End of March was the earliest we’ve seen cherry blossom peak bloom come, owing to an especially warm winter. Baby Life didn’t leave us much time or energy to brave tourist crowds for cherry blossom viewing, but I was able to take a weekday lunch break to run down to the Tidal Basin and snap a few photos with my NEX3N and VCLECF1 fisheye lens.
Also nice that some of the streets in our neighborhood were lined with cherry trees so even if we couldn’t make it to DC there were blossoms right around the block, which our infant son got to see on a sick day, too.
At 10 months of age, Ezra has mastered the arts of the commando crawl, multi-syllable babbling, and eating various pureed and soft foods.
He can understand a simple “yes” or “no”, identify a cat (“GAH”), and operate a light switch. He can sit upright independently, and even pull himself up to a standing position and maintain it with support.
He’s a smart and cheerful baby but not too fond of crib napping, prone to occasional bouts of separation anxiety and squirmy struggling. Still, he generally sleeps through the night, which is the greatest baby blessing of all. Sometimes he’s a little joker and given a sheet or a shirt, likes to play peek-a-boo back at us. He’s got all four front teeth now.
In other words, he’s a mostly normal 10 month old baby. Except Ezra is extra cute.
One nice perk of new job: access to the system of tunnels under the US Capitol. Hours are limited when House and Senate are recessed, but if I get out early enough it’s still a good way to get to Union Station when weather is less than optimal for a walk outside.
Cannon House Office Tunnel is lined with art from constituents in every Congressperson’s district, and connects to the Capitol Basement. Down there I still keep getting lost in a maze of nondescript and very un-Capitol-like passages while trying to get to here:
…the Senate Subway that connects the Capitol to the Senate Office Buildings. There are also walkways between the tracks; at least once walking has been faster than waiting for the train cars.
After a long walk through a brick basement hallway under the Russell Senate Office Building, I emerge right near Union Station.
Of course, if we still lived in our old apartment on E St NW I’d be practically home by now, but today there’s one more train to ride.
And miles to go before I sleep.
(If short VRE commuter train rides recorded with a GoPro are your thing, I’ve been collecting them in this Trains Playlist.)
It’s been a fairly warm winter without much snow, so even just the few hours of frozen precipitation we got in March was cause enough for some late weather excitement.
More ice rather than snow, so a smooth slippery crust formed over every surface.
Local forest trail became especially perilous after some refreezing, as I learned the hard way the next evening.
Since it was very icy and packed, the snow/ice mix lasted a while. A week later, this sad remnant was still left outside Library of Congress.
The late and sudden cold caused a bit of a cherry blossom scare but the trees appear to have survived nicely.
I think it was 1989, maybe early 1990, back in the Philippines. I was in 7th Grade. We went on a field trip to see the Ripley’s (of Believe It Or Not” fame) traveling show “World’s Firsts,” which was visiting Manila at the time. That day they had a guest speaker: Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan. (Some irony there, I suppose: that an exhibit about first things would feature the last person to have walked on the moon.)
I don’t remember much about the presentation; all I could think of was an Apollo documentary I had seen showing the EVA where Cernan and fellow astronaut Jack Shmitt had found orange-colored soil.
So when Q&A time came up, I bounded up to the mic (which I vividly recall gave me a strong static shock) and excitedly asked “Remember the orange soil? What was it? Was it radioactive? Was it some kind of ore?”
Cernan was extremely pleased by this. “Now this kid, this kid has done his homework,” he said, “We did find orange soil.” He went on to talk about iron oxide in the soil and volcanic activity, but the rest of the day my head was abuzz with praise from an astronaut who’d walked on the moon.
He died on January 16th, 2017, still the last man on the moon. We still have not returned. But I’ve done my homework.
But death aside, 2016 will forever be most notable for one birth: our son Ezra.
I turned forty. I also quit my last job and started a new one. In the week between jobs I hopped over to the Philippines to see my brother get married, and also do some diving. (Also got to ride a Boeing 787 for the first time and visit Tokyo for a night.)
Day trip with brother Francis to Anilao, scuba destination of our (and our parents’) youth. We dove out of Planet Dive, a resort in Anilao equipped for day trips, right off Twin Rocks, a relatively shallow and easy marine sanctuary accessible from the resort via shore entry.
Video recorded on a GoPro Hero4 Session with waterproof housing and hand strap mount. (The mount turned out to be terribly shaky and the housing clouded up at times, necessitating some post-processing and stabilization, hence the strange wobbly effects at some points in the video.)
Dive 101: Twin Rocks
Max depth: 60ft
Dive time: 55 mins
Air used: 200 bar
Shore entry means you literally walk into the sea, wearing full gear, then start swimming when it’s deep enough. Lots of scary looking sea urchins nestled in the rocks, though the dive center seems to have done a good job of keeping the immediate shore entry area urchin-free. On descent from the entry point is a sunken barge which serves as anchor for the dive buoy.
The Twin Rocks themselves are several meters north of this spot, a leisurely swim over scattered clusters of coral, harboring schools of fish and other diverse sea life. We met a friendly turtle and a shy mantis shrimp.
Hour long dive, with nice shallow reef area for safety deco stop en route back to entry point. Lots of fish and coral but again, many urchins in the shallows.
Dive 102: Twin Rocks, but deeper
Max depth: 80 ft
Dive time: 55 mins
Air used: 200 bar
Second dive after lunch. Went a bit deeper after shore entry, going past the sunken barge down to 80 feet. Sea floor was barer, with only scattered clusters of coral dotting the sand. Saw a moray eel peeking out from under some coral, with a cleaner shrimp roaming around its head and ducking in and out of its mouth.
Up at the Rocks I tried leaving my GoPro alone on the coral for a few minutes, so that fish normally fleeing my presence returned to the reef, schooling around the camera unconcerned. Got a good silhouetted scuba self-portrait, and an inquisitive red snapper came close to the camera three times, possibly trying to intimidate the GoPro away from its reef.
Overall, a nice pair of dives, and the resort day trip package included lunch and decent dive shop service. Extremely grateful to my brother for taking time out of his day for the trip.
I visited the Philippines for a week in November for my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding. Flight there and back were on ANA with transfers at Tokyo Narita. Interesting thing about the IAD-NRT leg of the trip: westbound 14 hour trip was entirely in daylight.
