via tiffany
Archives for the month of: February, 2011
Saw her at Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake. Noticed her (but didn’t recognize her) when I first came in, because she was being all giggly with the dude she was with. She seemed very tall, way too skinny (her legs were a little scary in her jeggings), but with a really perky butt, which seemed sort of unlikely given that the rest of her looked starved. Walked past her later and that’s when I recognized her, though it took me a second because a) she’s way prettier in real life than on screen, b) her hair was short and dark, c) the aforementioned alarming thinness. Maybe she’s just really hitting the yoga? I dunno. She seemed really happy; it’s nice to see a celebrity not looking like life is a bore/burden.
Fare thee well, Discovery!
somewhat related: cool flash timeline of the construction of the international space station. You can click on each part to get more info about it too. Very cool!
Inspired by this article which prompted Eric to ask, “Who carries around a bunch of Fruit Roll-Ups?” My answer: parents. Kyle’s answer: MacGyver. So naturally, this is what Eric made:
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Got up earlier than necessary so I could go across the street to the Wildlife Dome and have my photo taken holding a koala! She was so little (but heavier than she looked) and soft and sleepy. And her claws were very sharp too! she really latched on when the keeper put her on me.
We met up with the group and went to Kuranda. We drove through the rainforest and our guide, Roderic, pointed out a lot of plants and animals. In Kuranda, Mom, Dad and I went to the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary and saw all kinds of gorgeous and huge butterflies and moths. One butterfly wouldn’t stop landing on me – Mom had to pry it off of me and then I ran out so it couldn’t follow me again.
We went to the market area and to the honey shop then grabbed delicious German sausages for our walk to the Skyway terminal. The Skyway Rainforest Cableway is a giant gondola over the rainforest and you can see all kinds of plants and birds up there. We stopped partway down and saw Barron Falls, which was huge due to all of the recent rain. It was mostly shrouded in the huge amounts of mist it was spraying up.
At the bottom of the Skyway we went to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park and saw dances and explanations about food and hunting.
Dinner that night at Rattle & Hum, gelato (of course!), then retired for the night and watched the Olympics and some ‘Bones’.
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Woke up to rain (tropics!) on Great Barrier Reef day. It took over an hour to motor out to the floating platform but once we were there, Mom, Dad, Uncle Denny and I had the first scheduled marine biologist-guided snorkel.
Eric was a great guide and eased us into snorkeling and pointed out a lot of cool things. A humphead Maori wrasse named Roxie follows Eric around whenever he’s on the reef and will actually seek him out (the other guides say she’s in love with him. Later we found out she’s going through a lot of hormonal changes due to changing sexes, so I guess we can forgive her for being a little obsessive). We saw a lot of Roxie, and got to pet her and give her mouth a rub, which is her favorite. She was very smooth and soft and her mouth was sort of squashy. Roxie was probably the best part of the Reef; I wish I’d had an underwater housing for my camera so I could’ve taking a photo of her.
I didn’t take this, and this isn’t Roxie, but you can see the size of these fish!
We got to hold a sea cucumber and a free-living coral as well. Once the guided part of our snorkel was over, I stayed out and watched the fish and listened to the parrotfish eating (scrape scrape scrape!). It was fantastic and I wouldve been out all day, but I got stung by a jellyfish on my hand, ankle, and face (my lip and cheek), and more started drifting into our area so I didn’t go back in. The sting hurt a lot and took a few hours to go away, despite getting sprayed down with vinegar relatively soon after it happened (I was pretty far away from the base when I got stung).
We had a buffet lunch and went on a little trip in a semi-submersible so we could see more of the reef. We had a nice talk with Ken and Shirley, a couple we’d first met on our Taieri Gorge Railway trip and got some ice cream.
Back ashore, we cleaned up and relaxed then went to dinner on the Esplanade. My dinner at Barnacle Bill’s was so good i’m still fantasizing about it. We watched the fruit bats migrate out of town and got gelato.
by Graham Annable
“If a sloth falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
