OmegaMom

So there you are, an astronaut on the International Space Station, just motoring along, doing your job, and you get a call from Ground Control.

“Say, dudes!  Lissen up!  There’s this Russian volcano blowing its top, and you dudes are scheduled to be somewhere nearby overhead today…can  y’all take a picture for us?  Dude, that would be sweet.”

So as time approaches the rendezvous with this volcano, from a few miles overhead, you fish out your handy-dandy HD camera and point it out the porthole (or whatever astronauts really do when they’re taking photographs manually, which I know they can do)…and you grab this photo, very early on in a big eruption:

Which then proceeds to absolutely wow various folk around the world, including volcanologists.

And including me.  I immediately tweeted it, but just in case my faithful blog subscribers aren’t also Twitter followers, I thought I’d better mention it here.  It’s just too, too cool for words.  (For those who are interested, a bigger version of this picture is available at NASA’s Earth Observatory website.)

We are busy doing such things as ditching Comet the chicken (picked up today by a gal in town who is busy setting up a new flock), purchasing new chicks (a Buff Orpington and an Australorp, both less than two weeks old and the cutest little balls of fluff), dying Easter eggs, filling Easter baskets, socializing with school buds and what-not.  I hope to produce a post of some more substance tomorrow, but I had to pass these tidbits on.

First off, we have Ground Truth Trekking, a young couple who hiked across the northwest to their new home, a yurt in Alaska with a grand view of the volcano, and promptly had a new baby.  They have some lovely time-lapse photography of the volcano, plus some composite pics of the lightning during the nighttime volcano eruptions; go take a look.

Then we have a very nice slice-of-life blog featuring Sarah Palin’s own hometown, Wasilla!  It’s called “Wasilla Alaska, by 300…and then some“, published by a guy named Bill Hess.  I found him while looking at pics of volcanic ashfall from the Big City newspaper.  Those who like OmegaGranny’s blog, Walking Prescott, might like his.

Many moons ago, when I was a young lass in Chicago, I dipped my toes into the outskirts of science fiction fandom.  Alas, I was at the time too shy and uptight to let myself be sucked in further (it would have been easy, but I think I was wildly in tragic love at the time, which distracted me).  Anyhoo, I encountered Phil Foglio at a party or two, and got to know folks who knew him and said he was Going Places.  But…he did comic strips.  Ugh!  I thought, and promptly made sure to avoid all of his stuff since then.  But a few weeks ago, I decided to do a websearch.  Allow me to introduce two excellent web comic timewasters that are courtesy of Phil Foglio:  Girl Genius (set aside about five hours) and Buck Godot, Zap Gun For Hire (you will need fewer hours for this one, as it started in 2007, whereas Girl Genius started in 2002).  The latest volume of Girl Genius in print was nominated for a Hugo this year…

And, for your time machine needs, this handy-dandy posterized list of general scientific principles which will allow you to RULE THE WORLD!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

This morning, OmegaDad and I girded up our loins (figuratively speaking), and hauled Angie back out to the chicken coop after weeks in the garage recuperating from her last experience of being returned to the coop, whereupon Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken took it upon herself to beat Angie into bloody bits of ground beef.  Fearing a reoccurrence of the same, OmegaDad and I spent an hour leaning on the walls of the chicken coop and snatching up Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken, who turned out to be Comet (the bitch).

I have decided that chickens are visible evidence of evolution, obviously having evolved from dinosaurs.  Carnivorous dinosaurs.  Velociraptor type dinosaurs.  Lean, mean, fighting machines.  That like blood.

(Cue zombie sound:  ::Blooooood::)

What was happening was a disruption of avian psychodynamics.  New hen in the coop (okay, okay, so she’s not “new”, but it’s been weeks, and she seemed new) means establishing a new pecking order.

