Science Olympiad

Glitter Glue Princess’s team had their finals for science olympiad this week.

If you are not inaugurated in the ways of Science Olympiad, look here. It is an approach to provide group competitions to replace science fairs.

Glitter Glue Princess’s team had complete the following tasks within a timed period:

• Guide the path of a laser with mirrors to light up a target.
• Build a structure made of straws and tape as tall as possible and hold a tennis ball for 3 seconds.
• Give verbal directions to complete a shape.
• Build a boat from clay and determine how many pennies it can hold while staying afloat.

They had many practice sessions before competing to determine who had the best design, take notes for replication on competition night, and to increase their speed for completion.

Here are a few pictures from the competition:

At then end of the competition, she placed second – yay!

A night with the butterflies

As members of our local sculpture park/botanical gardens, Meijer Garden, we get the benefit of going to lovely members only events. We just attended the “Night of the Butterflies” where we get to see the butterflies that they are hosting after hours. After going to this for many years, we’ve found that it is best to get there early, so the place is not crowded and there are fewer flashlights to aggravate the poor fellas when you are finding them…

My most favorite part is to see the night blooming orchid, but it wasn’t out again this year…. Bummer.

On to the photos of sleeping butterflies…

This is not a butterfly, but is breathtaking nonetheless.

Of course, we always take a picture next to the frog sculpture in the tropical garden. It seems the Glitter Glue Princess is getting a bit big for this anymore…

Lastly, some pictures of something I dearly love, the Chihuly glass chandelier in our garden’s lobby… this picture is upside down, but still lovely…

If you want to see a picture of me, I’m posting the link to it here….

They are all out to get us…

No, I’m really not that paranoid. I’m just a recent victim of credit card theft.

Somehow my card number was used to buy about $200 worth of flowers (huh, would have liked to have seen those!), furniture in Dubai, and something in Great Britain.

I will state that Citibank was great and called us, but even so, I called back on the number on the back of my card rather than using the automated man who called us – I’m no idiot. The last time we had used the card was in Philadelphia, at the Independence Visitors Center across from the liberty bell – huh? Nothing spells freedom like getting your credit card skimmed…. Right?!?!? For the record, I have no proof of that, but the irony didn’t escape me.

Well, Citibank didn’t flinch at my charge to Finland for my ottobre design subscription in the previous month, but the Dubai and Britain charges set them off. This is my satisfied customer plug for Citibank – thank you!

Thankfully this whole thing is behind us now, but this started me off on a new tangent – identity theft prevention.

I’m now looking into RFID blocking fabric, such as the stuff sold here…. There will probably be more to come on this, as I’m still researching it. With chips being installed in passports, credit cards, clothing care labels (rfid reading washing machines? what?!?), and the information easy to intercept, I’m thinking about how I can make nice looking items without looking like the idiot with a tin foil hat on in the corner…

If you have any recommendations for patterns to make wallets or passport covers, I’d love to see them…. Then, I’ll secretly sneak some of the RFID blocking fabric into it – hehehe.

So…. What did YOU do this weekend? A wordless post on Philadelphia