books

Tonight, Jon and I are going to watch "Coraline," which I think is the next big creepy fairy tale classic, perfect for my children to say they grew up with. I was thinking about books I loved growing up, and how I appreciate that I don't need a different version of operating system to read them. Mostly I just have to not lose them, in order for them to stay just like I left them to read again later. The movie "Coraline," on the other hand, while awesome, won't be a "just pop in the DVD" in twenty years. It may be easier to access, actually, but I just keep thinking of all the music I've bought online and then lost over the years, or computer games whose floppy disks or CD's won't load anymore because they don't work in new computers. It's cool that I can go back to read "Megan's Island" (my favorite book for lots of years, that my second grade teacher gave to me because I read it so many times in her class) and it still says "Mrs. Yeager" across the front.

eating out in Oakland

We have a lot of friends who rave about the restaurants in Oakland, but I swear we are just totally unlucky or something. We have found one or two places we love, a couple of places that are okay, and then there's stuff like tonight. We went to a Chinese place where we basically each had a few bites of our food and then asked for the check. We filled up on the white rice because the rest of the food was gross. (There's a problem when you can't tell the difference between the pork, chicken, fish, and fat.) When it all tastes kind of like fat ... no thanks.

But if you want to go to Oakland for good macaroni and cheese or fan-freaking-tastic burgers, that I can help you with.

education

Oh, education. Jon and I probably have more discussions about this than about most in-depth topics. Tonight he read an article that essentially said that algebra, being a difficult subject and one that most people don't use in everyday life, should be dropped as a requirement in high schools because it's driving students to drop out. It also said that it could be replaced by social sciences that have a math element to them, to make math more accessible. The counter-article said something along the lines of, "Well, if you decide that algebra isn't worth keeping around, what about basically every other public education subject?"

I feel like a high school education is all about choices - giving students the tools and knowledge base to go any direction they want to after they graduate. It seems silly to drop a subject from a curriculum because it's hard (and this is coming from someone who only just figured out that math should be learned with puzzles instead of flash cards - math was ALWAYS hard for me).

However. I don't love how our high school system is so narrowly focused on English, math, history, and science. (Although I think science does it best by offering biology, physics, chemistry, etc.) I remember everyone asking me what I wanted to do in college and saying, "Well, are you better at English and history, or at math and science?" That was both limiting (establishing that I'm good at one and not the other, so I should only consider things in one direction) and vague enough to feel pretty directionless, especially when I can think of relatively few majors that have clear English-as-taught or history-as-taught roots, etc.

I kind of wish math growing up could have always been related to practical things (starting in elementary school). I will never care how many apples Sally has, but I do remember how cool it was to have to come up with an invention in elementary school. In the same vein, I wonder if people who didn't like English classes wish that English could have been presented in a more practical way with an end in mind (i.e., journalism) - to give them more of a reason to care.

But would that work? I know these kinds of classes often exist as electives, but would more kids be more successful in them if they completely supplanted the pedantic "this class is mostly about parts of speech" sort of class? Part of me thinks I would have been better at math if it had always been presented in an engineering sort of fashion - "here's what you can do with math" instead of "learn this irrelevant equation." However, the other part of me wonders if adding math to my invention project (I "invented" a new kind of fishing pole by hanging a purse over the end of Mom's old twirling baton - sue me, I forgot about the project until the night before) would have opened my eyes to the fact that I was being taught a tool with which I could actually figure out how to make an idea real, or if it would have just sucked the fun out of everything.

wedding pictures

A short introduction to us. We dated for a year and then we were engaged for awhile and then we got married in the Mount Timpanogos LDS Temple in *American Fork, Utah, in April 2011. Here is what we looked like in wedding clothes.

cute kids we know

Lots of people visit blogs for the pictures of children. We don't have any of those, so here are some pictures of kids we spend a reasonable amount of time around, are related to, or just who most definitely love us.

