Welcome Great Pumpkin

Because science rocks on Fridays

Sometimes in my job I get really lucky and there are guest speakers. Getting to participate in a round table after school was really cool.
Yes, that is NPR's Science Friday host Ira Flatow.
It was fun to joke with him when he posed for this pic that we are Facebook friends.  By the time I got to my van there were already likes and comments for this pic.

Post-game photo

With Zach Scott and Leo Gonzalez.

A Friendly Of Sorts

Seattle Sounders FC 3
CD Marathon 1
CONCACAF Champions League Group Phase
Seattle, WA - CLink Field
October 24, 2012

A game that technically counts towards the standings, but not really since nothing can change Seattle already clinching.

A game that actually has consequence in the seeding for the next round, even if not for the actual qualification.  That is pretty important.

So, in the ECS section for the first time in a while I went. Lost my voice by the 31st minute. Enjoyed getting a chance to welcome back big Marcus.  I yelled, "Yo Adrian!" and he turned and acknowledged it.  Shook Sigi's hand after the game. Ended up realizing doing a pogo in cowboy boots is dangerous to the guy next to you.  And ran my record to 7-0-0 this year, plus the final two matches I went to last year, so it has been a while since I saw the boys lose.

On to the quarters.  I know where I will be on or about March 12-14 next year.

Good beer

Brickyard Brewing
Grand Opening
10-20-2012 (around 3:30PM)
5817 238th St SE, Suite 3 - Woodinville, WA

In celebration of the Grand Opening of Brickyard Brewing I took the trek to Woodinville, sat down at a stool, sampled their wares, and left with a growler of very good beer.

Always support your friends.

Working on my formula

And so, the new (recently purchased used on eBay at a reasonable price and brought home from post office to immediately use) Turkish Coffee pot (a Cezve)  is now in use.

Made it really weak once.

Made it intentionally stronger the next two cups.

Both weaker and stronger are good.

Just need to work on the exact formula for sweetness and strength.

First, bring water and sugar to a boil together.

Then, add very finely ground coffee with a small amount of Cardamom until it foams.  This happens quickly and you take it off the heat once or twice to bring back to a foam.

Pour.  Let sit for a couple minutes as the grounds need to settle.

Drink really good coffee.

It's not exactly hard work, but in the end, I will come up with exactly the formula I need to make an awesome cup.

Celebrate The Awesome of Awesomeness

"Because it's there." George Mallory

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." John F. Kennedy

Once upon a time people celebrated achievements.  Today, there are people that shrug and seem to not care when people do awesome things.  A discussion about why is for another time and place, but it is worth noting that it exists and I actually got a taste of that from someone today while I was enthusiastic about a man skydiving from space and landing on two feet.

My daughter and I got the chance to watch the live stream on YouTube today of Felix Baumgartner's dive from the Red Bull Stratos. It was awesome. Totally fortunate to have borrowed my father's laptop and locating open local wifi with good timing in checking on the event led to actual watching of the event live.

I tweeted the following: @shotgunprose - We need to get Felix Baumgartner for ECCC. Just on principle. That was awesome. #bringfelixtoemeraldcity

With comments and likes on my facebook page from the tweet posting as a status I added the following comments:

"Other than producing a really unhealthy product, Red Bull - with its support for soccer and awesome stuff like today - is my favorite evil corporation right now."

"Felix is right up there with Michael Gspurning as my favorite Austrian."

"There were players in the Seahawks vs Patriots game today that landed harder than Felix did jumping from space."

Basically, I understand the lady at the post office that asked if I had heard much more than the uncaring commentary.  Pushing the boundaries of science and seeing engineering breakthroughs that will translate into improvements in aviation and space travel is not something I ho hum.

We are in a political climate where we have absolute idiots telling us science is evil on committees in Congress.  There is a very real and serious movement in this country pushing ignorance as being superior to information.  I have been reading science books lately to maintain brain cells after coming into contact with this stupidity.

So today, I went out and thanked Red Bull by buying their product.  I see that Zenith was the manufacturer name on the capsule and commend them too.

This entire enterprise was awesome.  Science is cool, important, and relevant and needs to be celebrated. I am happy to cheer for this and ramble on.

Our Driving Game

There are three cars we look for to count while driving to kill time.

Each of these three cars has a fairly distinct shape, so it is actually easy to pick them out.  We have been doing this for years.  Extra points if a headlight out or a convertible ("fertibertle"). I thought it would be fun to get little Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars.  It took a long time to finally get these. It also took eBay.

Greatest Deck Of Cards Ever

Mmm ... bacon.

Once again it is PDX

Seattle Sounders FC 3
Portland Timbers 0
October 7, 2012 - Seattle, WA - X-Box Pitch at Century Link Field
MLS Regular Season / Cascadia Cup

When I saw that Roger Levesque would be getting The Golden Scarf at this game, I knew the Sounders FC front office once again is on the ball.  It had occurred to me weeks earlier to start a Facebook campaign for just this idea, but then as happens I did nothing about it. I just so wanted him to blow kisses to the PDX fans.

PDX is just not playing well right now, and when The Rave Green scored twice in the middle of the half with a lot of Timbers help, this game simply did not have the feel of imminent comeback anywhere in it.

The second largest stand alone crowd in league history for a regular season game.  Crazy.

Beating PDX was fun in 1976 at my first game and it never gets old.

This might not clinch The Cascadia Cup, but not seeing PDX take it home was nice.

Then, I won a new ATT phone and VIP post-game on the field experience.  Winning!

Bring us a drinking holiday

 

The Germans brought us Oktoberfest ...

The Irish brought us St. Patrick's Day ...

We can thank Mexicans for Cinco de Mayo ...

If only the French could somehow tie wine drinking to Bastille Day ...

(The above pic is a bottle of beer from a nearby awesome beer shop near my apartment and the glass is an Oktoberfest stein from a Columbia Center employee event in 1993.)

Minions Watching Mariners

Seattle Mariners 4
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 8
October 1, 2012 - Seattle, WA - Safeco Field
AL Regular Season

When someone says, "Hey, we are going to take a group of you to a game."  I reply, "Awesome. Thanks." And then I try to go.

So, thank you to the Emerald City Comicon for taking us Minions out to the ballgame.

It was sort of awesome to see King Felix pitch in October ... I know.

But, King's Court seemed smaller than lately and simultaneously seemed bigger than the rest of the crowd.  This was bad 1980 something Kingdome crowd small.  The announced crowd in the box score is 13k+ but I have to imagine that is tickets sold and not butts in seats.  It was sort of depressing to think I went to a Spring Training game a couple years ago with a similar crowd.

The M's have a really good group of young players.  I really think this group has earned the right to see what it can do over the next year or two.  Let's hope that works out.

This is the last game I will see with the field looking like that.  The fences are moving in and that means some other changes in the outfield to accomodate.  It's overall a good thing, I think.

The Angels had their season end during the game in the sense that they were eliminated. 

Are they the "Los Angeles Angels" of Anaheim or the Los Angeles "Angels of Anaheim"? 

The pic is the game's first pitch with King Felix throwing to Trout.

It goes out over the water ...

The Seattle Great Wheel
09-29-12

It's a little spendy for my budget to do too often, but it was awesome to ride this with my daughter on a beautiful fall afternoon on our way to the WSU football game.  

Explained that being afraid of heights - actually I am afraid of falling, not the height itself - is the reason to do this.  It made it even more awesome to do that which is frightening.