Things got off to an inauspicious start when Galen's car wouldn't start. Being a physicist--I say I say a theoretical one--it was a true probabilistic experiment to see what would happen. He did, in fact, get the polarity right and the car did, in fact, start. However, when he came out after his class and office hour, it didn't. While one could argue that driving a car perhaps once a week places undue strain on a battery, that would only make sense if the battery was already beyond its design life which this one was. A visit from AAA and the purchase of a new battery fixed the problem.
As the saying goes, "A door closes; a door opens." In this case, the door that opened was the extra hour and half I spent at Bolsa Chica Reserve, a coastal wetlands and mesa in Huntington Beach. Laura is very active in the Friends of Bolsa Chica that works at reclaiming the habitat back to native plants. This work is on the mesa and I had visited that part before. I had worked my way to the point and had only begun to check out the wetlands when Galen called to tell me that he was delayed. That meant I was able to hike around most of the wetlands and was able to take some nice images of water fowl and other birds along with one fish...and it was actually serving as a meal.
Take a look at the Bolsa Chica photo album.
After a very nice lunch at The Red Table, a little bistro that opened in the neighborhood shopping area, we came home, rested a bit and then went to pick up Maggie and Thomas from school. Maggie is very enthusiastic about all this as you can see in this short video.
After all that excitement, I needed a nap which i promptly took. Then it was off to the orthodontist for Maggie's appointment. Dr. Chang's office is quite contemporary and very pleasing visually. Coincidentally it is across the street from what used to be a very difficult golf course that my friend, Tom McFadden, suckered me into playing some years back. It is now the site of Cottonwood Church. The ground certainly needed to be consecrated after I finished with it...both physically and verbally.
Back home I finally got around to getting a picture of the four kids. I think they are a pretty good looking bunch but then I am appropriately biased.
After a chili dinner, Maggie and Thomas gave brief recitals: maggie on the violin and Thomas a keyboard. That was followed by Galen and Maggie assembling the telescope she received as one of her birthday presents. After Galen introduced me to Google Sky Map, we located Mars or at least where Mars would be when it got dark enough which it did in a little while. We all took a turn looking at the red planet. it was really red, almost like a tail light on a car.
Take a look at the updated photo album.
They are encouraged to talk with each other about the answer and then can change the answer if they think their first choice was not correct. It is not really used to evaluate students but rather to give the professor an idea of what students are thinking and how they are thinking about the problem at hand. He asks for questions and actually wants to hear them and then will answer them. 
