Zoo Visit

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Amy and I strolled around the zoo over the weekend. Of course, the National Zoo on a summer Saturday is, like much of the Tourist Core of DC, Screaming Toddler Central, especially as we were going around the Reptile House, but things were quieter with Invertebrates. See the full zoo photoset here. Having forgotten my regular camera (the Powershot A400) at my in-laws’, I’ve been using my Thincam as backup, so please excuse the lower quality. Some snaps:

IMG_0441 IMG_0414 IMG_0411 IMG_0448 Crab.jpg IMG_0450

Oh, a Zoo tip: do not try to use your credit card with the vending machines. Dealing with two separate user interfaces: the machine itself and the POS card swipe (I use “POS” for both its meanings here), which barely interact with each other and give conflicting information, will frustrate you to tears as you struggle to extract ice cream bars from a machine which hates you for not having exact change on a hot sunny day.

Caturday!

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Take a dark room, a low ISO, and a cat who just won’t stop moving, and you get these photos of Pandora’s head doing what looks like the Picard Maneuver:

Blurry Cat 2 Blurry Cat 3

Blurry Cat 1

And if you haven’t seen it yet, you may enjoy Pandora’s take on the serious cat macro:

Pandora Are Serious Cat

Crab.jpg

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Crab.jpg

Great Land Crab, Cardisoma guanhumi. Despite being called a land crab, it must return to water. In the Invertebrates Exhibit now.

(Crab.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)

Storm.jpg

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Storm.jpg

Looming nimbostratus and cumulonimbus clouds in the northeast. Weather alert calls for 2 inch hail. Will I make it home in time?

Update: Yes! A wave of rain had passed when I got to Union Station, and it was still drizzling, but my lovely wife had just arrived from her work mere minutes before, and met me with an umbrella. She’s an awesome wife.

STS-117

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im in ur launch pad Well, after three months of patching up fuel tank hail damage, NASA finally managed to launch Atlantis for STS-117, to snap a new S3/S4 solar array truss on to the International Space Station. One small hitch post-launch: an insulation blanket pulled up by air pressure at launch has exposed a small part of the port OMS pod, raising the risk of heat damage on reentry. Shuttle crew may have to check for damage and undertake repairs.

Right now the truss has been moved from the shuttle cargo bay and bolted to the ISS structure, and astronauts Jim Reilly and Danny Olivas are doing all sorts of cool space things to get the truss working.

More links:

Wed

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After a week and a day of marriage, things are still kind of crazy with fixing up the apartment, we still haven’t gone on a honeymoon, and I haven’t found time to write about the wedding day in any kind of detail. We won’t have any photos from the official photographer for a couple more weeks, but photos from guests are starting to come in: here are some from Amy’s Uncle Wesley and from Jacquelyn. I’ve also turned our wedding site into a minimal memoir of the day, which I will update with links to photos as they come in.

More details after the jump.

Continue reading Wed