The Finish Line

I am the person in blue on the left, just after crossing the finish line of the Run Scared 5k run. Bede and Lucia plus two of our cousins participated in the 4k walk portion of the event, and my mom took the photo of me crossing the finish line. This time last year, I had no plans to run at all. I was merely trying to get in shape. I walked and stair-climbed, and that was good.

However, I have friends who love running, and they encouraged me to try a 5k. I said I Did Not Run. I cited the miserable experiences I had in gym class. I mentioned how easily I got cramps when I ran. My friends said I hadn't given running a proper chance. One day, walking started to feel a bit slow, so I ran for 5 minutes. It felt okay, not horrible.  I ran for 10 minutes a couple of days later, and that was okay, too.

I slowly built up my minutes over time, had some setbacks along the way (the short story is that I drink coffee 2 times a week instead of 2 times a day in order to avoid cramps), and finally signed up for the Run Scared 5k on October 30, 2011. I trained 2-3 times a week, following a plan that had me run for 9 minutes and walk for 1. Most times, I felt better having run than being in the midst of a run, but there were moments of enjoyment, too.

The morning of the 5k was drizzly-wet and chilly. I started the run at a steady pace, and only sped up to dodge around the 4k walkers strolling four abreast and toward the end, when the finish line was apparent. My net time for this 5k was 35 minutes and 26 seconds. My goal was to finish in 38 minutes or less. I am pleased with the results. It  doesn't seem that long ago when I gasped and staggered through the one mile course in gym class.

Halloween Fairy redux

I have a new post up at the NaturalKids Team blog: Too much candy? The Halloween Fairy wants it.This year, my daughter said that she was giving all of her candy to the Halloween Fairy because she wanted a really good present. I'm relieved to hear it. Last year, November 1 was a mess. Bede and I don't know how many factors were actually involved, but the combination of excitement the night before, plus party treats, plus candy with blue food coloring may have contributed to the meltdown at school the following day. This year, her class is having a Halloween party during the last hour of the school day, starring store-bought cupcakes, fruit juice packets, and a nod to health with a fruit platter, (i.e. sugar, sugar, and sugar). Then, the hopped-up 2nd graders are unleashed!

The House of Glee acknowledges its addiction to sugar. We usually deal with it in small increments and have occasional treats. At this point, the sugar addiction is a self-correcting mechanism because when we have more than our systems can take (and it doesn't take much), we have everything from temper-tantrum meltdowns to the equivalents of hangovers that affects our attention spans, moods, and creative outputs. The Halloween Fairy is a pleasant counterpoint to the sugar onslaught.

Word Choice Matters

Scientists are from Mars, the public is from Earth, by Phil Plait, discusses a list of commonly-used words that science writers use, and how the public interprets them. For example, "theory" means "scientific understanding," but the public interprets it as "hunch, speculation." The word "manipulation" when used by science writers means "scientific data processing," but the general public interprets it as "illicit tampering."

Plait writes, "There are times I fret over a word in a post. It took me a while to start using the word "denier" instead of "skeptic", for example, but the difference is important. I’ve fought for years to teach people that skepticism is not cynicism or denial; it’s asking for and looking at evidence logically and rationally (in a nutshell). What’s funny is that now the media uses phrases like "climate skeptic" when talking about some people who are not skeptics, in that they are not looking at the evidence logically and rationally. They look at evidence so they can figure out how to spin it, cast doubt in the mind of the public over something that is actually a fact."

Can you think of other examples of what you meant/what they interpreted?

Baby Planet

Bede sent me a link to this news: Hawaii astronomer captures image of forming planet

However, the picture you will see is an artist's rendering.

The newly forming planet's name is LkCa 15 b, and it's 450 light years away. "LkCa 15 b" is no name for a newborn. How about Luka Callista?

Steamcon III

This past weekend, the House of Glee attended Steamcon III, an annual steampunk convention. This year's theme was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. We were all dressed nicely, though Lucia was the only one who had a proper alt-Victorian ensemble. Then again, as Steampunk empress Diana Vick says, "Steampunk needs historical accuracy like a dirigible needs a goldfish."

Alisa's Totally Random Blog has a nice overview of Steamcon III, plus many great photos. Favorite costumes of mine included a friend's deep-sea diver costume for the bathing suit competition, the lady with the ship on her head, and the humorous deep-voiced fish. Lucia made a couple of friends, one of whom you can see here. She was enchanted with a lady who went by the name of Princess Eugenie, and they had a spirited talk about which of Princess Eugenie's castles would be the best place for the next ball.

One of the highlights of Steamcon III was the Amphitrite Society Afternoon Tea, during which the bathing suit competition took place, followed by the gorgeous cello playing and singing of Unwoman, a.k.a. Erica Mulkey. Visit her site, listen to her music, feel the chills.

