how now brownpau
While Amy had classes and workshops at the American Indian Museum and National Gallery a few weekends ago, I wandered around the Air and Space Museum with my iPhone and tried out Autostitch to get some wide-angle shots of Gallery 101 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project:
I also saw a couple of student orchestras play some classical music and viewed A Song for the Horse Nation. More photos from that day here.
We’re at the New York Academy of Art for The Ones, an exhibit of work by alumni from 1991, 2001, and 2011. Amy’s turn to show work should be in five years for The Sixes, if this pattern keeps up. Studio tours follow, with Canadian student Cory Dixon showing us around. Lots of ecorches about, which Amy finds familiar. (I note down the websites of especially interesting artists, but lose the notes later in a phone upgrade.)
Plastics. I hadn’t known New York still had a downtown plastic district, with various sorts of plasticware such as you would find in any home goods or crafts or office supply store — but all domestically produced, higher-priced than your standard Made-in-China plastics, supposedly better quality, and in greater varieties of shapes and uses, custom orders accepted.
It’s all so anachronistic, I can’t not post a photo of this scene without the requisite “one word” quote from The Graduate.
Hey look, New York has a Sea World:
Having once eaten at “Good Dumpling House” in the past, we decide to try “Excellent Dumpling House” on Lafayette Street. Most of the fare is decidedly not more Excellent than the Good, but they do serve xiao long bao soup dumplings, which are indeed excellent.
Then, a trip to the Met to view Renaissance Portraits. I think this is the trip where we break even on our Associate Membership (assuming a full donation for every visit).
A lovely sunset graces the afternoon sky as we exit the museum later.
At 86th and Madison, a taxi is being towed.
At church, the next day, we celebrate a member’s 95th birthday. While we talk with a Russian member at length about Yakutia and her home town of Severny, my father-in-law plays the accordion.
On the road home, I record the vibrant scrolling retail tableau of Route 22, a very New Jersey scene:
We pick up some lunch the next day at a pizza place called “Goombas,” the interior decor rich with pop culture mob references. Again, a very New Jersey scene. You couldn’t call a place “Goombas” anywhere else in America, I don’t think.
It was a good weekend. I close with the very best vanity plate ever seen on a Mazda MPV, anywhere, seen outside Chestnut Chateau in Union:
There has been a side effect to Pandora’s health problems I had not anticipated: jaw dislocation. According to the vet, renal failure causes calcium-phosphorus imbalances that can lead to bones softening or changing shape. In Pandora’s case her jaw sometimes has these infrequent but alarming moments of orthopedic disengagement (don’t watch if you’re squeamish about injured cats making bone-grindy noises):
The clicky grinding noises you hear are her joints not meeting properly, and you’ll notice she actually paws at her mouth trying to self-correct the error. Smart cat. She was able to fix her own jaw after a minute, but I did take her to the vet after this incident. The vet said she couldn’t find evidence of injury or inflammation, and was very thankful for the video to help her diagnosis.
Additionally Pandora has been experiencing occasional litterbox aversion, and has urinated on the couch more than once recently. Fortunately we had anticipated this given her age, and the couch is lined with machine-washable waterproof changing pads just for such occurrences. The vet says these episodes are most likely caused by urinary tract infections, to which Pandora is now more susceptible due to renal failure making her urine more watery and less germicidal.
Pandora will soon need subcutaneous fluid therapy to help her kidneys along. This will involve home injections of medicated solution directly into her tissues; she’ll find it unpleasant at first, but hopefully the added fluids will prolong her life without pain for years yet. We’ll see how good I am at injecting a cat with a large needle.
Here’s a summary in links of our trip to the Philippines and Hong Kong through Christmas 2011 and New Year 2012:
Photo and Video
Travel Log Entries:
A few notes on the trip from Hong Kong back to DC:
We were originally supposed to fly through SFO on a 777 but at some point United did a schedule change and it became a 747 to ORD. The change meant departing an hour earlier, and our seat reservations were wiped. We lost our pair of rear window seats and had to settle for middle seats, one by the aisle. This turned out okay since I got an empty seat beside me. Our plane was a B744 with registry N122UA.
After leaving the Philippines we spent a few days in Hong Kong before heading back to DC. This was our third time doing so, as United usually flies as far as HKG en route to MNL (I usually book the HKG-MNL trip separately so it’s cheaper), and it made for a convenient “decompression” stop after the hectic holidays.
Coron’s main draw for scuba divers is the fleet of World War II Japanese shipwrecks sunk around the Calamian Islands by US bombers in September, 1944. Around an hour by boat (give or take a few minutes depending on which wreck) from Coron proper, the wrecks sit on various reefs — or have become reefs by themselves — in relatively shallow water, some as deep as forty meters and one as shallow as the surface itself.
We were in the Philippines for about a week and a half — in Metro Manila for Christmas, then in Coron, Busuanga after Christmas through New Year, and back in Metro Manila for a few more days onward.
Our adventures started the night before, with United changing our seat assignments without notification, then disabling Amy’s online check-in. Then, some excitement on departure: a transformer blew up at the corner as we left in our taxi.
Pandora the Cat is now 20 years old, and still enjoying a reasonably good quality of life, but her advanced years have seen many feline health difficulties common to cats her age.