This weekend we had our first friend come to visit. Shaoshu took a red eye to spend a three day weekend with us. We knew this was a lot of pressure- if Shaoshu had a good time, he would come back, but also tell our other friends that they should come too. We went shopping in the Strip District and to the East End Brewery to get supplies for hotpot. We went to the museum, we saw Pittsburgh Light Up, Point State Park and the Zoo (baby tiger!!). We even got to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving! It was a short, full, fun weekend. Shaoshu left just before I got sick too. I'll be spending the rest of the week sucking cough drops and Advil.
An album from the weekend is posted here, for your viewing pleasure.
Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Pittsburgh turns 250!
It's true, 250 years old! The city has been celebrating on all fronts all year long, with robots galleries, and concerts. This weekend, we celebrated with the city's biggest ever fireworks display. For a city that shoots off fireworks regularly after baseball games (for the Pirates no less), you can imagine this was a big to-do. We took some hot cocoa and friends to a hill overlooking downtown in the park and watched fireworks launched from boats, bridges and buildings for almost 45 minutes! It was a great display, and we didn't get caught in traffic, since we walked.
We also swung by the zoo to check on the TWO baby elephants. For 300-lb tubbos, they are cute as can be. One of the little ones seems to be teething, she was rubbing her lips on the bars of her enclosure, and also had hand in the shovel incident. Matt and I went to the zoo just to see these guys, so we were hanging out while a care-taker came to muck the stall. When he took the wheelbarrow away, he left a shovel, which the elephants promptly disassembled to its component parts, and each had a bit to chew on. The little one got the plasticy end, her mom had the whole handle- which she chewed like a toothpick- and their roommate kicked around the metal part until the zoo-keeper came back. He walked into a room of guilty looking elephants and took away all their toys. He was smirking.
We also swung by the zoo to check on the TWO baby elephants. For 300-lb tubbos, they are cute as can be. One of the little ones seems to be teething, she was rubbing her lips on the bars of her enclosure, and also had hand in the shovel incident. Matt and I went to the zoo just to see these guys, so we were hanging out while a care-taker came to muck the stall. When he took the wheelbarrow away, he left a shovel, which the elephants promptly disassembled to its component parts, and each had a bit to chew on. The little one got the plasticy end, her mom had the whole handle- which she chewed like a toothpick- and their roommate kicked around the metal part until the zoo-keeper came back. He walked into a room of guilty looking elephants and took away all their toys. He was smirking.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Nine inch Bear Claw Nails
This weekend, Jess and I took a trip out to Houston, TX to see Nine Inch Nails (NIN) in concert. We left on Saturday afternoon after Jess had an evaluation for Roller Derby. They do a couple of those and everyone who makes it to the end of the training season and passes gets brought into the league. Woot.
Right after the eval, we hopped into the car and drove to Houston. It's a 3 hour drive, and we stopped on the way to have some dinner and then again to check into our el-cheap-o hotel. The concert was going to be late, and we didn't want to be driving home until 3 in the morning.
We had floor tickets, which meant we got to get down in the middle of the stadium with a whole bunch of others. We also got really close to the front, which was nice. Lucky for us, NIN has been around long enough that the mean age of the concert-going-crowd had gotten out of high school, and that meant that, all in all, it was a pretty civilized concert. I got bumped a couple of times due to proximity, but for the most part people just stood around and listened to/watched one heck of a good performance. There was some amazing stagecraft, including huge interactive light screens. My favorite part was when the drummer came out and started touching a bunch of squares on the back display. It turned out it was actually a massive, interactive drum machine, and he built up the drum loops for one of the last songs. It was a pretty long concert, lots of great songs, and a really good vibe. Jess, of course, was totally enamored by Trent (lead singer, composer, and all-around musical guy.) I gotta admit, the man looks good in a black t-shirt.
After the concert, we went back to the hotel and slept. We got up in the morning but, since we were in Houston anyway, we decided to try and check out the Zoo. It was a bit of a trail to find the darn place, but perseverance paid off and we tracked it down. I'm really glad we did, it was pretty spectacular. Most of the animals were awake and being interesting, so we got to see a lot of neat animals. My favorites included the primate exhibit, which held a bunch of small primates with bat-like faces. Cute, but I can just imagine people 1000 years ago assuming they were demons.
Other highlights: a family of giraffes. I only came up to their legs. The african elephants were awake, and the mommy and the baby were rolling around in mud to keep cool. Then they got their daily bath. They had been trained to lift up a leg on command so that the zookeepers could get all over with the hose. There was one small-cat exhibit with a wildcat about twice the size of a house cat that woke up while we were watching. He was very cat-like, he even did the 'wake-up-and-stretch-out-with-clawing' thing that our cats do, except that when he did it, he dug some pretty impressive furrows in a log. There was a petting zoo with some goats that were so fat they were nearly spherical. We got to see a nautilus, too, a crazy, deep-water crustacean that propels itself with a jet of water and always swims backwards. There was a family of orangutan in one of the displays, too. The mom and dad were busy being lazy, but the kid was playing around with a empty, plastic, tidy-cat bucket of litter. He would jump up on it and then fall off, or crawl around inside. It was all very entertaining until dad got annoyed and started coming after Jr. Mom rushed to his defense. Crazy but amazing.
