Castillo de San Marcos

The Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida was built to protect and defend Spain's claims in the New World. It is now a national monument. This shows one of the walls inside the fort where you can see the beams for a ceiling showing through from an adjacent room. Construction began on this fort in 1672.

Reflections in the St. John River, Palatka, Florida

Slice of Lizard Back

Closer

I just wanted to show a closer look at this guy's eye. He is browner here, not having warmed up as much as the photo below. The colors were just amazing and they kept changing!

Lizard

This little guy was only about three inches long from his nose to the end of his broken tail. I found him hiding in a cold, dark corner in Corky's yard. He was plain brown until he sat in my warm hand for a while, and then all his colors came out. Isn't he good looking?
This is the first lizard I have ever seen "in the wild," let alone grabbed and held. Cool.

Florida

I just got back from a full week in Florida. What a wonderful time to escape Wisconsin, as our temperatures plunged to a depth affording the cancellation of school for two days in a row. Turns out Florida was entering its own cold snap. Whenever I think of flying, I can't help but start singing Alanis Morrisette's Ironic in my head, about the guy who waits all of his life to get on an airplane because he's afraid to fly, and, sure enough, his plane goes down. Well, my plane got there just fine (another one went down in the Hudson River on the same morning), but the weather sure sucked for a mid-winter trip intended to escape a cold clime. Thankfully, I had delightful company the entire time I was there, staying with a friend I met online. No lie. I flew down and stayed with strangers, at least real strangers, not virtual ones.
Corky and her husband Allan were very generous hosts, despite the fact that Allan is dying of cancer and Corky herself in remission. They instantly made me a part of the family, a large family which includes the two of them and their SIX miniature schnauzers: Bonnie, Sassy, Skeeter, Skippy, Libby and Zubee. My Lexie is in a "relationship" with their Zubee, which is partly how we met. See the profile from Dogster.com to the right of this page.
But it was a great time, the weather notwithstanding, and I am very glad I had the opportunity to visit with these new friends. We ate wonderful food, watched movies, played with the dogs, went shopping and sightseeing and even did a few geocaches. I loved it. I will be posting an assortment of photos as time allows, seeing as classes are again in session and I am already heaped with homework.
I shouldn't complain about having too much studying to do. It's so damn cold outside that I'm sitting tight and reading all day long anyway!

"If They Can Do It, What's Our Excuse?"

Domes Today

The Mitchell Park Conservatory, aka The Domes, has recently remodeled its lobby and today was the first time I went after the reopening. It was very crowded, so I left my tripod in the car and most of my lenses. I always regret that, but it was so crowded that I would have just gotten frustrated.

I will return on a "workday" and use the tripod next time.

Sibling Love, Two Perspectives, Part 1

Here are my good friend G's two kittens, cuddling on the couch.

Sibling Love, Two Perspectives, Part 2

Here are my two mini Schnauzers, "cuddling" on our bed.

The Pipe That Ate Our Van

This is the unassuming pipe that completely destroyed our 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan one dark and rainy night this past month. You can see that the surrounding pavement in this photo is about half-way filled in, but it wasn't that fateful night. The pipe is located just north of the intersection of 84th and Meinecke, on 84th street. There were cones and sawhorses set up to direct traffic around things such as this, but someone had moved the cone that should have been covering this pipe. Instead, the configuration of cones directed motorists right over the pipe. The road had been taken down to the gravel so this pipe stood up quite a bit, enough to rip the front cradle to bits, break the front axel and mess up the transmission, rendering the van a complete loss. Thankfully, the contractor working on this road for the city of Wauwatosa claimed full liability without a fight. We just bought a 2004 Toyota Sienna with the help of the contractor's insurance proceeds. Funny, the pipe looks completely unharmed!

Satan or Science?

My 16-year old has a friend named James who is quite intelligent and charming (yes, James, I am talking about you) and he told us a story of Halloween at his house this past weekend. He said that some Jehovah's Witnesses came by during the trick-or-treat period and criticized his jack-o-lanterns, saying that they were symbols of Satan.

James replied that no, actually they were carved pumpkins into which he had poured liquid paraffin and copper sulfate and then set on fire to produce a green flame and charred interior. He got all excited and asked them to wait so he could go get his supplies and show them.