In general, establishing the pecking order means that dominant bird pecks at lower-status bird, lower-status bird squawks, lowers herself in a submissive posture, and then runs like hell away from the pecking bird.  A quick flurry, and all is over and done with, no harm, no foul, especially no blood.

But Comet’s a chicken bitch.  And Angie’s stubborn. 

Within minutes of Angie being reintroduced to the coop, Comet had drawn blood on Angie’s feet.

Then comes the creepy part:  Comet and Winnie spent the next hour wandering around very carefully hunting down and eating every single speck of blood they could find.  With sinuous and sinister darting heads with beady eyes looking sidelong at Angie, calculating when she was looking away, so that more pecking could be done.

Okay, it was mostly Comet doing this action.  Winnie was alternately pecking at chicken feed, hunting down a few bloody spots of chicken fluff, and running away from Angie’s desultory I-have-more-status-then-you pecks.

Comet was out for blood.  Literally.  Comet was looking for a violent confrontation.  Comet was trying to provoke a violent confrontation.

And Angie wasn’t backing down.  She wasn’t fighting back, but she wasn’t backing down.  Comet would dart in and peck at her then fluff up and posture and threaten, and Angie would put her head down, but she wouldn’t assume the submissive pose (crouching down parallel to floor); her body and tail were still up.  This kind of reminded me of a kid stubbornly refusing to do chores and being sullen:  You can’t make me! read her body language.  Which, of course, drove Comet even more into a frenzy.

So we finally gave in and removed Comet from the coop.

Lo and behold, hours later, no bloody Angie, no bloody Winnie, two eggs laid. 

We will attempt reintroducing Comet to the coop in a few days.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll farm Comet out; we like Angie better (Comet is a bitch).

Other than that…The volcano blew big time on Saturday, dumping lots of ash on Homer (check out some of the pics!), southwards.  Saturday was a glorious, sunny day, and everything was melting, with lots of rivulets and streams of water pouring out from under slabs of packed snow.  I took the dawg for a walk and had a lovely time; I meant to do it today, as well, but then I got struck with either pleurisy or costochondroitis or (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that it isn’t this one) pericarditis and spent the afternoon dreading every deep breath I took.  Bleah. 

In a few more days, I hit a birthday, a big one.

Ash fall actually hit us last night; while it was, apparently, pretty dreadful to drive in, when we woke up in the morning there wasn’t a huge amount of it. 

Enough for OmegaDad to haul both cars off to the carwash to remove same, but mostly–as the Weather Service said–a “dusting”.

And now it’s time for Stupid Mommy Tricks.

This afternoon, OmegaDotter got on the computer while I was shifting various loads of laundry, and started up Wilber Pan’s Wuha video.  When I got back to the office, she was in kung-fu pose wanting to do some “Wuha-ing” of her own.

I got the bright idea to show her a move that I thought might actually work.

I did not have the bright idea to, say, warn her ahead of time.

I just had her give me her hands, took them in mine, reached forward with my right leg, hooked it behind her left ankle, and pulled towards me, pushing her away from me at the same time.

Hey!  Guess what?!  That trick really works!

And if you’re not expecting it to work, you get yanked off balance and are sent tumbling forward right onto your “opponent”.

In this case, that would be me smashing into OmegaDotter.

She landed on her back.  I managed to bash her eyeball and nose with my arm and elbow.  It all seemed to be happening in slo-mo; I managed not to get her in the solar plexus with my knee by somehow twisting around and getting my knee off to the side.

Which means, while I was whacking her a good one in the eye and nose, I was also whacking my knee something fierce on the floor.

There’s a particular feeling of oh-my-god-ness to the realization that you may just have really hurt your very own child.  I was terrified that I had broken her nose; she was curled in a ball crying, and I was pulling at her going, “Omimgod baby are you all right omigod baby I didn’t mean it I’m so sorry omigod are you all right sweetie talk to me?!?!“

After a twenty-minute bout of crying snuggled in my lap, and me carefully poking at her nose and waiting for a nosebleed or swelling or purpling, I managed to make her laugh somehow, and all was well.

