Robot Bears, AKA Nimue's Cookies

Nimue decided to make the peanut butter bear recipe out of her cookbook yesterday afternoon, and as I had plenty of other things to work on, I let her do it largely on her own. Aside from her discovery that turning the stand mixer on high when it is filled with flour creates a "flour storm", she did pretty well.

The recipe calls for miniature chocolate chips for the eyes. I only keep the standard-sized ones in the house, which meant that the cookie bears had mutant big eyes when she first put them on (better after baking). Here is her reaction -- if you weren't convinced she is delightfully goofy, this is yet more proof...




And of course, after the first tray of bears, she moved on to making bunnies and cats :)

New Record in March

Just got done looking at the data out of my bike computer for the month of March, and was very surprised to note that 551 miles had been logged. That's a new record! (The only other time I've broken 500 was the month just before the STP in 2006)

Better Rocket Materials

 Nimue and I experimented with some different rocket materials this afternoon.

[Insert maniacal laughter here.]

New rocket on the left: craft foam and clear packing tape, 12 gram total weight, no appreciable destruction after repeated launch and crash cycles.

Old rocket on right: paper and masking tape, 17 gram total weight, crumples on repeated impact...

Hmmm. Still cheap, more colorful, less likely to be destroyed -- the new one wins! The lower weight of the new rocket means it flies higher at a given input pressure too :)

The "Cope Face"

 Nimue has had a hard time dealing with frustration lately (as usual, she howls when anything goes wrong...), so we've instituted a new policy: when she starts to feel upset, she can make the "cope face" by inflating her cheeks with all the screeching that wants to come out. One hopes this will lead to fewer complaints from her teacher about yelling in class.

You just shot my rocket into the neighbors' yard!

 

For Christmas, Chad gave Nimue a box of parts with which to build a bike pump powered rocket launcher which he saw written up in MAKE magazine, along with the promise to help her build it. The beauty of this system is that the rockets are cheap and easy to build (paper and tape), and don't require that you have rocket engines on hand, so you can shoot them off as often as you want. They've been working on building it on Tuesday nights when I'm off at rehearsal, and finished it off last Sunday.

The first test rocket was barely constructed and had not yet been decorated (fortunately, in retrospect), when Chad decided to test the whole apparatus out at low pressure in the back yard. He pumped it up to a mere 20 psi, and aimed it horizontally toward the shrubbery at the edge of the yard, thinking that it'd probably fizzle out across the grass, and if it didn't the camellia hedge would stop it.

20 psi. Recall that the rocket is made of paper reinforced with a little tape, and is therefore pretty lightweight.

PssshhhwhwhwhthhthhshhT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Insert maniacal laughter here]

Immediately after Chad hit the release valve, that little rocket tore off across the yard and straight through the bushes without even visibly slowing down. I peered over the fence into our elderly neighbors' yard, and didn't see any sign of it. It's entirely likely that it bypassed their yard entirely and ended up in the next yard down. Or the one after. At any rate, someone's day will be filled with some extra curiosity when they discover a little paper rocket stuck in their plants.

We obviously deemed the initial test a success, and after constructing a replacement rocket, headed over to the school field to do some vertical launches.

 

Also quite successful. A pressure of 40 psi will send the little rocket zinging up a couple hundred feet, and Nim had great fun chasing after it after it came back to earth.

 

After Chad wires in the remote trigger, we can try launching at higher pressure. I'll probably also experiment with making the rocket -- or at least the nosecone -- out of some squishy foam, as it clearly suffers a bit on landing...

 

Silly Bike Fun

After the walkathon, Chad rode Nim's bike back to the car (she had come to school that morning by bike, I walked over for the walkathon, and he brought the car since he had to rush over from work. Her current bike is now big enough that he can sort of ride it without too much danger of bruising his chin with his knees :) There's some talk of him borrowing it for some ride around Moffet Field that is brewing (the race component of said ride doesn't seem interesting, but the "ride a goofy bike in goofy clothes component" does...

In other bike fun news, the weather continues to treat us kindly, so Chad recently had an excellent mountain bike ride out at Henry Coe State Park, and I've been replacing memories of cold misery along Skyline Blvd. with warm ecstatic ones. This morning, I rode out toward Shoreline to exorcise the memory of the horrible headwind I encountered there a couple of weeks ago when riding Nimue on the tandem, and while it was warm and mostly windless today, there were many clouds of little gnats. Blecch. I tried really hard to keep my mouth closed. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I just had to laugh because there were several bug splats on my forehead. Didn't think I was going that fast...

