Hi-Ho the Derry-o - The Farmer in the Hood!

L's class took a field trip to a farm earlier this year and each child was given a little plant to grow on their own.  L got a radish and she planted it in a pot in the front yard where it was watered and fertilized by L, N and most of the neighborhood cats.  The day of radish reckoning eventually came and L was pleased to see the fruits, or rather, vegetables of her labors.

WWF Slap-Down!

There's nothing like a freshly stripped bed for an impromptu

World Wrestling Federation 

SLAP-DOWN!!!

It's pretty clear who got his clock cleaned...

See the Sea

L's Kindergarten class has been doing a unit on marine life. They've been learning about the ocean and all the happy, smiling denizens that live therein. One of her assignments was to pick a favorite sea animal and make a diorama about it. Many of L's little friends chose starfish and clown fish and other cheerful specimen. There were whales and otters and a plethora of other critters of the murky depths. L, however, didn't fool around. Eshewing all sentimentality and gentility, Little Miss Priss immediately chose her favorite sea creature; the ravenous, blood-drenched, sociopathic Great White Shark.

L is focused and no-nonsense when it comes to artwork, so she took it all very seriously. We tried to inject ourselves as all good overbearing and controlling parents do, but she really would not be helped. Daddy was relegated to printing out a cut-out of a shark and hunting in the garage for glue, but that was pretty much the extent of my creative contract. The bulk she did on her own. Once she's done with her nuclear physicist degrees at Oxford, she just might have to take up art at the Sorbonne. (Though I fear her work may have dark and disturbing overtones.)

Not to be allowed to rule the seas unchallenged, N insisted on making a diorama as well. Since his pre-K class is known as the "Sea Turtles" he had no difficulty finding a suitable subject.

A Four Year Old Philosophizes on Life, Death and Abandonment

I cuddled with N on the bottom bunk a bit tonight when I put him down. This evening, not uncommonly, we had a bit of a philosophical discussion. N has been pondering concepts of mortality, but doesn't seem to be particularly oppressed by it as his sister sometimes gets. His ponderings generally take a stream-of-consciousness type of feel and don't really seem to require much in the way of acknowledgment or comment.

"Daddy, did you know that kids don't know when they are going to die? Nobody knows when they are going to die. When you're 70 or 80 or 90, then you might die. Or you might live to 100 or maybe 200. Or you might live to 1000. Did you know that there are people that lived to 1000? They are all in heaven with God. They lived a long, long time. Did you know that some day you will die?"

He paused for the briefest of moments.

"That will make me have a lot of tears... And they won't be happy tears."

But gazing up at the sheets hanging from the upper bunk he was quickly distracted to another subject and the maudlin moment passed. "Daddy, I've decided on days that L has to go school but I don't, I get to sleep in the top bunk." (L is in full-time kindergarten whereas N goes to preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays.) "Mommy has put my very favorite sheets on the top bunk and I never get to sleep on them," he explained. "Daddy, what's your phone number at work?" The sudden apparent shift in subject matter caught me off guard. I read out my work phone number a couple of digits at a time, secretly worried that he would actually remember it. He repeated back the chunks as I said them. At the end his face screwed up in consideration. "Daddy, you'll have to write it down for me."

"Why do you need my work phone number?" I ventured.

"Because when I sleep on the top bunk Mommy will forget about me when she takes L to school, so I'll need to call you so you can get me down."

"I see."

L is for Launch!

Thursday, May 5, 2011 may go down in the annals of space flight. People may look back on that day and recognize a pivot-point in man's conquest of the cosmos. History books will venerate the day and folks will say, "I remember where I was on that fateful occasion!" After all, it was the day that the spark of life was lit in the heart of the world's soon-to-be most accomplished astrophysicist.

Once a year Boeing, like many other megalithic corporations, gets all schmaltzy and family-friendly and sponsors a "Take Your Child to Work" day.  They glitz it up good with welcome breakfasts and lots of tot-appropriate classes and whiz-bang demos and goodie-bags, and for one shining day the grey halls of industry are overrun with teeming hoards of colorful youth.  Technically L missed this year's age requirement by two months, but my manager, obviously fearing age-discrimination litigation, chose to overlook the fact and allowed me to sign her up.  (There was no hope, however, of passing N off as legal.)  Never was there a more spazzed out kid as she when Mommy broke the news to her the day before.  L would get to go to work with Daddy in the morning and see all the things that go on where he works!  A heart-wrenching of equal magnitude on the opposite end of the spectrum was wisely averted by promises to N that he would get to check out of school at lunch time and go up to El Segundo with Mommy to retrieve his sister and have lunch with his Daddy.  This, with many promises of workday trips with Daddy in years to come managed to soften the blow.

