged coast while soaking in the scenic surroundings all the while. Here's a few pictures of the weekend, which you may have already seen on Picasa:

Look who's turning 3 - 0!

Tom n' Kate

The view from our temporary residence - amazing!

Kate is king of the mountain so ppbbbblttttphff!

Looking back towards Dillon Beach and Tomales Bay

It was fun to take a trip to the coast, as we often end up heading East into the mountains for our CA vacations. The weather sure agreed with us, and a weekend spent with friends in a beautiful setting like this was a welcome escape from our busy lives. Happy Birthday, Dustin!

Glacier Point Hike

2009-10-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went up to Yosemite with an assortment of work friends (Kate was busy and sadly couldn't join us), and since we've all done Half Dome more than necessary, we opted to hike up to Glacier Point and continue down to the valley via the Panorama trail, mostly to do something different.

After arriving and spending Friday night in a crowded but still spacious Upper Pines campground, we set out on the Four Mile Trail up to Glacier Point, which was surprisingly consistently graded despite the numerous switchbacks and 3,500 feet of elevation gained in 4 miles or so. Here's some pictures of this part of the hike - the trail offered great views of the valley and distant domes throughout the hike.

Dave, Mikey, and Cathy heading up the Four Mile Trail

Looking West back out the valley towards El Cap

Climbing the valley walls

Almost to Glacier Point (it's the outcrop at the right)

Half Dome vista from Glacier Point, with the recent rockslides (whitish patch) visible

After lunch on top with a couple hundred of our closest friends, we continued on the Panorama Trail, which offered amazing views of Half Dome, Tenaya Canyon, the Panorama Cliff, and the almost-dry Nevada and Vernal Falls. One particularly neat aspect of this hike was how the trail provided nearly continuous, but still always changing, views of some of Yosemite's more prominent features. For example, we got to see Half Dome from so many angles, I almost think you see it better on this hike than you do when actually scaling the giant dome itself.

Heading down the scenic Panorama Trail

Half Dome - dead-on

Panorama Trail view

On the JMT above Nevada Falls

Nevada Falls, a little drier than last time we discussed it...

Mmmm... dinner.

HSB9, continued

2009-10-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

As promised, I have some additional videos and pictures from this year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SF. Enjoy! Who wants to come out for it next year?

Workers Comp

2009-10-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

It turns out being a Physics teacher is not safe.

Today I dropped a 2 kg mass on my middle finger from about 3 feet up trying to demonstrate potential energy. It worked - my jumping and hollering definitely convinced my students that the mass had gained some energy. I also accidentally hit a kid in the face with a (flat) basketball and got a rubberband lodged in the ceiling.

So, although this isn't quite as painful as the time I ripped my lips off with duct tape last year, and it didn't leave as much of a mark as stabbing myself with a fork earlier this year, it is going to be a challenge learning how to type with nine fingers.

Tomorrow is the famous "bowling ball pendulum" day, so keep your fingers crossed that I don't have any major mishaps...

Teaching Milestone

2009-10-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

A big moment in my life as a teacher today - I have been teaching for an entire year (counting my student teaching). This is a BIG DEAL because I am now getting to teach lessons for the second time around. I'm proud that I have managed to force myself to keep digital lesson plans this whole time - often the last thing I wanted to do was type up the material I taught after a long day. But now I'm getting to reap the rewards - I just opened up a file and had Monday's lesson basically all planned out for me, which was a great feeling!

So now, it is mostly a matter of making changes and edits to improve myself and my lessons, but that should be a lot less time consuming than generating the first drafts has been. Yay!

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2009

2009-10-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'll have some more photos and a recap up soon, but here's two videos I took of Natalie MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy fiddling up a storm on the Porch Stage Saturday. Her performance was my highlight of the weekend, although there were lots of other great acts too.

This was their opening number:

And this was their closer, a rousing fiddle and dance extravaganza.

This song really captured the relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere of their performance. You could really tell that they were genuinely having a grand old time up there on stage. The crowd really enjoyed the girl (just an anonymous concert-goer) that was invited to dance a bit on stage (2:10) after doing her thing in front of the stage. Neat moment among many at HSB 9. Can't wait for next year!

More to come when I have a little more time...

YTVotD

2009-09-29T13:25:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since we had one, and I thought this was pretty cool. If you thought the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies were well-choreographed, check this out:

Sure beats the "Wave," homer hankies, or the Tomahawk Chop, huh? I still like the SJ Sharks chompchomp move though.

There's another less professional video here that shows some of the same cool moves.

Also, Happy Birthday Mom, and cousin Margaret! (And Bailey and Jones!)

Phun Physics

2009-09-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share some highlights from my new life as a teacher. I'm still amazingly busy but really enjoying myself and my kids!

My top 10 best stories / anecdotes so far

Using Physics as an excuse to watch roadrunner cartoons and the Simpsons in class.
Surprising and startling them with demos like "pound your hand with a hammer". I couldn't find a good video of this but the idea is that you put a large mass on your hand/arm (I used an 18 lb block of aluminum) and hit it with a hammer as hard as you can. It won't hurt... I promise!
A student showing up for class wearing these. (Make sure you scroll down far enough to see the picture. Creepy, eh?)
Physics aerobics! Try to stand with your heels against the wall and touch your toes without bending your knees. One of my students can... but it turns out he's a hyper-flexible waterpolo player. Can you?
Outtakes from our water rocket launching project. Most launches went fine, but 3 rockets did explode on the launch pad and one took off sideways across the campus quad... right at the principal. No injuries, though!
Stabbing myself with a fork attempting to do this demo.
Walking around the room while they're problem solving and feeling like almost everyone is getting it!
Playing with super-sensitive motion sensors. The kids really got a kick out of seeing a graph of their movements on a computer screen. We also talked about how motion sensors worked and I showed an incredible video about a blind boy from Sacramento who can actually echolocate! He's good enough at it to be able to skateboard, ride a bike, and walk without a cane... and he literally has no eyes. If you want to check out the video it is in six parts on youtube here. It's worth watching if you've got an hour (or even 10-20 minutes for the first parts).
Students giving me links to weird websites/videos, like this one. I'm not sure why they thought I needed to see that, but it looks a lot like Banjo getting a belly rub...
Lots of kids telling me that they like / love Physics!

Biking to the Beach

2009-09-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

Over Labor Day weekend we didn't have any big travel-related plans, but we did head over to a beach near Santa Cruz for an afternoon of fun in the sun and hanging out on the beach. Alex and I decided to take advantage of the free ride home and bike one-way out to meet our friends on the beach. I've been wanting to bike from home to the coast for a while and this was a great day for it! Here's the route we took, which took us up on Route 9 above Saratoga and down the other side through beautiful and redwood-filled Big Basin State Park as well as the lush canyon of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park before we got to Santa Cruz.

Here's a couple pictures from our ride that Alex took. Our favorite part was the windy downhill into Big Basin where the road alternated between open views of the forest-covered hills and nice banked turns snaking through giant redwood groves before bottom out at the park headquarters, where we had a nice snack break.