Except for the fact that my knee is now swollen and quite painful.  She, of course, is doing fine.

So there’s your PSA for the evening:  Don’t play around with faux martial-arts moves when you don’t know what you’re doing; you might actually hurt someone.

Dudes.  What is with our culture?!  Seriously.  Isn’t it good enough to be invited to participate in the state science fair?  Does every damned thing kids participate in require that every tender ego be protected from negative vibes?

All the kids at the State Science Fair got “participant” ribbons and a certificate.

Ah, well, it’s all for the chiiiiillllldrrrruuuuunnnn.  We must spare them any and all psychic harm, dontchaknow?

Bah.

That said…OmegaDotter came home with an official second-place ribbon, and we’re as pleased as punch with that.

The venue was a brand-new middle school in Big City.  A really pretty brand-new school.  With two art studios!  And a dance studio!  And an atrium filled with dangling glass mosaics in rainbow colors!  Holy cow, it looked like the set from High School Musical–there were balconies and swathes of glass and the principal’s office was a two-story high-ceilinged affair!  Man, we felt like we were in Swank City while we were there.

Friday evening was filled with standing in lines.  There was the line to check in to get a project number.  There was the “media release” line.  There was the line for the free T-shirt.  There was the line to pay for registration.  There was the line for the judging information and time selection for judging (for elementary students–older students had to be there for a full four hours).  There was the line for the FAQs (really–why on earth didn’t they just hand it out with the project number?!).  There was the line for the Safety Check, which in essence said that if you brought anything that could possibly, in any way, harm someone by giving them a boo-boo, it was out.  THEN, when all those lines were visited (older students also had the line-to-submit-abstracts and the line-for-human-research-protocol-checks), then you could visit the line where they told you where to put the project.

But even with all the lines, it only took us an hour.  Then we went off to dinner at a local Korean restaurant, overate, and went home, to return again this a.m.

These are the hanging mosaics at Very Bright Shiny New Middle School:

This was part of the scene in the gymnasium where the exhibits were displayed:

OmegaDotter talking with the judge.  We had walked her through various questions and answers beforehand, but were not allowed to be anywhere near her during the judging.  The gymnasium had an upper-level track around the periphery, so we went up there and spied from above.  Yes, it’s a bad picture; I zoomed too far and things pixilated.

Madame Scientista posing in front of her project:

One of the middle schoolers on the other side of the gymnasium also had a dissolving-egg-shells project; theirs was much more complex and involved measuring the thickness of the egg shells using calipers after four days of immersion, and they used Sprite instead of Dr Pepper and Pepsi.  The dotter was very interested in seeing their project, and they had to ask her if she bounced the nekkid eggs–which, of course, we had done.

Then we had five hours to kill before we could pick up the projects, so we drove down the coast of the inlet to Ski Resort Town, which we had never visited before.  I was astonished at how much snow they got there; OmegaDad kept telling me that this was the Rain Shadow Effect In Action.  Thank you very much, Herr Professor My Love!

We were intrigued by the effect of tides on ice in the inlet; there were many small iceberg-lets stranded on the mudflats at high tide, and the ice was not a solid sheet, but carved into canyons and mesas by the action of the tides (we assume).  Nothing like the ice on Lake Michigan in winter, which I remember very distinctly as a solid mass, with excellent frozen wave action on the edges (no waves in the inlet, so none of that here).

As we drove back, there was this large grey cloud to our left.  OmegaDad and I kept eyeing it, and we finally decided it must be an ash cloud from the volcano.  Note the brownish tinge to the bottom of the cloud layer at the top of the image below:

When we arrived home and checked the Alaska Volcano Observatory, sure enough, there had been yet another eruption (another day, another eruption; this is becoming almost routine by now), with an ash fall advisory in Big City.  Another eruption occurred after we got home, and this time the ash fall advisory is right here in Suburban Alaska.  So OmegaDad is outside taping up the cracks around the chicken coop.  Ah, life in Alaska…

As an aside:  last year, there were pictures of way kewl lightning around the eruption of Chaiten volcano in Chile.  Tonight, I am able to provide links to similar pictures of our very own volcano!

