March Mayhem 2012

March Mayhem was Friday! Mommy drove ahead and Daddy and I walked. Daddy painted my face and I painted his.

After we painted each other's faces, we started walking. We stopped at Flippin' Pizza for dinner on the way. We got to the middle school soon afterwards.

When we got there I got pompoms. Then we found Mommy and went to look at the gift baskets for the raffle. I ran into two of my friends. When I was looking for Mommy I ran into my teacher.

We got into line with our neighbors. When we got into the gym, we tried two different seat arrangements before we sat down. Then there was a flag ceremony and The Star Spangled Banner. I found out that I know more of the national anthem than I thought.

Soon afterwards the teams came out. My school came first and the middle school (MS) came out afterwards. They played knockout to decide who got the ball first. Then the game started. My school scored first, but MS tied quickly. A pattern started of one team scoring and the other team bringing it back to a tie.

In the break between 1st and 2nd period, they had a basket shooting contest. Ms. R. was the first player from my school. I don't remember who the first MS player was. In the 2nd period my school won the first half. At halftime my friend E and I went on the floor. A bunch of students from my school were cheering and jumping by one of the hoops. I started cheering too and lost an earplug.

Then I hurried back to my seat for the 2nd half. In between the 3rd and 4th periods the mascots tried to shoot but none of them did. The 2nd half was tied. A player from my school dunked the ball but he was a second too late! As he slammed the ball down the whistle screeched. But March Mayhem was still fun. My school didn't lose and we have been losing for ever!

After the game Daddy and I walked to the ice cream shop where Mommy met us. The ice cream felt good after the screaming.

[Daddy Geek helped edit a bit - mostly to clean up names.]

Avian Fluid Dynamics

This morning, I found the following in my Twitter feeds:

I had to follow the link on that one, which took me to a PDF copy of an article from the journal Polar Biology, entitled "Pressures produced when penguins pooh - calculations on avian defaecation", by Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal of the International University in Bremen, Germany.

This is apparently the single most frequently downloaded paper in that journal, and contains the following as Figure 1:

"Fig. 1 Position of model penguin during defaecation and physical parameters used to calculate rectal pressure necessary to expel faecal material over a distance of 40 cm" (Meyer-Rochow and Gal, 2003)

This paper is actually a pretty interesting read for those who've studied fluid dynamics - and really, who isn't interested in the fluid dynamics of poop?

Mama Geek, a biologist and former chemical engineer, was especially predisposed to it. She was excited when she saw that the paper notes that penguin poop is still in the laminar flow regime ("What's the Reynolds number?!") and does not, as the abstract so delicately puts it, "lead to an energetically wasteful turbulent flow."

I have two thoughts on this one. First, remind me not to stand downwind of any chinstrap or Adélie penguins. Two: "Science. It works..." (xkcd to the rescue again).

Spring Portrait

You'll notice that the last post did not include any photos of Girl Geek--or is it Geek Girl? All I know is that I better not refer to her as Little Geek Girl. She took most of the pictures during our walk.

However, we did stop to photograph her:


This is the face she makes when Daddy Geek says "Whatever you do, don't laugh."

By the way, the last time we measured, she was only 6 3/4 inches shorter than me.

Ack!

Around the Tidal Basin

This is a guest post by Geek Girl with minimal help from Daddy Geek.

Today we walked around the Tidal Basin. These are some things we saw.





This is part of the Tidal Basin with the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. The dots in front are geese. And speaking of geese, we saw a lot.




We also saw ducks. Lots of ducks. Ducks in water and ducks on land. Mommy and I also saw ducks in grass on the way.




Well, the reason we went was to see the cherry blossoms. Here are some pictures of them:










After a little while, we went to the tulip library. Here are some pictures of the tulips:



















There are a lot more flowers than the ones I just showed you, but I took too many pictures to show.



As we left, I got a final picture of the Tidal Basin.

That was our visit to the Tidal Basin.