Fortunately there were friends with a car, grill, burgers, and frosty beverages waiting for us there! Hope you all were able to celebrate the "end" of summer in good fashion as well, although it still feels like summer out here in CA.

P.S. - If you're not easily nauseated and don't mind intense biker-style rock music soundtracks, there are some YouTube videos of motorcyclists riding some of this route. This on e is going uphill from Saratoga to the high point at Skyline Blvd (passing lots of tired bikers), this one is cruising through the woods on the western side of Skyline, and this one is good if you like Journey and bad video quality. Maybe I need some speakers on my bike so I can rock some Journey too while pedaling through the hills...

August Update

2009-08-29T13:27:00.001-07:00

What have we been up to the past few weeks, you ask? Well, let's take a look!

We got to go to a preseason football game in San Francisco - Niners vs. Kate's Broncos - thanks to our friend Karen. It turned out to be quite an exciting game, with the Broncos scoring a touchdown down by 7 with a minute left, then failing on the 2-pt conversion to lose the game. It was entertaining to watch Kate go through the full spectrum of sports emotions within a 30 second timeframe.

Here's a shot of the action. I kinda like the blurry-ness, you can see how fast the wideouts are moving relative to the linemen.

And here we are (Cara, Dustin, Kate, with Karen hidden behind Kate) bundled up against the chilly SF August evening.

And as you know, Kate is now teaching kids that Physics is fun. Most recently/currently she's doing a project involving bottle-rockets:

3... 2... 1...

Just this weekend went to one of our favorite summer activities - Shady Shakespeare in Sanborn park near Saratoga. This year our friend Mikey was in it, playing Touchstone in "As You Like It." Here's a few shots from our picnic cookout beforehand and the performance.

Kate happily stocking up on the ever-important pickles.

The Adams manning the grill

Other friends - Dustin, Kate, Ashley, (another) Adam, Cara, Katie (hidden)

Blurry Mikey in one of several compromising positions his role required.

Touchstone and Celia peeking through the curtain.

Bravo!

And of course Banjo is being cute as always. Somehow he always manages to turn would-be distinguished poses into something silly just in time for the shutter, but the results are usually pretty amusing. Not quite the surprise squirrel picture, but still pretty good.

If teaching doesn't work out for me...

2009-08-16T17:50:00.001-07:00

I think I might have a promising career as a lunchlady.

One of my goals for the end of summer was to stock our freezer with healthy breakfasts and lunches that I can grab on the go on days I'm too busy to make something. Breakfasts are particularly challenging because my new teacher schedule has me waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 am (class starts at 7:27) and I just can't force myself to eat that early in the morning.

So, in the last couple of weeks I have made the following:

~12 Gorgonzola Burgers (top left)
~80 muffins (top right), both apple-walnut and pumpkin-cherry. I did make them healthier, substituting some apple sauce for oil, halving the sugar, and using whole-wheat flour.
~27 burritos (middle / left), both beef and chicken
~20 baked potatoes (bottom left), with vegetarian chili, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and cheese
~5 batches of pesto (bottom right)

Tom has contributed, too, with double batches of pecan bars and lemon bars, SOME of which found their way into the freezer. Suspiciously, I couldn't find them to photograph when I was making this post, though. Do you have anything to tell me, Tom?

So, the freezer is packed and I am getting ready for my first day of school (tomorrow!). Hopefully this will last us a couple months, at least, and it will be nice not to have to eat the dreaded school sloppy joes on mornings that we couldn't quite stretch the leftovers.

Banjo and Rufus say: "We can has cheezburger?"

2nd Floor Mid-Mass Reunion

2009-08-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend we got another visit from our good ol' Dartmouth friend Frank, who was in the Bay Area on a buisness trip again but this time stayed an extra day to socialize! Also in the area for a few weeks on a med school rotation is our friend Matt with whom Frank and I (and some of our other readers, I think) shared a corner of Mid-Mass (dorm) during our sophomore year. Friday was Matt's birthday, so we celebrated by going to a local comedy club, which gave us all some good chuckles. Saturday we decided to head over to Santa Cruz to see the sights, beat the heat, and visit our favorite Greek restaurant ever. Here are some of the highlights.

From the nice walk along the cliffs near Lighthouse Field Beach, where we watched the surfers catch the waves for a while.

Getting up close and personal with the piles of sea lions that are always hanging out on the boat landing at the wharf. Frank seemed strangely compelled to try to communicate with the sea lions in their native "language," but I'm not sure if he ever got through to them...

While Kate and Matt got carmel apples on the boardwalk, they decided to treat Frank to a surprise snack and have him guess what it was. Can you guess? It was chocolate covered bacon. Frank got close by guessing "pretzel." Sure puts the fried twinkie stand a few booths away to shame.

Here's Kate at our favorite carnival booth - the tennis ball bazooka. You shoot tennis balls out of this pneumatic cannon at 186 mph at various targets. The only prize you get is the satisfying "whoooompfh" of each ball getting blasted out the barrel, but trust me it's worth it.

Good times, gentlemen! Come back soon, Frank.

Phish at Shoreline, 8-5-09

2009-08-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

The highlight of the week for me was not only getting to go to my first Phish show in 6 years, but that I could even ride my bike to and from the show! A band that I have invested a lot of brain cells and hours between headphones in over the years since middle school, it was thoroughly enjoyable from both a nostalgic and forward-looking perspective; the band is back and playing their old classics (almost) as well as ever before, and they also have some real inspiring new material as well to keep things interesting. While it's definitely not just a "reunion tour" or novelty act, they are seemingly paying appropriate attention to the old stuff that the fans like.

The venue was about 5 miles away from our place and accessible via a scenic biking/walking trail that heads out to the Bay. Getting to bypass the throngs of people in cars both getting in and out was especially fun. If anyone's curious, here's a video clip from their performance Wednesday, it cuts off, sorry. (not filmed by me despite the same last name, my seats weren't quite that good!)

Two of my cousins will be in Washington state catching a pair of shows today and tomorrow, lucky ducks! Hope you guys have fun at the Gorge.

From Belgium with Love

2009-08-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

The last few beers we have made were relatively common styles that are generally liked by us and our friends - an IPA, a Smoked Scottish Ale, Pale Ale, Nut Brown, Porter, etc. This last time we wanted to try something a little different, so below is our first attempt at making a Chimay clone. (Sorry the picture is so bad - lack of camera required using my webcam to take the picture.) If you haven't had it before, Chimay is a Belgian Brewery made famous by its three types of Monk-brewed beers that - as is typical of the "Belgian" style of Trappist Ales - are extra rich, flavorful, interesting, and alcoholic. The extra alcohol (it should be around 8-9% when finished) comes from the 9 or so pounds of malt extracts, candi sugars, and specialty grains that the special trappist yeasties chow down on vigorously, as you can see from the photo below. This was taken about 2 days into the fermentation.

We just racked (or transferred) the wort (or unfinished beer) into secondary (or a separate jug) yesterday to help it clear and keep it off the dead yeast cells, and in doing so I definitely got strong aromas of blackberry and pepper, in line with the distinctive Chimay Grande Reserve flavors. We'll be sure to let you know how it turns out in a month or so.