After that, we had some diner, drove home, and wrote this. Coming around, full circle.
-N
Right after the eval, we hopped into the car and drove to Houston. It's a 3 hour drive, and we stopped on the way to have some dinner and then again to check into our el-cheap-o hotel. The concert was going to be late, and we didn't want to be driving home until 3 in the morning.
We had floor tickets, which meant we got to get down in the middle of the stadium with a whole bunch of others. We also got really close to the front, which was nice. Lucky for us, NIN has been around long enough that the mean age of the concert-going-crowd had gotten out of high school, and that meant that, all in all, it was a pretty civilized concert. I got bumped a couple of times due to proximity, but for the most part people just stood around and listened to/watched one heck of a good performance. There was some amazing stagecraft, including huge interactive light screens. My favorite part was when the drummer came out and started touching a bunch of squares on the back display. It turned out it was actually a massive, interactive drum machine, and he built up the drum loops for one of the last songs. It was a pretty long concert, lots of great songs, and a really good vibe. Jess, of course, was totally enamored by Trent (lead singer, composer, and all-around musical guy.) I gotta admit, the man looks good in a black t-shirt.
After the concert, we went back to the hotel and slept. We got up in the morning but, since we were in Houston anyway, we decided to try and check out the Zoo. It was a bit of a trail to find the darn place, but perseverance paid off and we tracked it down. I'm really glad we did, it was pretty spectacular. Most of the animals were awake and being interesting, so we got to see a lot of neat animals. My favorites included the primate exhibit, which held a bunch of small primates with bat-like faces. Cute, but I can just imagine people 1000 years ago assuming they were demons.
Other highlights: a family of giraffes. I only came up to their legs. The african elephants were awake, and the mommy and the baby were rolling around in mud to keep cool. Then they got their daily bath. They had been trained to lift up a leg on command so that the zookeepers could get all over with the hose. There was one small-cat exhibit with a wildcat about twice the size of a house cat that woke up while we were watching. He was very cat-like, he even did the 'wake-up-and-stretch-out-with-clawing' thing that our cats do, except that when he did it, he dug some pretty impressive furrows in a log. There was a petting zoo with some goats that were so fat they were nearly spherical. We got to see a nautilus, too, a crazy, deep-water crustacean that propels itself with a jet of water and always swims backwards. There was a family of orangutan in one of the displays, too. The mom and dad were busy being lazy, but the kid was playing around with a empty, plastic, tidy-cat bucket of litter. He would jump up on it and then fall off, or crawl around inside. It was all very entertaining until dad got annoyed and started coming after Jr. Mom rushed to his defense. Crazy but amazing.
After that, we had some diner, drove home, and wrote this. Coming around, full circle.
-N
Sunday, July 13, 2008
No news - more rumors
The update on Matt's new "career opportunities" is still up in the air. It is starting to sound like they want to upgrade his responsibilities by two full positions, but keep him on the same pay scale. If they were going to just make him do the job that needs to be filled (that he doesn't want), there should be a significant monetary increase. The real story may be some broader redistribution of a lot of people's responsibilities for a short period of time. Either way, his immediate supervisor asked him to work through a few things before the end of next week since he "probably won't be available to after that." At least this sounds like it should all sort out soon- I'll keep you up to date.
Otherwise, we didn't join a roller derby league, but we did visit the zoo again (no glimpse of the baby elephant!) and eat sushi this weekend. Also, my former mentor (and previous tenant in our current house) came over to visit Friday night and visit the neighbors, which was a lot of food and fun.
This week: Gear up for the DNA Tumor Virus Meeting in Madison. I'm leaving the day after my birthday- I think my siblings will have to cover the blogage while I am gone!
Otherwise, we didn't join a roller derby league, but we did visit the zoo again (no glimpse of the baby elephant!) and eat sushi this weekend. Also, my former mentor (and previous tenant in our current house) came over to visit Friday night and visit the neighbors, which was a lot of food and fun.
This week: Gear up for the DNA Tumor Virus Meeting in Madison. I'm leaving the day after my birthday- I think my siblings will have to cover the blogage while I am gone!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Visiting the Zoo
Yesterday, in our continued effort to enjoy our time not at work, we went to the zoo with one of my labmates. This turned out to be an even better idea than just going to the zoo- Sarah did horticultural stuff there a few summers back, and has been in most all the habitats and know all kinds of secrets about the facility. Like, that the elephants are exercised before the zoo opens by walking around the whole park. In single file, holding their tails with their trunks. How Cool! And that all the monkeys have hidden habitats under the viewing area, and that the gorillas actually have the best one, its like a jungle gym. Oh, and that only one of the gorillas will go outdoors when it snows, and he makes snowballs and brings them inside to pelt other gorillas with. I've got to go back to see that!
We mostly went to check on the elephants. There are TWO pregnant elephants right now, both at around 22 mo pregnant, which is about as pregnant as an elephant is supposed to get. They are due anyday now. While we missed out on baby elephants, we did get to pet a kangaroo (very soft, surprisingly), and see the polarbears swimming from below. SO COOL!
We also watched Get Smart, which made me laugh a LOT. We are pretty much having a great weekend. I'll update soon about my pottery class- stay tuned for 10 weeks of messy comedy.
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