Hosenfeld Happenings

Walking into work at 3am, only to find out you’re not really supposed to be there until 11am.

I’m thinking this will be alot funnier in a few years!

and was greeted by this lovely sight:

Despite the chirping birds and blooming flowers, winter isn’t over yet!!!

I feel so lucky to have such an awesome dad who is also a good friend. I never grew out of thinking my dad was one of the coolest people ever; I still think he is! My dad is so fun to talk to. He’s interesting, knows pretty much everything, and wants to learn anything he doesn’t. We share so many interests; politics, books, food, doing stuff outside, and so many more things. He is an amazing example to me in so many things.

When I grow up, I want to be just like him!

as I was opening a package of mushrooms for some tofu stroganoff, I noticed something really new and exciting about the fungus:

Apparently, mushrooms suddenly come with 100% vitamin D!

How sad that vegetables (or I suppose, in this case, mushrooms) have to be marketed.

Jared got me the best Christmas present ever. A brand new mountain bike! Except, I told him it was cruel to give me a present I have to wait months and months to use. I think I’ll forgive him though.

My impatience got the best of me, and we headed down to St George in early January to do some mountain biking. We went to a place called bear claw poppy, right outside of town, and it was awesome.

Here’s me and my new bike. We’re already in love:



This ended up being my favorite part of the ride. If Jared hadn’t gone first, I never would’ve done it!


it was a really awesome trail:



After biking, we met up with Alisa and Casey, and climbed a route. Pretty much a perfect day:



On the way home, we stopped at a state park that I’ve never heard of, and have already forgotten the name of. It was beautiful! Although, it really seemed like a place that tortoises would live, so we spent the whole hike “thinking like a turtle.” Despite our best efforts, we never saw one. Jared sure did make a good substitute though!



Oh and sorry about the retarded formatting, with the text running down the pictures. I think Wordpress is having some  issues!

A few weeks ago, my mom recommended a movie that she predicted I’d “have to blog about.” Well, she was right.

You HAVE to watch “The Cove.” It’s a documentary describing the treatment of dolphins in a small town in Japan. In this town, dolphins are forced into a cove where dolphin trainers from around the world select those dolphins that they want to purchase for their shows. Those dolphins that aren’t selected are taken to a secret cove and slaughtered. The individuals in the documentary make it their mission to find out exactly what happens in this cove. The truth is chilling. Not only how the dolphins are killed, but what happens to their meat is absolutely unbelievable.

“The Cove” is available at Redbox. Rent it. It’s short, but incredibly compelling. If the trailer below doesn’t work, click here:

I put a heat resistant silicone spatula to the test, and it failed! Although perhaps the test was a little unfair.

Yesterday afternoon I put a tea kettle on the stove for some mint tea, and left the room. After a minute or two, I detected a slight food smell, but figured that i was just smelling some leftover food on the burner. Probably five minutes later I noticed the smell getting stronger, and then realized how weird it was that I hadn’t heard the tea kettle whistle, and hurried out of the room. As soon as I entered the hallway, I saw thick black smoke pouring out of the kitchen. As I rushed in, I was greeted by flames from two fires about 8 inches high coming from the top of the stove.

This was all happening because I had turned the wrong knob on the stove, and heated up the front burner instead of the back burner. On the front burner was a frying pan with a silicone spatula inside. As the pan heated up, the spatula began to melt. The handle broke off and landed on the exposed part of the burner, and caught on fire. Meanwhile, the part of the spatula inside the pan heated above 500 degrees (apparently the temperature to which silicone is heat resistant) and also caught on fire. I grabbed the pan, threw it outside, and then put out the second fire from the spatula on the burner. I then spent the next hour airing out the house (not so comfortable when it’s 30 degrees out) and cleaning up the black ash covering every possible surface.

Let’s hope I learned my lessson!!

(that spatula was yellow in a previous life.)

Inspired yet again by a story heard on NPR, we studied snowflake formation for science Sunday. It all began with this video:

After learning about snowflake formation we discussed the differneces between snow and ice. Then we went on a snowflake safari of our own. Unfortunately, it hasn’t snow in forever, and the snow in the backyard was pretty boring. Still, I got out my official snow magnifying glass and snowcard, and we looked at the snow crystals on the ground. Like we’d imagined, not too excited.  However, I promised my scientists that the next time it snowed, they could come over and we’d look at some real snowflakes.  With the way things are lining up, it looks like that could be as early as Monday! Hooray!!

Here’s a cool website about snowflakes that you can explore. There is even an experiment where you make your own snowflakes!

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

Jared, Caitlin, James, Kevin, and I headed to Silverton and Ouray, colorado for a quick weekend getaway. It is a trip Jared and I have taken every year but last since we met. It started out as a huge group going ice climbing, but after we discovered Silverton, it sort of morphed into a skiing/ice climbing trip.

We headed out New Years Eve. My parents were really exciting about us going ice climbing after hearing Casey’s story of climbing that same day. (read it here. It’s INSANE!!!!)

We skied on Friday at Silverton, a resort in southwestern Colorado. It is seriously the coolest resort ever. There is only one rickety lift, that takes you 2000 vertical feet; from about 10000 to 12,000 feet. From the top of the lift, there’s a 1,000 vertical foot hike to the most amazing run ever. With so much hiking, you don’t get as many runs in. But, the runs you do get are amazing!!

Here is the lung-burning hike:

Caitlin, Kevin, and me at the top of the hike:

Jared on the way up:

The snow was good, but not especially deep. In fact, we may have had to forge a river or two:

it was really steep.

the best run there. worth the insane hike!

this bus picks you up at the end of each run and takes you back to the base

After a day at Silverton, we headed to Ouray for ice climbing. It was James and Kevin’s first time, and they did great!

Jared

Why the dark picture? Because this is me belaying Caitlin up on our last climb of the day. It was crazy! I was dark by the time she got to the hardest part of the climb, and the ice had gotten cold enough that it was really brittle, and would just break off every time she tried to get her tool in. It was a little scary. I didn’t know how she’d get up! Luckily, she’s amazing, and climbed in the pitch black!

For the first Sunday in a very long time, I didn’t have to go to work. It was weird.But great, because I was able to do all the things I love to do on Sunday; go to church, do Science Sunday, and eat a yummy dinner.

For Science Sunday, we learned about sound.

To begin, we discussed how sound moves through the air in waves; short, skinny waves make high sounds, and long, fat waves make lower sounds. We learned how everything makes sound by vibrating. We make sound when our vocal chords vibrate. To visualize this, we watched this You Tube video of vibrating vocal chords. Cool, and kinda gross at the same time:

We then learned how instruments make sound by plucking the strings of Jared’s guitar. We experimented by making the strings longer and shorter by putting our fingers different places on the string, and found that shorter strings make higher sounds than longer strings.

We talked about the speed of sound, and learned that planes can move faster than the speed of sound.

From there, we somehow moved onto the speed of light. We talked about how the light from the stars that we see is actually light that was emitted millions of years ago, and if a star went out, we probably wouldn’t know it in our lifetime. Chandler then wondered that if the sun is a star,  if it went out, how long it would take to realize it on earth. We found the distance from the earth to the sun (1.496 x 10¹¹ m) and the speed of light (2.99 x 10⁸ m/s). By dividing the speed of light by the distance from the earth to the sun, we calculated that if the sun went dark, it would take 8 minutes for those of us on earth to realize it.

It was a great discussion, and really fun watch how excited the kids were to understand things they’d always known in a whole new way.