Maybe some day we can have a taste test with Steve and Sarah, who I'm happy to hear have just started homebrewing themselves! In the meantime, what should we make next? Does anybody have any other favorite commercial beers that we should try to clone?

Back from the Northwest

2009-08-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

Hi readers - time for an update! We just recently returned from a trip to the Great Pacific Northwest where we spent a fun-filled few days with Kate's family (parents, sibings, and nieces and nephews and all) and then did some exploring on our own to break up the long drive back. Yes, we drove up to Seattle, in part because we were bringing the dogs. And yes, I said dogs (plural) because in addition to Banjo we brought up the cute little puppy that Kate adopted down here for her sister's family (as they had been unsuccessful this year in a search for a small terrier-type breed from a rescue/shelter in the Seattle area). So our drive up was pretty much a straight through blast, complete with a comfortable night spent in the back of the Subaru at the Roseburg, OR Wal-Mart parking lot (the price is right!). Unfortunately my camera went on the fritz and died right at the beginning of this trip, so you'll have to make do with these pictures from the internets that I think represent our travels.

The puppy delivery went well and while it was very fun to have a well-behaved and adorably small puppy around the house for a week, we are happy to see Kate's sister (and especially her dog-loving niece) get to have a dog of their own now. We think that Clover (as she's now named) will miss Banjo a little more than vice-versa, especially given Banjo's sudden increase in toy protectiveness that coincided with the puppy's arrival. They did play quite nice together, and it was really a blast to watch the two of them rough-house around outside or play-fight over a stuffy-toy.

Little Clover, back when she was just "puppy."

The big family gathering was at a gorgeous house we all rented for the big group in Union, WA - right on the Hood Canal at the SE end of the Olympic peninsula. This gave us great access to some beautiful spots like Twanoh State Park - a charming Depression-era CCC park project right on the water and with some lovely rainforesty trails - and the Staircase area of Olympic National Park. Kate and I tackled the thigh-burning Mt. Ellinor hike one morning, with 2,500" of vertical in the last mile to the summit! I even shared a shady nook on the summit crags with a mountain goat as I ate lunch, but as it turns out these goats are not uncommon in Olympic these days and are even becoming a nuisance.

One of the neat CCC-built buildings at Twanoh SP

The view from atop Mt. Ellinor N to Mt. Washington Some of the ubiquitous Olympic NP mountain goats with whom I shared the summit (the photo is from the top of Ellinor, too)

Some of the highlights of the family portion of our trip were the delicious meals we all took turns making each night, the lovely view over the water from the house's deck each evening, making exciting waterside or rainforesty discoveries with the nieces and nephews, a fun-filled day jumping off inflatable floats and boats at a nearby freshwater lake, and of course some game-playing with the adults after bedtime.

When the time eventually came for us to disperse again, Kate, Banjo, and I headed North to drive around the Olympic Peninsula and see some of the other areas in the National Park. First stop was Hurricane Ridge, an incredibly scenic ~15 mile drive up into the hills from Port Angeles terminating in a gorgeous alpine playground with several short trails to choose from. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed on any of them so Banjo had to wait in the car while we took in some of the scenery. That may have been a good thing, as we saw a bear (!) just munching on some grass in between some of the paved "near the visitor center" style trails there! Alas, no pictures of the bear.

Some representative pictures of Hurricane Ridge

After Hurricane Ridge our intent was to head to the coast and camp at Kalaloch, a section of the park that covers the coastline, but we arrived to find out that both the regular and "primitive" campgrounds were both full (on a Thursday). Who knew! We took a nice long walk on the wide, foggy Kalaloch beach and let Banjo romp around in glee. Watching our dog run around on the sand, happily sprinting from one intriguing scent to the next and back to us was definitely a highlight of the trip - marred only by the fact that about 5 minutes before our hike was done he somehow managed to find a dead seagull to roll around in before we could get him off of it. Yick. Dead-seagull-covered Banjo with about 15 hours of driving left to do in the next two days. Fortunately we had a bathroom nearby at the lodge and a spare towel, so the little guy was punished for his transgressions with an impromptu bath.

Kalaloch Beach and Rocks, the latter of which were mostly obscured by the fog while we were there, but the beach itself was beautiful and eerie.

That we were denied a campsite at Kalaloch turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as our Plan B was driving a little further down to the Quinault Rain Forest area of Olympic NP. Here we found a fantastic campground with some easy walk-in sites right along a creek and a stone's throw from a lakeshore with lots of privacy thanks to the rain-foresty surroundings. We cooked up a quick dinner, made some s'mores, and cozied up in the tent happy we weren't stuck amongst the hoardes of RVs at Kalaloch.

One of the waterfalls near our Falls Creek campsite in the Quinault Rainforest area

The next day we packed up early and headed south, destination: Crater Lake. After a lunch stop in Portland at Corbett's Fish House for some delicious fish tacos, we veered East off I-5 for some scenic driving over the Oregon Cascades and south towards Crater Lake. We arrived at the lake around sunset and after taking in a couple viewpoints we found out yet again that the campground was full here too (despite a ranger telling me on the phone the day before that "that campground almost never fills up). This time Plan B was another NF campground about 10 miles away, but in 3-4 miles on dirt fire roads. After a turning off onto the NF roads we saw a couple signs directing us to a campsite but those signs quickly stopped and we drove on through the forest wondering what we'd find. Eventually we saw a little spur with a small sign identifying it as "Huckleberry Hill" so we thought we'd try that. This road wasn't grated and quickly turned into a rocky tree-strewn 4x4 road that was just about as much as my Subaru could handle, with Kate helping to pull fallen trees just enough out of the way so I could drive past. But all's well that ends well and we made it to the top of "Huckleberry Hill" which afforded us a really nice viewpoint over towards the rim of Crater Lake and the surrounding area. Interestingly you can see where we ended up in the bottom left of this map from the NPS, and also Google seems to have the dirt roads identified too - we ended up at the end of the spur road in the little clearing shown here. A quick camp-stove dinner, another nice campfire and s'more s'mores were followed by a night filled with crystal clear stars in the sky and visits from the local deer population (which Banjo found some combination of interesting and frightening). Again, everything seemed to work out nicely for us.

After Huckleberry Hill we went back up to Crater Lake early in the morning to get our fill of hiking and sightseeing in before finishing the drive home. Crater Lake was pretty amazing - the water is incredibly blue, the thousand-foot walls down to the lake staggeringly steep and severe, and of course Wizard Island in the middle is so quintessentially volcanic it almost looks like a middle-schooler's baking soda and vinegar science fair project. Views are unique from every vantage point around the lake, making the hike around the rim particularly interesting. Also making that hike interesting was the necessary attention to not trip and fall a thousand feet down cliffs into the lake - it really is right on the rim for a significant portion of the trail, at least for the ~5 miles I hiked on it between the visitor center and the Watchman overlook.

(I'll add some pictures of Crater Lake later)

After circling the lake and taking in some more viewpoints and a couple short little hikes we continued south through Oregon and California, had lunch in the shadow of impressive Mt. Shasta, and made it back safe and sound!