Oh, and greetings to any Mudflatters who are visiting.  Look around, kick the tires, see if you want to stay a while!

Sunday I spent with the dotter, pulling teeth interviewing her so we could get the egg-speriment down in (pretty much) her own words.  At one point, I had her doing her own typing, but that swiftly became a case of flibbertigibbet-ness wherein she was typing gobbledegook while I was backspacing over it and we were having a race and it kept going and she was giggling wildly and I was giggling and getting frustrated…

So I ended up typing it up.  But still, most of it, as I said above, is in her own words.  After I gave her very pointed questions.

And then I printed the typing out carefully overlaid on a large egg shape.  She cut out the typing eggs.  I traced and cut out bigger egg shapes of various colored construction paper.  We searched (in vain) for glue sticks.  We found old Elmer’s Glue containers.  She tried de-booger-ifying them, but we still couldn’t squeeze out glue.  She located some paintbrushes.  We had a grand old time painting glue on various pieces and pasting them down.

There was glue everywhere.

There was enough glue to soak through the pictures, so that you could see the carefully looped streams of glue that had dribbled off her paintbrush in the middle of the backs of the pictures.

At some point I gave up, drove off for glue sticks, and returned; this also served the purpose of giving her a break.  We then attacked things with glue sticks.

Glue sticks, if you don’t know, don’t stick as well as dribbled-on Elmer’s glue.

Anyway, here’s the finished project:

We trekked off to school with this behemoth this a.m., and encountered many other kiddlies bringing in their science projects.  There were many clay volcanoes being hefted by parental units; very timely, given our neighboring smoking mountain’s antics this weekend.

And there was the kiddo lugging in the poster board with a great big artsy “TNT SODA!!!” banner slashing diagonally across his project.  I am assuming that this is evidence of what is the science project du jour:  Sodas and Mentos, mixed explosively.

The science fair is Wednesday evening.  I informed the dotter that people would be asking her questions about her project.  She blinked at me in a panic, and asked me, “Can you give me the answers?!”  I further informed her that she should be able to answer the questions about her project.  She promptly called me a meanie.

Yup.  That’s me:  Mean Mommy.  Har.

The dotter staged this picture of my big red lips beanbag “reading” a book; I barely cropped it at all.

So there I was, relaxing and reading a few blogs’n'boards’n'things late this evening, and I decided to do my recent hobby:  checking in at Alaska Volcano Observatory’s Redoubt website to see how things were a-cookin’.  Things were definitely a-cookin’, to the point that I kept checking in at the seismic webicorders as it became obvious that the volcano was really thinking of doing something this time.

And then, between one moment and the next, suddenly the color code of the volcano watch changed from ORANGE-”watch” level to RED-”warning” level, and the descriptor over to the side changed to “RED: Eruption is imminent with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere likely OR eruption is underway or suspected with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere [ash-plume height specified, if possible]. WARNING: Hazardous eruption is imminent, underway, or suspected.”

So I switched to Twitter to send out a notice to whoever might possibly be listening to my intermittent blatherings, and as I was typing, @alaska_avo sent out a tweet that Redoubt was erupting.

Now, before anyone gets worried, concerned, scared, etc., please be aware that this volcano is a hundred miles away, and it looks like a short eruption (seismic stuff has already cooled down after going off the charts).

But still…so cool to be able to monitor this stuff in real-time.

Here’s what the seismometer was doing at one of the seismic stations; the red square at the bottom left corner is an indicator that the seismicity was off the chart, unable to be measured by that seismograph, during those minutes.