They Blinded us with Science!

I'd been watching for the dates of this year's Virginia Science Festival, the memory of last year's fun still being vivid in my mind, and Miles growing in enthusiasm for all things science almost by the week. 

We in the New River Valley are currently in the middle of a monsoon, apparently. It's been raining for about 4-5 days now and shows no sign of stopping until next Monday! Flash flood warnings have begun today, as have school and dance class closures. The state university, as usual, acknowledges that there is weather, but not that it could have any impact upon anyone belonging to it, so my work continues. 

But fortunately, on Saturday, Virginia Tech's library stepped up to host the half of the Science Festival that usually occurs outside. It was a brilliant, educational, inspiring day of indoor science!

Miles probably spent 25 minutes engineering with hydrolics and Popsicle sticks. Adele and I made the rounds. She's able to take in so much more than last year!

Some dry ice chemistry demonstrations 

One of my students is taking Chemistry this semester (MWF 8am, yyyyesss), so I was able to impress myself by identifying some of the reactions at one chemistry table. "That's ionized! That's a precipitate!" I wanted a sticker, but just got a smile and a nod. This university is making me wish I'd been more inspired by my science teachers in high school, and that I'd believed in myself a bit more. Still, I am grateful that Dr. Bradstreet get me into the science world through the astronomy and physics window. Better late than never!

Hokies get cool library chairs.

Here, Miles engineers a weight-bearing structure. 

It's a "bed," capable of bearing the weight of 3 boxes of toothpicks!

Adele might have been eating too many of the gumdrops, and they might have given her a lollypop to get her to stop. Maybe. Hard to say.

Both kids made helium "hot air" balloons:

Adele spent a long time focused on thoroughly milking this "cow." She petted her for a while afterwards, too. Future Ag major? Husbandry?

See her self-made nametag?

She still insists she's opening that pizza place in Brooklyn, though.

I do not remember the name of this goo, but it's liquid when still, and solid when in motion. Cool!

I agreed to tweet with the hashtag #WhyICare4Nature to support the campaign (and to get some stuffed frogs for the kids, obvs). I tweeted, "Because this world IS our home." Some of the atmosphere in the more evangelical wing of the tradition I was raised in has the rather gnostic view that the world is doomed (because of sin, mind you, not because of climate change), and the best we can hope for is to be raptured out of it. I am glad to be raptured out of this mindset. A very lovely Lutheran professor I had at university said that if we felt at home on this earth, that was because it is the natural home of human beings. Our spiritual tradition says that we are made of earth; science confirms our elements and those of the earth to have a common origin. Let us care for the good earth as the precious and unreplaceable gift it is. 

Learning about tornadoes at the local news/weather station's table:

Making a cloud! She loved this.

I pose with the "sore throat" virus.
The Hokie Plague, an exceptionally strong fluey cold, is just getting out of my system now. For a lot of students and professors, however, it's just getting started. Out with you, dark virus spirits! 

They did so much that I didn't photograph; we were there for 6 hours! Then it was time to run some errands and head home to our wet pirate house.

Jon and I really needed a date, and though we couldn't get a babysitter, our "porch date" was probably more fun than we would have had in a restaurant. 
We enjoyed the rainy night in the dry, played some gin rummy, talked, laughed, and reconnected. You need creativity to make this healthy marriage thing work when you're a grad student family with kids! Fortunately, we have senses of humor to sustain us even when our creativity as at a low.

We're still getting tomatoes! 

What an inexhaustible source of joy is the pirate house.
 I even like to cook, here! 

For morning glorys, porch furniture, apple cider, endless small gifts, I am grateful.

I need this sweetness just now. My maternal Grandmother passed into the next world last Wednesday. I'm sure I'll have some photos of her to share in future entries, as it looks like I AM going to be able to attend Grandma Peggy's memorial service in 2 weeks. I missed the last two memorial services for grandparents, so this will be a really meaningful time to be with my family. I am grateful that the last time I saw her alive, she was still her sassy self.

I'll miss her as I've been missing her for years. She has been leaving us, bit by bit, for a while now. But she is free and with her husband and two of her three children, now, and is no doubt entertaining angels with some hilarious yarns right now. Selah.