All in all a great trip despite the lots of driving. A few good books on tape and good company in the passenger seat helps there. I'm glad we got to see family and some natural highlights of the Pacific Northwest in the same trip, but it's always good to be back home too. Hopefully my new camera will arrive soon so I can get back to photo-enhanced blogging. Kate, was there anything I forgot that's worth mentioning?

Hot!

2009-07-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

I know I'm not the only one posting about hot weather, but still:

Ten Lakes Backpacking Trip

2009-07-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we joined two couples of friends through Kate's soccer team for a backpacking trip out of the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite NP. Tuolumne is higher elevation than the more famous Yosemite Valley, and is more known for its open high-country peaks and mountain passes and lakes (as opposed to the quintessential valley with all the waterfalls and domes). Kate and I went up early Friday with Bill and did a day-hike to Cathedral Lakes, right below spectacularly jagged Cathedral Peak. We had to brave a swampy meadow teeming with mosquitos to get out to the lake, but as you can see, the views from out there made it worthwhile.

Mosquitos! Run!

Hiking along the shores of Cathedral Lake

Looking back over Cathedral Lake at Cathedral Peak

That night we were joined by three others (Roe, Igor, and Petra) at the campground after happily making s'mores and watching the stars around the fire left by the nightly ranger talk. Even later, our little corner of the backpacker's campground was paid a visit by a pretty tame bear who was curious enough about the contents of one of our neighbor's backpacks to loudly eviscerate it (the backpack, not the neighbor) at 3am maybe 15 feet from my head. I guess he was after an overlooked packet of Crystal Light or something. Fortunately the backpack owners got up and scared the furry beast off, then we put their packs into one of the metal food storage lockers. Good thing too, because he (the bear) came back around dawn and sniffed around again at the very locker where their packs were.

The next morning we got on the trail to Ten Lakes, a cluster of seven (yeah, I know! not ten - weird) alpine lakes north of the main road through Yosemite. This being the introduction to backpacking for a couple of the other folks with us it wasn't too strenuous of an adventure - maybe 6-7 miles in - but it was a nice trail and offered some great vistas upon reaching Ten Lakes pass.

Our group at Olmstead Point before starting our hike

On the trail: Kate, Roe, Petra, Igor

Hiking through the meadow: Tom, Kate, Roe, Igor, Petra

The view from the pass NE towards North Pk, Conness, White Mt.

On the steep drop down into Ten Lakes Basin

We found an amazing lake-front campsite a little ways off the trail and spent the afternoon swimming (brrrrr!), exploring the other lakes and streams, pumping water, collecting wood for a fire, eating smoked salmon, and drinking wine. What? You guys don't eat smoked salmon and uncork a nice bottle of Cabernet on your backpacking trips? I guess you need to go with Roe and Igor and Bill and Petra more often. The wine (packed in by the other boys, I must confess) was a nice touch as Kate and I were actually celebrating our 1000th day of being married to each other, a nice milestone I took note of in an imitation of my Uncle Larry, who has celebrated both his 1,000th and more recently 10,000th days of marriage to Aunt Carol! Thanks for the idea, Toledos.

Our campsite by the lake

Nothing beats a good swimming spot after a day of hiking in the sun.

The lakeside view

Petra and Bill make pancakes! We ate pretty gourmet this trip...

Igor celebrates going downhill on the way out

After our hike out we went down to the valley to take in some of the sights and swim in the Merced River, which was refreshingly almost as cold as the alpine lake the day before! Brrrr... Anyways, a good trip and scenic location - always nice to take advantage of some of the beautiful country we have in our extended backyard out here in California.

Here are the photos I took, and there are some others by Bill here if you're curious.

Happy Independence Day!

Sunny Florida & the Keys

2009-06-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month Kate and I took a trip out to Florida for a medium-sized family gathering, followed by a quick trip down to the Keys for just the two of us. We were quite shocked by the intense heat and humidity of mid-June in the sunshine state, but we had a great time visiting three generations of relatives as well as exploring Key West for the first time! I have pictures up on my Picasa page, but here are some highlights. Thanks to our friends for watching Banjo while we were gone, and thanks to Auntie for hosting Fam-Fest '09! Hope we can do it again sometime.

First, from our family visit:

Family Picture (can you tell which of us is related to these people, and which two are sisters?)

Relaxing by the pool at Auntie's, which was pretty much our modus operandi for the weekend.

Grandpa in one of his great t-shirts, Wendy

Kate, Claire, & Wendy feeding the giraffes at the Brevard Zoo - it was very cool how they came right up next to us to grab some veggies and treats!

Rhino!

Kate on our airboat ride in the FL swamplands - we saw lots of gator eyebrows and nose-tips

The evening peacock arrival - they were not very timid

Next, we drove down to the Keys for a few nights, stopping in Islamorada and Key West:

Kate

Quintessential "Keys" boat docked in Islamorada

Tom on the old railroad bridge at Bahia Honda State Park

Tom looking ridiculous making an "S" at the southernmost point in the continental US as dozens of other tourists with cameras give him strange looks out of the frame to the left

The nightly "Sunset Celebration" at Mallory Square in Key West, featuring lots of street performers of all types and species

Us on the Key West waterfront

Sunset over Sunset Key

Banjo and the Basenjis

2009-06-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we got to dog sit for a couple of Basenjis. They're an interesting breed - they're African and are pretty far from the genetic tree of most dogs. They're notable for their thin, bristly fur, "aloofness", and their yodel (they can't bark!). Contrary to popular belief, being barkless doesn't mean being quiet. We found that out this weekend, for sure.

Banjo wasn't sure what to think about these intruders, so he put on a bit of an attitude. What a tough guy!

But soon he discovered that the basenjis could do things that he couldn't, like get the stuffy toys down from their high shelf, get into the trashcan, and snitch things from tables. So they decided to form a posse, Banjo and the Basenjis. And they all lived happily ever after, the end.

Kate and Tom and Banjo in 2008

2009-06-22T09:16:00.001-07:00

Tom and I just finished putting together our 2008 photo album. Even though these photo books seem sillily overpriced, we've really enjoyed being able to look at an actual paper copy of our pictures from the past four years. If you'd like to take a look at the most recent version, click on the link below:

2008

Marshmallow Launchers and Other Physics Projects

2009-06-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

After my Physics students finished their standardized tests, I decided to give them a break from the lecture circuit and turn to some research and engineering projects.

First they spent about a week researching a Physics topic of their choice and then gave a poster and presentation on it for the class. I was amazed at what a great job the kids did, as a whole. They had some really interesting topics (MagLev trains, Speedo swimsuit designs, Astronaut Ice Cream, LRAD, body heat powered pacemakers, etc). One set of kids really wanted to do something related to birth control (I think they were in the middle of health class) but had a tough time coming up with a solid connection to Physics. They tried to convince me it was related to "fluid dynamics" but it got vetoed.