He returned (they had politely waited) and took a small packet of copper sulfate and dropped it into a hollowed out pumpkin, poured the lantern oil/paraffin over it and then struck a match and dropped it in - Pouuuuf! It flamed up green and remained lit, like a torch.

"See? That's not Satan. It's science."

What Is It?

Time to play "What Is It?" again. I did filter it a bit, but not very much. This was in my house.

Guess I'm Just Naive

My 9-year-old son came home from school one day this week and began discussing politics. He asked me who I was going to vote for in the election next week. I told him and then he told me that at school that day his friend Seth (not his real name) said he did not want a black guy to be president. My son asked him why, and Seth replied that he didn't like black people.

My son then asked Seth if he was a racist. "What's a racist?" Seth asked.
"A racist is someone who doesn't like people of other races or colors," my son said.
"Oh. Yeah, I'm a racist," Seth replied, as if it were just another way to talk about yourself. Why yes, now that I know what a numismatist is, I do enjoy coin collecting!

My son went on to explain that this was not a good thing and asked Seth why he was a racist. Seth told my son, matter-of-factly, that he just did not like black people. Gibby and I had a conversation about this and he knew already that it wasn't right. What was worse to me was that I know kids his age really are still expressing the views of their parents, so Seth's parents are almost surely feeding this attitude to their children. It just blew my mind.

Race is not an issue for me in this election, but maybe it should be. If electing a black president does anything positive to change the opinions of people like this, it can only be a good thing. Then again, the darker color of our president's skin would probably precede anything good Obama might do in office in the mind of a racist. Such is the preset lens of racism.

Famine . . . Then Feast

So I ignore this blog for a long while and then suddenly want to post a whole slew of things - go figure. This is a photo of my oldest daughter's wrists covered in bracelets made out of colorful plastic beads. She held still, but I moved the camera (on purpose) to get this effect.

Blue Jean Mural

This painting is done on several pairs of blue jeans and it hangs in Cafe Lulu in Bayview on KK. I would give credit to the artist, but I don't know who did it. Anyone know? There are a few of them like this hanging in there. Great cafe, by the way, right next to Broad Vocabulary.

Lake Michigan

A few views of the lakeshore last week when my daughter was running in a race down there. She came in third, by the way - woohoo!

Sorry for Talking Politics

I am very uncomfortable talking about politics. I HATE it when a Christian friend comes up to me and starts talking to me about how this economy is all Clinton's fault and how of course he or she is voting for McCain because he is "pro-life."

After I commented on how fellow Christians so often just assume you are going to vote for the Republican candidate because they espouse pro-life views, a good friend responded, "Who would make such an assumption??!! Until we can find a "pro-life" candidate who is as protective of lives after birth as before, there's no assumption to be made." How refreshing, and she is also a Christian. There are plenty of good people on both sides of the political debate, just please, please, please don't assume that Jesus would vote Republican.

http://tinyurl.com/45u4h9

New Stuff

This is a garbage bin on the street in Seattle, seen from behind a chainlink fence with blue slats.

I took this photo while on a field trip with my daughter's class at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This is part of the Petroleum Planet exhibit and features multicolored tubes of bubbling crude oil, which is going down in price, by the way. I bought gasoline at $2.99/gal. today. Never thought I'd get excited about getting gasoline for three dollars a gallon!

Bad News . . . Good News! . . . Bad News?

I had a strange day, emotionally. I heard of this really tragic accident involving a child. It was just awful and I felt sick when I heard about it. But the story has a twist. The child in this story was described to me as a three-year old Ethiopian boy. A very good friend of mine just recently adopted a three-year old Ethiopian boy. How many of those are in the area? Then I really got sick. I called my good friend immediately, but could not get a hold of her. It wasn't until hours later that she called me back and I found out that her children were fine. I was SO relieved. Then shortly afterwards, like a couple seconds later, I felt bad again just knowing that this horrible thing had happened to some family and I was relieved it didn't happen to MY friend's family, yet whoever this happened to was certainly suffering in ways that most people cannot even begin to imagine. I won't go into what happened to this child, but it was so awful in so many ways. Now I am praying that this unknown family can get through this somehow.