One of my few purchases of Steamcon (and don't think I wasn't tempted by many beautiful, wonderful creations!) was Unwoman's album Casualties. Lucia lucked out with a portrait by silhouette artist Kerry Cook:


Silhouette by Kerry Cook

We have plans to attend Steamcon IV, which will take place closer to Halloween. Its theme is Victorian Monsters. I joked that I planned to go as a Morlock, but in actuality, I'm drawn more toward aviator chic. It would be fun to dress as Deryn Sharp from Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, and make a badge ribbon that says, "Barking Spiders!" (There's even a Leviathan contest going on to win Deryn's flying cap and goggles, which you can enter here.) Then again, sometimes I just want to wear silk bustled skirts. In lieu of fabulous dressmaking skills, I am keeping my eyes open for inspiration in thrift shops.

Your One Book From Planet Earth

Imagine that you are preparing to leave Earth in a spaceship. You are traveling with your closest loved ones far away to a new world, and you will never return to your home planet. The spaceship is an older model than the fancier ones used by rich colonists. The spaceship was meant for exploration journeys, not colonization, and there is no time to upgrade the computer to store the vast richness of humanity's  history and literature. Really-- there's no time. The Disaster is imminent. Because of space limitations, each person in your family may take one hard bound or paperback book. You don't get to consult with other people outside of the family who will be traveling with you (because of the aforementioned time constraints) but you do get to talk with your family members about what you will bring.

That is the premise for The Green Book, a first-person plural point of view science-fiction novella by Jill Paton Walsh. The book was originally published in 1981 by MacMillan, and republished in subsequent editions by Farrar, Straus and Giroux's Sunburst imprint. The Green Book is available as an e-book, too, which is amusing, given the premise of the story.

I've read The Green Book several times since I was a child. It was published before personal computers and cell-phones, and yet (with a few tweaks to account for why the passengers can't bring their audio-visual media devices) remains relevant science-fiction for today's readers. It works as a contemporary children's book, too, as children, not adults, find solutions to the problems of how to survive on a new planet.

Here is the inevitable question: If you had the same constraints as the colonists in The Green Book, what is the one book you would bring? What book would you have brought as a child? It could be literature, or a how-to manual, or a science textbook, but it has to be one volume. You can't take the whole Enclopedia Britannica, for example, but you could take volume 15.

If I were leaving now, I would take my Globe Illustrated Shakespeare with the idea that even if someone else on the ship takes Shakespeare's complete works, it would be handy to have more than one copy. I know Shakespeare's an obvious choice, but I am thinking about my fellow colonists, not just myself! (Besides, I've not read most of the history plays, and I'd hate to leave Earth without knowing them.)

Lucia says she would take Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (and have to explain to the other children what happened in previous volumes). Bede is not home, so I don't know what he would want to bring, but if I had to guess, he'd bring something by Plato. If I were Lucia's age, I would probably have chosen my mother's copy of The Melendy Family, by Elizabeth Enright, which conveniently had three books in one: The Saturdays, The Four Story Mistake, and Then There Were Five.

Ada Lovelace Day

My friend Jules of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast alerted me Ada Lovelace Day, which is today. Ada Lovelace, born Ada Augusta Byron in 1815, is considered to be "The World's First Computer Programmer" because of her extensive mathematical work on Charles Babbage's analytical engine that produced the first computer algorithm.

Ada was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron (whom she never met) and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. Lovelace's parents separated soon after she was born, and her mother had her tutored in mathematics and science in an attempt to steer her daughter clear of poetry. After learning the story of Icarus and Dedalus, Ada decided that she would design her own flying machine, and and spent an extensive amount of time on what she dubbed "flyology." Even after her marriage to William Lovelace and three children following, Ada's focus and dedication to mathematics continue until her death from cancer at age 36.

I first learned about Lovelace from a local Seattle store, Ada's Technical Books. From that bookstore, I purchased two biographies:  Ada: A Life and a Legacy, by Dorothy Stein (which raises questions as to just how extensive Lovelace's work influenced Babbage), and an English children's book import called Ada Lovelace: The Computing Wizard of the Victorian World, by Lucy Lethbridge.

While so much of mathematics is still a mystery to me, I am trying to rectify as an adult the lack of a firm mathematics foundation I had as a child and teen. I did have one teacher who extended herself beyond her obligations to help those of us who struggled:  my Algebra I and II teacher, Mrs. Hoffman. In her class, and after school, I learned so much that there were quarters when I actually got A grades in math. (Unfortunately, the E grades I got the other quarters averaged out to C grades for the year. That's the way averages go.) Thank you, Mrs. Hoffman, for giving me a glimpse into how exhilarating math can be when one can understand the concepts in addition to plugging in the formulas.

GeekGirlCon 2011

The House of Glee is looking forward to the first GeekGirlCon this weekend. GeekGirlCon is "a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting awareness of and celebrating the contribution and involvement of women in all aspects of the sciences, science fiction, comics, gaming and related Geek culture." Everyone is welcome, and children under 10 are free when accompanied by their ticket-holding adults. LoneStarMa, the concept of this convention was made for your daughters!