Then, for the last couple weeks in class we built marshmallow launchers with popsicle sticks and a rubberband. They had two goals - to launch a marshmallow as far as possible, and to be able to hit a bucket at ten feet. The "winning" team managed to launch the marshmallow 36 feet AND hit the bucket! Of course, we also had a major marshmallow war one day in class and ate a bunch of marshmallows along the way, so everyone was really a winner. There were a huge variety of designs, ranging from a standard catapult to a bow-and-arrow to a slingshot to a rubber band cannon. This project was interesting for me as a teacher because the kids who had struggled with the more academic material this semester really embraced it and often were more savvy and intuitive than the top students.

Anyway, the success of the marshmallow launchers makes me want to incorporate more engineering-type projects into my class next year - hopefully spaced throughout the curriculum instead of just at the end. I've got a few ideas, (mousetrap cars, rockets, build-an-instrument, blimps, boats) but haven't really built many of them myself, so if anyone out there has any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them!

Job Update!

2009-06-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

Looks like I have a job next year! I'm going to be at Pioneer High School (where I did my student teaching) teaching Physics and Conceptual Physics (2 sections of each). I'm really excited about it because I had such a great experience there last year - I know the kids and will have the benefit of teaching with my mentor teacher for another year.

It has been a strange year to be looking for a job. Apparently in past years, teaching offers were made in April and most new teachers (especially in science and math) would have 3-4 offers to choose from. But this year the education budget in California has been cut so much that schools just aren't hiring. Prevailing wisdom seems to be that most job offers will start appearing in late July and August once schools have a final budgets and enrollment count - giving many new teachers only a week or two to prepare for the new year. Brutal.

At any rate, I feel very lucky to have landed on my feet at a school that I know I'll like. Here's hoping all my friends from the SJSU credential program find what they're looking for, too!

Big Brother vs. Carpal Tunnel

2009-06-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today at work I noticed that some new software was automatically installed on my machine, but I didn't think much of it until this afternoon when I heard a "bloop" over my music and saw a window telling me it was time for an exercise break! The software was this ergonomic monitoring program that prompts you to take a break or do a short exercise if you've been computing too long...

Anyways, I thought the pictures and exercise names they have "tutorials" for were pretty funny. Some of the images really demanded a more accurate name based on the picture:

"Go Speed Racer, Go!"

"Smell my pits!" or "Check me out"

This one is just funny on its own.

Do the "Sock Adjust."

"Pretend you are a corpse"

"Shoot lasers out of your fingers"

"Aghghhh! Where did everyone go?" or "Ostrich hide"

Heh. This one is much funnier to watch the video for. No, there wasn't a "Love Handles" or "Spare Tire" exercise.

"Office Ninja!"

"The Bionic Elbow!"

Got any better name suggestions? Uh-oh, I'm overdue for a mousing break, better stop and do a Speed Racer or two...

She's baaaaack!

2009-05-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

I have had this strange feeling all day. I can only describe it as "that feeling you have when you finish up a nice soak in a hot tub." Tom tells me it is called "relaxation" and that I might have to get used to it.

At any rate, I have finished up my last classes at San Jose State and only have a couple weeks of low-key teaching to go before summer break. We're building marshmallow launchers in both of my classes, so it'll be a good time. Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll get back to blogging regularly now that I don't have essays to write every night. Of course, who knows if I'll have anything to write about once this "relaxation" gets going full-time...

Kate

A's Game

2009-04-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we (Kate) took a break from a busy weekend of schoolwork and headed across the bay to see our first Oakland A's game of the season! The A's took on the American League defending champion Tampa Bay Rays on a beautifully sunny spring afternoon, and it ended with the good guys winning 5-2! Here are some pictures:

Here we are sporting our Matt Holliday replica jerseys, the giveaway of the day

Matt vs. Matt: Holliday shatters his bat on a Garza fastball

A beautiful day at the Coliseum

Ziggy! Everyone's favorite blogger-turned-submariner-closer, sportin' the high socks

You show 'em, Kate.

Another YTVotD

2009-04-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

I know I know, get back to cute pictures of Banjo. All in good time, gentle reader.

But I wanted to post this so some of you could see it before Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex) or his staffers realize how far he has stuck his own head up where the sun don't shine by putting this clip on his own YouTube channel complete with sensationalist graphic at the beginning indicating he thinks he's successfully made his point. Anyways without further ado - Rep. Joe Barton questions Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu on how oil got to Alaska.

I am honestly amazed. Not just that Chu had to explain that to a US Congressman, but that Barton appears to think he's made Chu look like a fool with his "so-called continental drift theory hogwash." Anyways, this will probably be pulled soon, so get it while it's hot. Too bad comments are disabled on that video, they would have been interesting to read.

Thanks to GOOD magazine again for the link - it's a good blog, check it out.

1000 miles!

2009-04-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

Speaking of bikes, I just passed the 1,000 mile mark on my new bike! That's an unimpressive average of just over 4 miles per day over the last 7.5 months.

Fortunately I've only fallen off twice, both times being when I forgot I was clipped into my pedals soon after installing them. And to any concerned parents out there, yes, I always wear my helmet, despite a "study" that suggests not doing so actually decreases your chances of getting hit by a car.

Seemed like a fitting post for Earth Day. Anyone want to bet whether or not I can break 2,000 at my bike's 1-yr anniversary in September?

Cue the Proclaimers song . . . now.

YTVotD

2009-04-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Holy insane biking, Batman:

The guy is Danny MacAskill, probably the best street trials biker out there. It's filmed in and around Edinburgh, and, if you've ever ridden a bike in your lifetime, is dang impressive to watch. Especially the part with the tree at around 3:05. Watch and be amazed.

Tax Day!

2009-04-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Hope you got your returns in on time. Thanks to Kate, we already have our refunds! Here's a tax day-themed post for you all with an infographic from Good Magazine.

Where Your Tax Dollars Go:
Also, happy birthday to the nieceling!

Unreal Estate

2009-04-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

There is a lot in the news recently, with the economy in the tank, about how it's a good time to buy a house and that prices are good and low. Well, unfortunately the people selling their houses in our neighborhood didn't get the memo. In fact, we - along with everyone else in our neighborhood - actually got a memo from our friendly local real estate brokers congratulating us for living in an area where housing prices are staying strong and definitely not following the state-wide and national downward trends of becoming a "buyer's market." Harrumphf.

Anyways, lest you think we are exaggerating, I present to you exhibits A, B, and C. Note - all three houses are literally between a stone's throw and a long home run in distance from our current (rented) residence.

A: House #1 - 3 BR, 2 BA, 1,600 sq ft - $968,888

B: House #2 - 3 BR, 2.5 BA, 1,460 sq ft - $935,000

C: House #3 - 3 BR, 2 BA, 1,384 sq ft - $848,000
I can vouch for the fact that while these houses are decent, and I'd be happy to own any of them, they by no means would be considered one of the "nicer" houses in the area.

Sigh. Well, so that part of the so-called American Dream (or maybe the New Zealand dream is more accurate in this case) is going to have to wait for a while...

Homemade Fog Machine

2009-04-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would share one of my favorite new Physics demos with the blog. We're currently covering fluids and thermodynamics and I thought this was a really great and cheap way to demonstrate work, internal energy, and phase changes. All you need is one of those 12 oz disposable clear plastic water bottles that you have in your recycling bin (any kind).

