Day 72

Matt whipped up a great breakfast of bacon and egg burritos. The day's big event was a hike at Palmer Lake Reservoir. While most of the gang was hiking, Jamie was taking photos of the 8th grade grads at TimberCreek Church (I'll get to those photos tomorrow). The big event of the evening was looking through a box of old pictures. You'll see a few of those below, all dating before 1986. Dinner came from Vaqueros. Andy and Matt watched The Replacements, Jamie and Lynn watched Battle Los Angeles.

Three shelves of bacon.

Old photos...

Trevor in the Adams Street backyard.

Jamie in the Adams Street backyard.
Over 400 varieties of trees, mostly conifers, on about one acre.

Trevor with Papa Bill

Hike to Palmer Lake Reservoir (today).

Lynn and Trevor

Trevor and Jamie

Palmer Lake Reservoir today.

Can you spot AJ?

Day 71

Visitors from Kansas! Lynn's sister and family. Their son is doing an internship this summer in the Denver area so the whole family brought him out. Interestingly enough, it was Hailey who was here just before the lockdown started and now it's Hailey here as the first guest as things re-open. Dinner: chicken piccata, wine lovers' rice, ceasar salad, and garlic bread. There might have been some Josh and John's Ice Cream later in the evening, too.

Leave it to Jonny to help straighten things out.

A few more masks.

Guess who got her braces off today!

Cutting bread to make croutons.

A welcome meat and cheese board!

The Kansans brought Laura's Fudge!

The ants arrived. Two by two, of course.

Wolff and Pear Valley (not pictured) wines.

Wine Lovers' Rice                                     Chicken Piccata

Day 70(b)

Outdoor work and play continues. Tracy and Matteo finished putting together the astro-turf landing pad for the kiddie slide. Official school is over (for all except Fina), but reading daily will continue. Dinner was picked up at Bad Daddy's Burgers. Nana and Papa watched one of the James Bond movies last night, Tomorrow Never Dies.

Curious about Day 70(a)?

AJ's excited about ant farming.

Done. Except 48-hour drying time.

Fina said she thought she was going crazy. It's possible.

My favorite demo from yesterday's science teaching conference.

Day 70(a)

Today is coming in two parts. This first part (a) just got to be so much that I thought two pieces were in order. First in this post is my new Ember Mug. Second in this post is the science teaching conference I "attended" today.

1. So far so good on the first morning with my Ember Mug (14oz). I learned the coffee comes out of our coffee maker freshly brewed at about 160 degrees. The mug max setting is 145. That works for me. And I actually got a little more than 80 minutes from about 70% charge (out of the box). And it really does take about 2 hours to fully charge from under 10%. At one point the app would not open when touched (all other apps worked fine). Restarting the phone fixed it. Coffee from the pot at 118 degrees took 20 minutes to get to 145 in the mug (about 60% full).

2. There were over 11,000 registered participants (even more via Facebook live) in the ScIC2 (Science Is Cool Conference) today. Topics were about remote control of distance learning as well as all kinds of do-it-at-home science activities. Neil deGrasse Tyson was the keynote along with Chuck Nice (PocketLab, a free online lab notebook; "Backyard Rollercoaster Physics"). 1700 questions were submitted ahead of time! Capitalize on curiosity. Look for the kid's "velcro spot" - where science will stick. Recordings of the entire day will be available online (link will be here by the end of May, in the meantime recordings from the first ScIC conference are here). They also created a Facebook group: ScIC Science Is Cool by PocketLab. Lastly, check out these valuable links I snagged as the conference proceeded (most have at least some, if not all, free content):

iNaturalist
Stellarium
How Science Works
The Wonder of Science
Bozeman Science
PhET, interactive simulations
TeacherGeek
Hooked on Science
Exploratorium (San Francisco, penny cleaning demonstration)
Argument-Driven Inquiry
Future Engineers
Nasco (all free till July 1st, some will remain free after)
   Nasco Educate
Parametric Studio
NetLogo
Google Jamboard
FlipGrid

My favorite demo of the day. Drop the egg into the water
without breaking the egg. You may touch only the pie pan.
It's OK for you or an assistant to hold the glass of water in place.
Video.

Bacteria evolving to overcome antibiotics.

Dipping Birds  - curiosity!

Does this remind anyone else of Odyssey of the Mind?

Exploratorium has 300 such demonstrations.
They guarantee you have all you need at home for 70 of these.
Check out their STEMinars.

Future Engineers