iPhone Pictures

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!

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!

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

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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...