Peel off the label so you can see through the bottle. Put 1/2 inch of water inside the bottle and put the lid on. Twist the bottle until it forms a little "bow tie" shape. It is important to do this in one fluid motion. This will make some alarming noises and feel a little scary - probably a good idea to point the lid away from people just in case.

Let go. The bottle should "bounce" back to its normal shape. Inside, you should see whitish fog form. If you take the lid off, you can make fog rings by squeezing the bottle. This will only work once per bottle.

What's happening? When you twist the bottle, you are compressing the gas inside it. This increases the internal energy of the gas, warming it up and also causing more water to enter the vapor phase. When you let go, the gas rapidly expands to fill the new larger volume of the water bottle. This quickly cools the gas and causes the water vapor to transform back into water, or fog.

Let me know if you give it a try!

Birthday Poems

2009-04-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

For today I will try something new:
It's fun - see, Jeff did it too!
I hope it won't make you doze,
Soon we'll be back to prose
But 'till then - normal blogging, adieu!

Now I don't want to sound like a preacher,
But that Kate, she really is quite the teacher.
It's physics her students learn,
Maybe to work someday at CERN,
But that's not her only great feature.

Far from it, great qualities she has aplenty.
Of canines, baseball, and cuisine she's a cognoscenti.
I'm so happy we met
And though we've got no Corvette,
Can you name a husband who's content? (Me.)

Now I am off to make birthday cake.
Chocolate hazlenut's the kind that I'll make.
I wonder what she'll wish for...
(Probably for Carolina to swish more)
Wish me luck in my attempts to bake.

So today is my sweetie's big day,
The third day in the month before May.
(Don't tell her I told,
but 29 is how old)
So join in a hip-hip-hooray!

Making Lemonade

2009-03-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

Well, Duke may be out, and Carolina may be rolling, but yours truly is still the queen of HORSE in THIS household.

Utah Trip

2009-03-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to get to take a trip to Salt Lake City to visit our college friends Steve and Sarah, as well as to do some skiing with them and other Greenmen that came to visit! Sarah already beat me to the punch with pictures on her blog, but I thought I'd include a few here to show you how beautiful the Wasatch in the winter are and how much fun we had. My pictures are online, and Gordie took some nice ones too that are also up.

Day 1 at Solitude - lots of snow all day long!

Somehow we managed to survive...

Our group at Alta, Day 2

Steve leading us to one of his favorite spots at Alta

Gordie drops in!

Silliness

Erin is happy to be out in the snow!

The beautiful vistas over Snowbird's Mineral Basin (Day 3)

Ari, Steve, Steve, and Sarah

Tom's snow-beard

Steve and Sarah at Snowbird

Hooray, fun trip

Thanks, Steve and Sarah for hosting us - and it was great to get to see your dogs and the city, too. Hope we can do it again sometime! For anyone else out there considering a ski trip to Utah, the mountains are really quite impressive and we all had a blast exploring them. Maybe next year we can get everyone to come out to California for some Tahoe adventuring...

A moral quandry

2009-03-07T19:59:00.001-08:00

When I was in high school, the most common cheating was "borrowing" homework answers. Cheating on a test was a much bigger deal, and I can only recall one instance where I knew of people cheating on a test.

By all accounts, cheating is much more prevalent in high schools these days. So far in my teaching career (3 months), I have caught and referred two students for cheating on a test, and there were two more that escaped for lack of hard evidence. It creates quite the dilemma for a teacher. Should I...

A) Make my tests as cheat-proof as possible. This creates problems in its own right - more work creating and grading multiple copies of the test, photocopying students' answer sheets to ensure they don't change them, strict rules about bathroom breaks and what students can and cannot do after they're done with the exam, calculator and cell phone monitoring, and constant vigilance.

OR

B) Create "normal" tests and make students take ownership for their own behavior.

I'd love to be able to use option B - I feel like high school should be "practice" for real life, and students of that age should be able to make their own ethical decisions. But if a student is caught cheating, there are major consequences, including failing a course for an entire semester and notification of any college they may have already been accepted to. So, what to do?

Uvas Canyon

2009-03-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning offered a rare, brief window free from both lesson-planning and rain, so we went out to explore a new park nearby which purported to have some good waterfalls. Given the recent consistently heavy precipitation we've been having, this sounded like a good option. Uvas Canyon is maybe 45 min South of us, kind of towards Santa Cruz but further East. The many waterfalls were nice - kind of reminded me of hiking in New England where the trails often follow a rocky creek through the woods. Banjo, as always, loved getting to romp around a bit and sniff a bunch of new smells. And apparently this place is ladybug Mecca. Check out the conglomeration of little red bugs below! There were masses of them on rocks, trees, sticks, leaves, you name it! Strange. Although our sighting was apparently not an isolated incident - I've since learned they like to winter in Santa Clara county. It's fun that we are still - after five years living in the Bay Area - still discovering new places to explore!

Ladybug convention on a mossy rock

Closeup of some of our ladybug friends

Group shot, sans Tom

New Math

2009-02-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

Found this blog, entitled "New Math," and I got a kick out of it. Maybe you will too. Here are some of my favorites:

Happy Paczki Day!

2009-02-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Happy Paczki Day everyone! (pronounced pun-shkee)

Makes me wish I was Polish... mmmm...

So, friends and family in places like Toledo, or Buffalo - is this description of Paczki-fever in your towns accurate? Have you had a paczek before?

In Toledo, Ohio, people will start waiting in lines at 4 AM to get fresh paczki for Fat Tuesday. A local Polish grocery store called Stanley's, located on the north end of town, makes them homemade. The same thing happens also in Buffalo, NY, Cleveland or Garfield Heights, Ohio.

I also would like to see (or compete in?) this event:

A cultural phenomenon is the emergence of the "Pączki Challenge", an eating contest in which individuals attempt to race from one side of a room (non-standard) while eating as many pączki as they can before reaching the other side. The person who arrives first and has eaten the most pączki wins. Typically a ratio of 1 pączek for every 10 steps is considered competitive. Amateur competitive eater McKay Johnson holds the record at The Greater Chicago Paczki Challenge. He was able to consume 18 raspberry filled pączki before crossing the room.

Yum, I guess.

2nd Annual Pioneer Cabin Trip

2009-02-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

I know I know, you are sick of posts about snow. Sorry. But there are probably going to be at least a couple more after this one, considering my excitement over an upcoming trip to Salt Lake City to visit and ski with friends Steve and Sarah (and Gordie and Erin F and Emily and Anonymous too!).

But the snow is finally falling in copious amounts in the Sierra, and last weekend we were able to take advantage of it with a trip up scenic highway 88 to Kirkwood, staying at Karen's family cabin in Pioneer for the second year in a row.

Two days of powder made for some great winter mountain fun, and tired bodies in the process. Kirkwood is really one of my favorite places to ski. I guess a big part of that is that it's maybe 45 min closer to the Bay Area than other Lake Tahoe ski areas, but it also has a whole lot of pretty amazing terrain. With a higher elevation, it consistently gets better and more snow than the other (more nationally known) places, too. It was really fun to be able to explore some parts of the mountain that I hadn't been able to ski in the past, thanks to the good conditions.

