Hockey Game

This is way late but here are some pictures from the hocky game. There was literaly a fight in the first three seconds and two more in the next three minutes. But I only have a few pictures because my camera ran out of bateries. Dad took the movie of the guy selling beer. He thought it sounded funny.

International Space Station

It's definatly late to be saying this but we saw the ISS on our way to the hocky game and this is a movie I took of it on my digital camera

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi! This morning we made some stuffing and put in the turkey then we put the turkey in the oven. Grandma Janie and Grandpa Ronnie always come over for Thanksgiving. Right now Dad, Gabe, & Grandpa are out hitting golf-balls at the driving range. They like to golf. The driving range has this cool thing were you put an empty bucket under a chute in a big box\shed looking thing and put a token in the slot and a bunch of golf-balls come out right in the bucket like a soda machine.

Academic Team

I'm in a thing called Academic team. Every Wednesday after school we practice for an hour doing trivia and stuff like that. This is to practice for the "Trivia Fests" that other middle schools have. I was on the team last year too but we never even got 3rd. On Tuesday a school called St. Mary's had a trivia fest. there were twelve teams and all of them were private catholic schools but us. Almost all of them also had eighth graders but us. Our team had 4 7th graders and 4 6th graders. They ask the questions out loud twice and all the teams have to put the answers on the sheets they are given. After each category of 10 questions & 1 bonus you take the sheet up to the grading table. Then they announce the answers & put the scores up. It was about two hours long with a break and snacks in the middle. Obviously our worst category was saints because as I said we were the only public school. We only got one right & the answer wasn't even the name of a saint. But in the end we one by one point and there was a tye for second. It was awesome this was the first one of the season, we had no 8th graders, we totally crashed and burned on the saints category, & never even came in 3rd last year. Dad toke me to get ice cream afterward. It was GREAT!

Hockey Night!

We went to the St. Louis Blues hockey game Friday night against the Anaheim Ducks (they are no longer known as Mighty Ducks). The occasion was Sierra and Gabe cashing in their chore Stars to go to the game. They each have set chores to do during the week, but there are also "bonus" chores that they can choose from that range in severity from 3 to 5 stars. They can cash in their accumulated stars for a variety of treats or activities. They both decided to go for the High 35 Star reward of a hockey game. I was glad!

I found an offer for the tickets on Craigslist a couple of days earlier and was able to get a good deal on four seats in the lower bowl of the arena. I got out of work early and arrived home to change into my Clarkson hockey jersey (there were two Clarkson Alum playing for the Ducks, Todd Marchant and Kent Huskins). We headed north into the night and then pulled over on the shoulder of the highway just north of Perryville.



I had set a reminder on my cell phone to hopefully catch a glimpse of the International Space Station and the space shuttle Endeavour. The night before was very cloudy, so I missed seeing it. We got out of the car and saw it just coming into view in the western sky. It was booking along and went right overhead of us to the east. Sierra took a take a movie of it on her Lumix digital camera, but it was much too tiny against the night sky to make out.



We got to the arena in good time and was surprised that the lot parking nearby was only $5. It's usually around $10 or 15, I guess times are tough!

Hi

Hi! Dad just sent me this link so I signed up and tried it. Today was nice and cold and Mom drove me to school. I usualy walk. School was good but my neck hurts. I don't realy know what to write, not much exciting happens to me. Bye

Happy Anniversary

Venus and Jupiter are moving closer to each other at night after sunset. They are so bright against that dark fall sky. The nights are getting more crisp and cold finally.

Today is the 10th Anniversary of the International Space Station. The International Space Station and Space Shuttle Endeavour are going to be visible here in Jackson for the next couple of nights. I'm hoping for more clear cool nights to catch a glimpse of this marvel streaking through the sky. If you haven't seen it before go to this web page NASA Skywatch, enter in your zip code, select the ISS or shuttle, click weekly sightings and it will give you a list of times that the ISS will be visible in your area.