On Thursday morning L was up at 5:00am with me - much earlier than we had any need to be up - and she presented herself fully bedecked in her finest church dress.  She was heavily wounded a couple of hours later when Mommy told her she couldn't wear it and to put on something more business-casual.  When the fateful hour arrived Daddy and L proceeded out to the car for the hallowed drive to the aerospace Mecca in El Segundo.  Emotions ran high on all fronts.  L was thrilled and at risk of hyperventilation.  N managed to keep it all together, but the eyes were a little misty here and there.  Mommy was maudlin, experiencing yet another of those "they're growing up too fast" moments.  And I was stoked to get to use the carpool lane. 

My work site has a pretty big campus and L was rather impressed with all the buildings and the security guards at the gates.  She knew she'd hit the serious stuff, however, when she got to ride up six stories of a spiral garage to find a place to park.  We walked to my home org's main building where they had graciously put on a breakfast for all the visitors.  L scarfed scrambled eggs and chocolate milk while watching videos of satellite solar array deployments and Proton rocket launches.  She managed to get a thin coating of bacon grease and pineapple juice all over the two-foot wide satellite model that was passed around.

After the breakfast it was off to the demos!  The first thing we hit was a demonstration involving liquid nitrogen.  We sat on the front row while an engineer explained about how super-cold the liquid was and how it was used to test the satellites at space-like temperatures.  He then took volunteers to come and dip things in his drum of liquid N₂ and examine the results.  One kid soaked a spongy rubber ball and was amazed at how hard it was when it emerged from its bath.  The docent told him to throw it against the wall, and when he did it  shattered into a dozen pieces.  L kept a small fragment which got all spongy again once it thawed out.  At one point they brought out a huge restaurant-sized alluminum mixing bowl filled with a frothy cream and sugar mixture.  One of the docents stirred the pot while another poured a scintillating stream of liquid nitrogen into the mixture.  Within seconds they were scooping out ice cream for the kids to eat.  Eventually L got called up and was given a turn to pick something to freeze.  She chose a cut tulip from a bouquet sitting nearby.  She goggled up, put on rubber gloves, was given some big old barbecue tongs and a flower.  She lowered it down in and a few seconds later pulled out a brittle, frosted tulip with petals that shattered like glass when she touched them.  She kept her decapitated tulip stalk with her the rest of the day.

Several other sessions followed:  she made an FM radio out of individual electronic components, she learned about composting (and got a small Chinese take-out box of garbage-devouring earthworms to take home), she got to walk the myriad halls of the factory and see satellites being assembled from an observation deck.  And, most exciting of all, she got to make her very own mini-satellite out of a mountain of arts and crafts supplies.  The four hours flew by and before we knew it, it was time to meet Mommy and N for lunch.

Where does one go for lunch when one has aerospace on the brain?  In-N-Out, of course.  Now there's nothing inherently high-tech about a Double-Double and a chocolate shake contributes little, if anything, to a day of space-play.  It wasn't the In-N-Out in the abstract; it wasn't the In-N-Out, per se, that was the drawing point - it was this particular In-N-Out.  This particular In-N-Out is located at the tail end of the north landing runway of the Los Angeles International Airport.  (Known as LAX, which is clearly a reference to its security.)  At this particular, unique and utterly singular In-N-Out one literally sees the world coming and going; one watches the wheels of civilization move, and considering how close the planes are, its not entirely inconceivable that you might just have a bolt from one of those wheels land in your order of French fries.

After we'd finished our lunch and had our fill of watching some of Boeing's other fine products parade by we packed up and headed out.  For me, it was back to work.  For Mommy, L and N, it was home to discuss the events of the day.  (As Stacy listened to all of the things L got to do she became more and more bitter, wondering when they were going to have a "Take Your Wife to Work" day.  "I've never gotten to see a satellite," she moped.)

That evening when I got home we decided to put what L learned to good use.  A satellite doesn't just show up on orbit one day.  Once the design and building is complete it undergoes months of rigorous and crucial testing.  Not willing to trust our luck, we needed to verify that L had produced a flight-qualified product.  We took her finely and exquisitely designed satellite and put it through its paces.

Pre-test inspections

First it undergoes grueling Thermal-Vacuum testing.

Then experts are brought in to oversee Random Vibration testing

Testing complete, the satellite is prepped and readied for launch!

Mission accomplished!