Cherry Chase Walkathon

Last Friday afternoon, Nimue's school held their big fundraiser for the year -- a walkathon and silent auction. One could immediately tell that there was a lot more money and donations involved here than at her previous school, just from the sheer level of organization, scale of the silent auction, and volunteer effort. It turned out to be a rather entertaining afternoon (and it was so warm and pleasant out that it was automatically enjoyable to be outside!)

All the kids were wearing their matching green walkathon shirts (donated!), and began marching around the quarter-mile lap at 1:00 sharp. The older kids began to run as soon as they were allowed (after the first lap, so no one would get mowed right at the outset...), and I was impressed at how many of them went pretty much straight through until the course closed at 5:00. Nimue walked the first few laps with a group of girls from her class, but by about lap 4 had shifted to walking with her friend Jeffrey. They spent the entire rest of the afternoon together -- each taking breaks when the other needed water, bathroom, food, etc. Very sweet. When I asked Nimue what they talked about, she said "Stuff. And we were counting butterflies. There were 147!"

I heard from a couple of other people in the area that they too had seen a lot of painted lady butterflies pass through on Friday afternoon, so it must be migration time. Interesting. At any rate, it kept Nimue and Jeffrey interested enough that they completed 23 laps -- almost 6 miles! Without an adult pushing them along. Good kids, all.

I had volunteered to punch lap cards for the kids as they finished each lap for the first shift. This turned out to be a busy, but fun job, as the kids seemed so very gratified by the small words of encouragment, teasing (for the kids I knew), jokes, and the like that they got if they came through my lane. By the end of it, my lap was covered with hundreds and hundreds of little multi-colored hearts that had been punched out.

Chad was one of the "Cool Dads" that manned the VIP tent (a resting zone with snacks and drinks served to the kids by said Cool Dads that was a reward for completing 15 laps). This was also apparently fun, though he did mention that next year he would prefer a volunteer spot that did not involve vasty quantities of popcorn smothered in a scary-smelling artificial butter substance.

By the end of it, sunshine and exercise had been enjoyed by all, I scored a silent auction basket with a nice baking dish, two generous chunks of imported raw-milk parmesan (smelling the cheese was what led me to bid on that particular item), a chunk of good dark chocolate (ok, that was part of it too), and a nice bottle of wine. The last was convenient, as we had need of something to make the leftover dinner more appetizing!

Continuous Bounty from the Fava Bean Forest

 

I had thought the fava beans would be done by now so I could plant tomatoes, but as you can see, they're still producing! There are clearly many more to come. Nimue thinks it's great that we can eat things we grow ourselves in the backyard market :)

Powder Day at Donner Ski Ranch

Early last week, I realized I had enough use-it-or-lose-it points at Sugarbowl to get us a free lift ticket if we went before they closed for the season (Nimue's lessons really rack up the credit!) Plus, we've only gotten one ski trip in this year (albeit a good long one with both backcountry and resort components. Clearly the solution was to head up to the mountains.

The storm timing was just about perfect.

We headed up on Friday night under clear skies, and got Nimue into her usual lesson at Sugarbowl on Saturday while we amused ourselves on the friendly spring slush bumps at the top of the mountain. About mid-day, the snow started to come down, transforming those delightful slush-bumps into powdery-feeling bumps (though Chad, being a telemarker with a higher standard for powder and a lower appreciation of moguls would disagree with my classification of them as powder bumps). Most fun, especially as it became clear by the end of the day that the storm was a true late-season Sierra dump.

Snow snow snow snow snow. By the next morning, the car was covered. We had decided the previous day that Sunday would be a family ski day since Nim had done so well in her lesson (she even skiied off the lift that went to the very tippy-top of the mountain at Sugarbowl), and instead of going to Sugarbowl, where I might have felt frustrated by not being able to spend the day ripping through the trees in the powder, we went across the street to Donner Ski Ranch.

This ski area is a lower-cost, not-as-steep, small, friendly, old-timey resort. Think lots of good blue and green trails, slow calm lifts, and no crowds.

And two feet of fresh powder. Woo hoo! Nim showed herself to be quite competent, and after the first couple of chilly runs (and a miscalculation on my part that led to us coming down part of a run labelled as a black), we found a run off the top of the mountain that led Nimue to whoop in exhilaration at every turn. "Mommy, this is fun!" What a good kid. She doesn't seem to be bothered by ungroomed snow at all.

By the end of the day, the sun came out, and we had an uneventful drive back down the hill. 80 was clear of snow, but occasional snow flurries slowed the traffic somewhat. Lots of neat clouds to look at, and the air through the Central Valley was the clearest I've ever seen it, having been just washed clean by the storm. We got quite an interesting view of the tall buildings in Sacramento under dramatic cloud-filled sunny skies in the distance as we came down off the hill.