Washington Harbour Floodwall

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Walking along the river to work through the heavy rain yesterday, I stumbled across a Washington Harbour feature of which I had not been previously aware: a floodwall!

Harbour Floodwall

Harbour Floodwall

The river was indeed fairly high (just over six feet, even higher than the last time I recorded a Potomac high tide), but still not swamping the riverside as I’ve heard it’s done in the past. The floodwall protects the sunken restaurant-and-fountain area which sits beneath the waterline, but also blocks my route to and from work, so when it’s up I have to circle around the Harbour to one of the side streets — which slope up to K Street, in case you were wondering about the flood being able to go up those to.

Photos were taken with my Nokia 6120c in panorama mode.

Timelapses: Bartholdy, Summer House

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Additional visual ouput from the weekend: short time lapses of sky, clouds, Capitol, fountain, and trees from Bartholdy Park and the Summer House. These were taken with the Canon Powershot SD1000 sitting on a table or atop a brick ledge, snapping frames at 2 second intervals. (Background music is one of Chopin’s Nocturnes but I kind of botched the audio fade-in and fade-out. Sorry.)

Weekend Garden Shots

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Saturday was a pleasant but somewhat atmospherically unsettled day, alternating between warm sun and chilly gray as a northerly breeze blew scattered, dark, but non-rainy clouds across the sky. After looking at UAVs, we dropped by Bartholdy Park and the Summer House to take in some garden ambience. The large photo is of hens and chicks growing in a tray of succulents at Bartholdy. There’s also one non-garden photo above: the study of James A. Garfield’s monument silhouetted against gray stratocumulus clouds.

Update: Aforementioned monument/clouds photo is in today’s DCist morning roundup. Hurrah for the ambidextrous preacher president who could write in two classical languages with either hand simultaneously.

UAVs at NASM

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UAVs at NASM

UAV exhibit at Air and Space. I stitched this panorama from a 3×4 matrix of photos from the second floor, leaving ragged borders uncropped to keep the full range of view. Visible here: RQ-7A Shadow 200, RQ-3A DarkStar, MQ-1L Predator, X-45A J-UCAS, and RQ-2A Pioneer. Larger image, and official NASM press release.

Artomatic (9-12)

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Amy and I dropped by Artomatic Friday night, since it was close to home, I hadn’t been to it before, and Amy had a coworker exhibiting there: Alex Zealand, with Addiction, part 3 and Transformed Books.

After admiring Alex’s coffee filter installation, we went around the place, but didn’t have the time or energy to go through everything; so we did just floors 9 to 12, saving the remaining exhibits on lower floors for another weekend. (Update: The rest of the floors here.) Along the way, I picked up an artist’s card each time I saw something that had something special to catch my attention. Without further commentary, I offer a dump of the links gathered, and leave it to you to deduce what attracted me about each artist’s (or gallery’s) work:

There was also an installation with a pedal-powered zoetrope installed in an old television housing which would alternate between applauding and booing the pedaler, but I didn’t get a card and couldn’t try it out because so many other people were crowding around it. The peace dove shadow thingy was fun too. And I loved the Victorian decor in the tattoo parlor even though I would never get a tattoo myself.

So next weekend we’ll try and do the other floors. Anyone else go? How’d you like it?

Caturday!

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At left, Amy on the couch with Pandora on her lap, and at right, Pandora rests her head on her paw on her catnip mat.

Animals at the National Zoo

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Some video from our stroll through the National Zoo: alpacas, donkeys, goats, prairie dogs, jellyfish, cuttlefish, lobster, crested partridges, burrowing owl, pygmy falcon, and sloth bears, all taken after our Rock Creek Hike. I’d like to draw attention especially to the jellyfish in the invertebrate house, which I’ve uploaded by itself to Flickr:

Brief Rock Creek Hike

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We went hiking around Rock Creek Park on Saturday, walking the Melvin Hazen Trail from Connecticut Ave to Rock Creek itself, down the bike path along Beach Drive to the zoo, and up through the Zoo to look at animals. Some photos from along the way:

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Full Rock Creek Park photoset here.

While in the zoo, we made the mistake of eating at the “Mane Restaurant,” where slow, unfriendly staff served us chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and french fries scattered across a wet, haphazardly cleaned tray, all in a disorganized, noisy environment where a napkin dispenser touched a garbage can and a spray bottle of cleaning fluid rested abandoned on a dining table within easy reach of one of dozens of screaming brats running around the place. Not eating there again.

I’ll have a zoo video up later, but I must point out this sign we saw at the aviary, which made me insanely happy to see:

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Update: Hurrah, I am noted in DCBlogs.com, and my zoo video is up.

Caturday!

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It’s my first video Caturday! In this epic, sweeping 30 second drama, our lovely feline heroine Pandora meows twice, does a wide meow-yawn, then returns to luxuriating on her new scratching rug. Playing faintly in the background is “At the Airport” by Scott Andrew.