As with any cabin trip, there was plenty of apres-ski fun to be had too. Naturally, we brought our "personalized" version of Apples-to-Apples (which, you Greenmen will be happy to hear is a huge hit out here with our CA friends), and a few other games. Banjo got to come along too! We didn't make him hike 10 miles this time. I think he was happy to spend the day inside snuggled on our sleeping bags.

Thanks, Karen and friends, for what has become a fun tradition at the WoodCastle!

(pictures)

Bradley Hut Trip

2009-02-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago I made a trip into the Tahoe backcountry with friends from work Adam and Marc, Dustin, and our organizers Erin (Adam's sister) and her boyfriend Jeremiah. We snowshoed/skied into the Sierra Club's Bradley hut, which is nestled right up in an alpine bowl just north of Squaw. Having been warned to bring our own sleeping pads, lighting, and cooking equipment, it was a nice surprise to find the newly renovated fully outfitted with mattresses (for 15), solar powered lights (good for ~3 hrs at night), and a decked out kitchen and picnic tables inside. It reminded me a lot of the nicer Dartmouth DOC cabins, but then again most DOC cabins don't have a 2-story outhouse or a 2nd-floor entrance with shovel in case the snow reaches 10+ feet. Nor do DOC cabins have 9,000' peaks surrounding you less than a mile away on three sides. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your feeling towards ridiculous amounts of snow) we were able to use the normal entrance due to this year's dry winter, but the snow conditions were still pretty great above 7,000' in the area thanks to a few inches that fell earlier in the week.

We were up there for two nights, so we got to do some good exploring of the nearby peaks. Perhaps the best part was that someone had left a couple plastic sleds up there, so we built a pretty fantastic kicker on a nearby hill and launched ourselves off it for hours. I'm afraid the pictures and videos we have don't quite do justice to the distance and air I remember getting, but the time-lapse video below is a pretty good summary of this activity.

Here are some more pictures from the trip. There are more available at my Picasa page as well as photos and some sledding/skiing videos on Erin's Picasa page. We all had a great time in a truly beautiful winter playground. Trips like this make me happy that we live in California!

Dustin and Marc at the trailhead

Evening light and tracks on Mt. Silver

Tom and the 2-story outhouse!

Tom and Marc on (fake) Mt. Silver

Marc with Squaw behind him

Our group by the hut

Heels 101 - Dookies 87

2009-02-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

Although I was a little worried at the end of the first half, I'm happy to report that this last night in Durham:

Resulted in this last night in Chapel Hill:

Ty Lawson really took control of the game in the 2nd half - I don't get why he doesn't just drive and get either a layup or a foul every possession. Four in a row now at Cameron! I think Coach K summed it up best by saying "We're not as good as they are."

My insincere condolences to certain spouses, fathers, brothers in law, and brainwashed nephews who may have hoped for a different outcome. But don't worry, there's always the rematch at the Dean Dome on March 8th (4pm EST). I'll be cheering with my fellow (honorary) Tar Heel Sarah in Salt Lake City!

Tales from Teaching

2009-02-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

As my mom commented the other day "you must be busy - you haven't updated the blog in a loooong time". Too true.

My second semester is in full swing - I've been taking 3 classes at SJSU and am teaching 2 classes full time (Physics and Conceptual Physics). Needless to say, "prepping" for two classes while trying to plow through inordinate amounts of dry edu-speak readings has been keeping me busy. But I'm still enjoying myself!

Anyway, I'm going to try and pop on here every so often to give you a taste of what my new career teaching is like.

When I was in high school, the only school-wide organized drills we had were quarterly fire drills. Times have changed - there are now 4-5 drills and protocols that we have to be prepared to lead our students through at all times. A couple of weeks ago, we had a "CODE RED" drill at school. Code red stands for "armed shooter on campus" - it is scary that this is now a common enough occurrence that all students in California schools have to practice it. When the code red is called, we have to lock the doors, turn off the lights, and build barricades in front of the doors and windows. Then we build another barricade in the back of the classroom and everyone has to hide behind it in the dark, perfectly silent, until the police come and clear the classroom. You have to give a special code to the police or they will come in with the SWAT team. Once you're cleared, you have to evacuate the building in single file lines with your hands above your head. Everyone took the drill very seriously, although I had a hard time not laughing at the student evacuating in front of me who had to waddle to keep his pants from falling down (with his hands on his head).

De-pantsing aside, it was a sobering day for me as I think about my new responsibilities as an educator.

Ugghhhhhh-Rod

2009-02-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

Remember this from 2007?

Well now there is this.

Sad day for baseball fans. What a mess.

First Annual Sunnyvale Puzzlehunt

2009-02-05T10:31:00.000-08:00

Yikes! It's been forever since a post. A miserable 2 in January. Well, it hasn't been for lack of excitement, fortunately. We had a nice holiday trip to both Denver and NC (maybe we'll post on that someday...). It was great to see not only our families, but we had a good visit with Erin and some of Kate's local friends in Denver, and a great reunion of my youth-group friends and leaders at Charity's house in Durham. Good times.

Some of you (Greenmen and immediate family) served as the guinea-pigs for some of our puzzles we were working on over the holidays - thanks for your help. Well, with the help of your comments and suggestions, along with a few new puzzles, we hosted the First Annual Sunnyvale Puzzlehunt last month for about 17 friends (4 teams). Each puzzle led you to another location around our town here, and we ended back at our house for a festive recap and party. It was a lot of fun and we look forward to doing it again sometime, after we let our brains recharge from spending the many weeks beforehand creating and fine-tuning the puzzles!

Here are the four teams that ~~we tricked into particip~~ enthusiastically participated. Happily, all teams finished all 6 puzzles! Thanks again to all our friends and family who helped.

Group 1 (the winners!): Mikey, Pat, Adam L, Rachel doing Puzzle #1

Group 2: Erin, Bailey, Mike, Ashley, Adam R with "Art Through the Ages"

Group 3: Cara, Dustin, Marc, Alex, also with the "Art" puzzle

Group 4: Chris, Ann, James doing the Candy Bowl (not shown: Jessie the Golden Retriever)

Post-hunt festivities, including a raucous game of liars dice

If you're interested in trying out some of the puzzles for yourself, they are not all really possible to recreate electronically, but I'll try to post the ones that work up here shortly. Stay tuned.