 

anniversary stuff

When I was in elementary school, our family had a membership to a local science center in Iowa. I loved science centers when I was little because they were basically huge playgrounds. My favorite thing was the laser light show of "Peter and the Wolf." Since then, I've never been able to find planetariums that do the same kind of show, but I still like planetariums. Anyway, the Chabot Science Center has a pretty cool adult-night-special-rates thing, so we went to that to celebrate our anniversary. Observe:

This is a shuttle that astronauts spent more than 24 hours in. Officially worse than long car trips.

Legos. We were instructed to make a space elevator that stretched to the ceiling. Jon, being an engineer, designed a base that actually would have supported the height, but we didn't stick around to see how the rest of it turned out. The volunteers helping out with it were pretty impressed, though. Another hilarious engineer moment: They have a lab where you can take broken stuff and the volunteers will take it apart to see if they can fix it. We happened by that room and there were people from Jon's company who were there as volunteers. They had just fixed some lady's shredder which happened to be the same model as a broken one they have at work, so the guys were all excited that now they think they can fix the work shredder too.

Bill Nye the Science Guy's Environment Lab or something. Jon is generating PURE ENERGY FROM A BICYCLE. 

I am generating pure energy from a hot air balloon?

Trying to fix stuff in hypothetical zero-G:

Pictures in the planetarium (before the show started, thanks):

We also got to do the super cool Mission to Mars thing, where you put on space clothes and fulfill special tasks to fix failing equipment and check oxygen levels and stuff in a simulated space shuttle. IT'S SO AWESOME. I got to participate in the exact same exhibit when I was little (it's a traveling thing), so it was basically amazing. The best part is the airlock to get in. I felt like Sam on Stargate, except that I don't actually know physics or math. I have pictures somewhere.

A few weeks before our science center trip, we had a party to celebrate our Anniversary-of-the-Day-We-Met date. Our friend Corene made these super cute celebratory confetti favors for everyone, but we forgot to use them until after most people had gone home. They did not, however, go to waste. Here is us, after the science center:

Maker Faire

I heard about the Maker Faire on NPR about a year and a half ago, and immediately thought of Jon. He wants to have summer projects with our kids (when we have them) where he helps them make pretty much whatever they want. (I am kind of jealous of our kids. I'll have to see if I can get in on that action.)

I am not as technical about it, but I also sometimes prefer making things to buying them. I don't do arduinos, but if I see something expensive that looks within my grasp to make, I'd way rather make it. (As evidenced by my bookshelf, which was way, way harder to make than I expected, but still awesome.) for example, I like my fingerless gloves but I want some blue ones that are softer. That would take forever to find, but it's pretty easy to find soft blue yarn and learn how to knit them. (Current project.) I don't like making things just for the sake of doing it (see: crafts), but I sometimes like using my own means of production to get things I want.

Anyway, the point is we both like making stuff, so we went to the Maker Faire. It was fun to watch Jon get excited about things, and it was fun to see all the tools that are out there. My personal favorite was the station that showcased how to make your own haunted house stuff (i.e., how to make a plastic skeleton look like it's actually been pulled from a body, etc. AWESOME).

Jon, making a circuit out of blocks:

 Me, with umbrellas that were maybe conducting electricity?

 STATIC:

 Lots of hanging metal strings:

 Let's make this, Jon. Maybe in the kitchen:

 A giant dinosaur that breathed fire:

 Giant bicycles:

 DAVE EGGERS SPOKE AND I HEARD HIM. (This was awesome in general, but he was talking about very local things, not anything he's published or anything. He wants to start a maker coop downtown in SF and was looking for input.):

A CNC machine. Like 3D printing, but cooler - instead of spitting out a melted thing to harden in the shape you want, it carves what you design into whatever material you use (I am pretty sure). Jon taught me the basics of SolidWorks once, so now I TOTALLY know how to design a box with a hole in it.

Aaaand, here is my Halloween stuff! Just a fraction of it.

I am pretty sure our posts won't usually be this picture-heavy, but since I'm posting off of what we have pictures of for these intro ones ... that's what you get. haha. Here are a couple videos we took at the Maker Faire. First, a glowy, mobile robot shark:

And a Tesla coil light show:

We know you all want to come with us next year.