The Birds are Back in Town

We rent a home that has an awning over the back door. Since before we have lived here, there has been a bird's nest under the awning. Year after year, either the same birds, or generations of the same birds, or at least birds that look very similar to each other, have used the nest. (I'm not an ornithologist or a birder, so to me, these are LBBs: little brown birds. Some kind of house finch, I'm guessing, but what do I know?). We have had the joy of watching two sets of loud, chirpy baby birds learn to fly outside our back door.

You may have heard about the mild winter we have been having in the DC area. Honestly, it has seemed more like a long fall and an early spring than a real winter - we have had very few storms and barely any snow. The crocuses have even begun blooming in early-to-mid February.

Well, today we had another sign of a mild winter: our LBBs are back already - a month ahead of last year. Daddy and Mommy Bird spent the day working on the nest. Now, we have no real idea which of these birds is Daddy and which is Mommy. We noted than one of them was much slimmer and the other much fluffier and more rotund, and GG and I hypothesized that might mean the fluffy round one is Mommy Bird getting ready to lay some eggs, but what do we know?

Daddy and Mommy Bird also brought us a bonus: another pair of birds appears to be setting up a home at the other end of our awning. Maybe we will get to watch two sets of Baby Birds learning to eat, cheep, and fly just outside our door.

(Edited to replace 'LGG' in the original version with 'GG' in this one. As she reminded me, "Daddy, I thought we got rid of the 'L' a while ago...")

Barcelona by Geek Girl

This is a guest post by Geek Girl, with minimal edits by Daddy Geek...

We are in Barcelona. We have done several things. Here are some pictures:



This is me with the lizard statue in Parc Güell.




This is behind the lizard statue.




I climbed a tree under some arches that are also
in Parc Güell.




These are the arches.




This is the curvy bench in Parc Güell.




This is a museum in Parc Güell.




We also went to a beach.




There was a rope pyramid by the beach.
After a while, I got to the top.

We walked up a hill and found out there was a castle at the top.




In the center of the castle there were some people
singing.




On the way down the hill, we passed a fountain
with stepping "stones".

We took the aerial tram down the hill.




This is a view from the tram.

We saw a wavy building. Here is a picture of the wavy building.



See above.

These are some pictures from my trip to Barcelona.

Geeks...In...SPAAAAAAIIIIINNNN

(Jim Henson, please forgive me for the title.)

The Geeks are on holiday in Spain, a destination we have had in mind for a long time.

So far, the trip has been pretty good. Short overnight flights are never that fun, but ours was relatively empty, so Geek Girl got a set of two seats to curl up in alone, and Mama Geek scored another set that she and I traded off. Arrival in Spain was easy and after a short Metro ride, we arrived at our first hotel of the trip - and lucked out, as the room was ready for check-in well before noon. Quick showers, and then we headed out to explore Madrid.

We had a late morning snack at Las Mallorquinas, a famous bakery/cafe on Puerta del Sol, before wandering to the Palacio Real, where I snapped Mama Geek and Girl Geek





before she returned the favor:





We found a small playground nearby, where Geek Girl could burn off some climbing energy





and then we got to see some kind of procession with lots of horses with well-clad riders, and eventually a coach





I'll let Geek Girl blog the final thing in the procession.

We found a quick lunch in a local place -- all the other patrons were Spanish -- and then wandered around to get some light and help battle jet lag. After a quick siesta, we headed out in the rain to find a tapas place we had read about, but we must have had the wrong opening times, as it was closed. Instead, off to have a quick bite of bocadillas con calamari and bocadillas con lomo before heading off for our new favorite dessert: chocolate and churros.

How do I know it is our new favorite? Just ask Geek Girl. I did, tonight in Barcelona: "What would you like for dessert, ice cream or churros?". She replied, with a tone I can only characterize as "enthusiastic pity" (for the idiot even suggesting there is a choice to be made), "Churros. Lots of churros."

On that note, buenos noches, amigos.