Puzzle #1: A Picture is Worth... (12 MB)

1.20.09

2009-01-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

Do you ever notice how sometimes you spend so long thinking about an upcoming milestone, important event, or other date as being in the future that when it finally arrives it kinda takes you by surprise? For me, these times have included turning 21, graduation from college, my wedding day, and tomorrow - January 20, 2009. Now I am happy to state that I'm happily looking forward to tomorrow's inauguration primarily because of my excitement and anticipation about the future (despite the status of my 401k) as opposed to bitterness and anger about the past. That being said, I think a lot of people out there will be celebrating the departure of the Bush administration as much as the beginning of the Obama era. I base this claim on the widespread prevalence of the "1.20.09"-themed political merchandise that I'm sure all of you have seen in the form of bumper stickers, t-shirts, hats, mugs, or even hot-sauce. Maybe it's that I spent the previous 8 years living in two areas practically bursting at the seams with proselytizing liberals (Vermont and San Francisco), but I feel like I've been staring at the date "1.20.09" (often accompanied by "BLD" or "Bush's Last Day") so long it's going to be kind of strange to actually write it out, not to mention have it pass by. Interestingly enough, the guy behind all the 1.20.09 swag is from Manchester, VT (wonder if Gordie or Amanda knows him?), and according to the NYTimes sold more than $1 million worth of the stuff in 2007 alone (who knows how much more in 2008), and there's even a song/video about it (the date, not the swag), which I chose not to embed due to its bland predictability.

Also, there is this newsy bit from a Burlington TV station that aired this December about the business, complete with shots of Obama speaking at Dartmouth and hippies making 1.20.09 mugs (click on the image to get to the real video, I couldn't get it to embed without automatically starting, which is annoying). And if you are interested in buying any discounted merchandise, check back in a few days. The "Hilllary - 11.04.08 ... make history" t-shirts have been marked down from $24 to $4, so there might be some deals on all this junk come 1.21.09.

Politically-themed entrepreneurs aside, I hope you all out there find something to look forward too, be inspired by, or be thankful for on 1.20.09.

Most Unusual Pet Names of 2008

2009-01-07T16:02:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since we dusted off the old blog, so here is a very important post bringing you the most unusual (according to MSNBC.com) dog and cat names of 2008. Vote for your favorites (or add your own submissions) in the comments.

Dogs:
1. Rush Limbark
2. Sirius Lee Handsome
3. Rafikikadiki
4. Low Jack
5. Meatwad
6. Peanut Wigglebutt
7. Scuddles Unterfuss
8. Sophie Touch & Pee
9. Admiral Toot
10. Spatula

Cats:
1. Edward Scissorpaws
2. Sir Lix-a-lot
3. Optimus Prrrime
4. Buddah Pest
5. Snoop Kitty Kitty
6. Miss Fuzzbutt
7. 80 Bucks
8. Sparklemonkey
9. Rosie Posie Prozac
10. Toot Uncommon

I kind of like #6 for the dogs since it is remarkably close to things we call Banjo, but there are several strong entries for the cats, in particular #2 and #5 for the rapper theme, and #10 for the historo-scatological take.

Oh Christmas Tree!

2008-12-14T12:14:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that we always travel for the holidays, we still get ourselves a Tom and Kate Christmas tree to enjoy in the weeks before we leave. When we go to pick out the tree, we have only one criteria - how pine-smelly it is. Tom and I always spend a good 20 minutes with our noses buried in all of the reasonably-priced trees until we can agree on which one is best. Because "appearance" doesn't factor into our decision at all, we've ended up with some goofy looking trees in years past. But this year the stars aligned and we got a big, beautiful, smelly tree that had somehow found its way into the discount section. Oh happy day!

We got it home and filled it with lights. Being relatively newly-weds, we still don't have a ton of ornaments, but we love the ones we do have. My aunt Susan gave us a traditional "brides" ornament box for our wedding, which contains a variety of blown glass ornaments designed to represent the different aspects of marriage. These include a heart for love in the home, a house for family shelter, a flower basket for beauty in the home, a fruit basket for plenty, a teapot for hospitality, a bird for confidence, a pinecone for eternity, an animal for peace with nature, a fish for Christ and fertility, a rose for the Virgin Mary, an angel for God, and St. Nicholas for giving. There is also one "groom's" ornament - a blown glass pickle. My aunt claims not to know where the groom's tradition came from, but we have our suspicions...

We also have some ornaments that Tom's mom and I made out of remnants from Tom's grandfather Nichols' mobile-making hobby. Tom's grandfather made wonderful mobiles with glass, rhinestones, and mirrors - they are big, delicate, elegant pieces of art. We love hanging those on the tree and always think about Grandpa when we do.

Tom's Grandpa Hill has also contributed to our beautiful Christmas decorations by giving us a hand-made wooden Noah's Ark. Inside the lift-off lid is a whole boatload of jigsaw critters - camels, alligators, hippos, walruses, snakes, elephants, wildebeest, gorillas, buffalo, giraffes, rhinos, llamas, donkeys, kangaroos, moose, lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

One thing that we are still missing is a tree-topper, so for the last two years we have made our own with stuff we find around the house. This year we made it into a contest with some friends one night after dinner. There were some creative entries, including some geometric snowflakes (Tom), the baby Jesus in a crib (Kate), a tin foil Angel (Miriam), a large silver question mark (Mikey), and a Nichols-family-topper including tin foil renditions of Kate, Tom, Banjo, and Tom's bike (Cara). They were all so good that we've been rotating which one is on top.

We've only been married a short time, but it definitely feels like our own Tom and Kate brand of holiday traditions is starting to emerge - a little bit old, a little bit new, and a lot borrowed from our families. We hope your holiday is feeling as festive as ours is so far!

Up for Air

2008-12-13T09:50:00.001-08:00

Hi hi hi!

Friday was my last day subbing as a Physics teacher, so I've finally got time to get back to the blog and my "normal" life. It is unbelievable how fast the five weeks went, and also how busy and exhausted I was all the time!

I called my mom for her birthday last night and was apologizing for not getting a birthday card in the mail in time. Mom, a long-time teacher, just laughed and said she understood completely. She reminisced about how exhausted she always was when the Winter and Spring breaks finally rolled around each year, and how "necessary" every inservice and holiday day is to the sanity of a teacher. I can tell I'm going to be calling my mom a lot in my first few years of teaching...

Anyways, I had a great time teaching, with no horror stories or sour notes at all. The kids transitioned to having me as a teacher very easily - they were fun, and engaged, and interested and worked really hard. In fact, when my supervisor from SJSU stopped by to "observe me", his only comment was that he thought that maybe this gig wasn't challenging enough for me as a student teacher since the kids were treating me so well. I think that's a testament to the classroom management of the teacher I was taking over for and also to the overall culture at this school.

In case you're interested in the Physics side of things, the unit I taught was on Energy and Momentum. I really enjoyed pulling together a lot of demos and activities for this unit - I don't have photos of me doing them, but I am linking to some websites below that show the same activities / demos.

Energy:

Bowling Ball Pendulum
Sand Shakers
Entropy - this one is definitely my favorite, and worth watching!!
Friction of Shoes

Momentum:

Impulse and Egg Breaking
Strongman Apparatus

Power:

Human-Powered Lab

Machines:

Rube-Goldberg Machines
Honda Cog

And just for fun to fill in spare minutes at the end of class:

Matchstick Puzzles
Center of Mass

So I'm taking a couple of weeks off, and next semester I'll continue with my Phase II student teaching, so I'll have two classes of my own for the whole semester. Looking forward to it - there's lots of fun things to be done with Electricity and Magnetism!