Here's our info for the week:

------------------------------ Max ---------------------------
___ Local Date/Time ___ Pass _ Elev Approach ___ Departure
ISS Thu Nov 20,08@17:11 05m00s _26_ 10 above _S_ 11 above ENE
ISS Thu Nov 20,08@18:47 01m00s _18_ 16 above WNW 18 above WNW
ISS Fri Nov 21,08@17:39 03m00s _67_ 42 above WSW 19 above NE
ISS Sat Nov 22,08@18:05 03m00s _21_ 15 above WNW 18 above N
ISS Mon Nov 24,08@17:24 03m00s _19_ 14 above WNW 11 above NNE

Pass tells you how long it will be visible in the sky. Max Elev tells how high above the horizon in degrees the satellite will pass, with the ground being zero and the point straight up over your head being 90. The Approach and Departure coordinates tell you approximately how many degrees and which direction the satellite will appear and then disappear.

For example, tonight's first pass of the ISS/Shuttle will appear at about 10° above the horizon facing due south heading northeast rising to 26° before disappearing 11° above the horizon facing east-northeast. This will take 5 minutes to complete the transit. I think the longest pass that I've seen was around 4 minutes.

At 5:11pm I'll be on my way home from work. My co-worker is driving tonight, so I'll have to keep an eye open for it while we're heading home. The shuttle itself won't be a visible entity itself per se, but you will see what looks like a bright "star" moving across the sky at a pretty good clip.

This is an image of the ISS from earth, taken by an amateur astrophotographer.

The current shuttle mission is scheduled for 14 days and we are entering day six today. Earlier this spring after one of the shuttles undocked from the ISS you could see each of them as they passed overhead. It looked like two stars chasing each other. I'll try and remember to post again, if that is going to happen next week.

Dreamtime

Well I have definitely been known to have some crazy dreams, but this one woke me up around quarter to five this morning. I was dreaming that Kel, Gabe, Sierra and I were going to a hockey game and we were meeting up with a high school friend of mine that I haven't seen in years.

We were walking to the game, which turned out to be at the Montreal Forum. After waiting in line I realized that I didn't have any tickets and I had to find the will call and pick them up there. The lady told me that the will call was upstairs in the church! Okay, I'm game, so I headed up there while everyone else waited in line. Then Gabe said he wanted to go with me too.


--le Forum Montréal (Didn't look anything like that in my dream)

As we were waiting in line to get scanned/searched before we entered the main building and head up to the church?! I heard the Hall & Oates song Sara Smile over the sound system and I started singing along.... in my best falsetto..... The French Canadien guys in line started looking at me funny and laughing and then I woke straight up out of my dream, knowing the horror that I was actually singing along to a Hall & Oates song!

I'm not sure what Freud would have said about this, but I guess it's something from my subconscious someplace. I never liked Hall & Oates much when they were popular, but I guess now that 25 or 30 years have passed I am giving myself permission to sing along to their songs in public. We'll see...

"If you want to be free, you know, all you got to do is say so
And when you feel cold, I'll warm you
And when you feel you can't go on, I'll come and hold you

It's you... And me forever"

--from Sara Smile Hall & Oates

Go ahead and sing along! You know you want to...

Now the hockey part of the dream, I definitely know where it came from. I found 4 tickets to the Blues vs. Anaheim Ducks game tomorrow night on craigslist and I have to pick them up at will call. I can't wait!

Black Widow

I hadn't realised that the black widow spider was so common in this part of Missouri. Gabe found one squashed flat after opening our garage door on his way to school last week. I was skeptical at first, but on closer examination, sure enough you can see the telltale red hourglass shape on the spiders abdomen. That's the first one I've seen outside of a museum. Sierra then goes on to tell me that there is a hole on the pool building in Jackson that houses black widows quite often that she knew of. Things like this make me curious.

More common here are the very venomous brown recluse, whose head and thorax form kind of a violin or fiddle shape. We had seen several of them in our shed this summer.

Retaining Wall

Kel is doing some end of the year painting on the foundation in front of the house. We have this big ugly retaining wall that frames our front steps and garage. It was just kind of a grey cement color until we painted the house this summer. Kel got the idea to make it look like stonework instead. She has done a great job on it and some people walking by the house asked her for a business card for some similar work that they'd like done on their home.

I think it's a great way to change the look of the house without having to hire an actual stonemason.

Great job Kel!