Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Concrete turtle on the front porch.

Another piece of art!

Back in January Jerry and I went on an expedition to jump start the economy by buying art with the money Mom sent us from Jack's estate. We ran out of room in the car before we ran out of money to spend.

One of the galleries we went through had some pieces by the glass artist Scott Amrhein. They were somewhat large and would have been a task to place even by such an expert arranger as Jerry. Besides, as I said, we had filled the car with other pieces so we had to leave them behind.

There is a gallery in La Jolla that carries Mr. Amrhein's work. Yesterday we went shopping in La Jolla. We came home with a piece whose scale fits our house.

Here are some pictures of it. I took several with different exposures. I couldn't figure out which to show you so here are three. You have to decide with shows it off best.

This picture was taken without a flash and was somewhat underexposed (thus the graininess). I tweaked it just a bit to increase its exposure.

This one is without a flash but was a bit overexposed.

And one with a flash. It brings out some of the colors that we probably won't see with normal lighting.

Glass is such a pretty material, especially in the hands of a great artist.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

An inscribed and painted soapstone egg with turtles.

Also shown is a painting of a scarab brought back by Mom and Dad from an Elderhostel trip to Egypt. Well, it looks a bit like a turtle (with six legs)!

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A hose guide near the front walk.

Peeps in Space!

One of our most-used appliances is our FoodSaver Vacuum Sealing System. We store food in the bags that it sucks the air out of then seals. Most things keep longer when they don't have air around them. The FoodSaver came with some canisters that you use when the food shouldn't be crushed (salad, for instance).

For entertainment, you can put marshmallows in a canister and suck the air out. The marshmallows are full of air that expands when the air around them goes away. The marshmallows grow quite a bit. If you leave the marshmallows in the vacuum they eventually lose much of the air to that made them grow and they shrink back to their original size. Then when you let the air back into the canister, the air pressure smooshes the marshmallows into tiny lumps.

I recently was pointed to Peep Research from an old article in the New York Times. In addition to studying such things as the effects of smoking and alcohol on Peeps and their solubility (well, lack of) in sulfuric acid, they studied Peeps in low-pressure environments.

With my FoodSaver I have the ability to subject Peeps to a low-pressure environment. So I did. Here's a short film of Peeps in Space!



Happy Easter.

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A little update: I have Google send me alerts when news articles or blog posts appear that contain interesting keywords (for example, my last name). Apparently some people are notified of blog posts that contain the word "peeps." I got a nice note asking me to link to Marshmallow Peeps on the Internet - A Study. If you're interested in Peeps, this looks like a valuable resource.

Now I'm officially rated XXX!

Last year, I posted a story on the 30th anniversary of the beginning of my post-college career. In the middle of the story I told of the time I was working for BEA Systems. After I was laid off from BEA I went back to NCR. My service clock with NCR was restarted where it was when I was sold to BEA. When NCR spun Teradata off to be its own company, our years of service with NCR/AT&T/NCR went with us.

Today is the effective 30th anniversary of my starting work at Teradata! I'll get a new lapel pin with 30 (in Roman numerals, just like the Super Bowl!) on it!

I've never had the opportunity to wear any of my V, X, XV, XX or XXV lapel pins. I get another trinket to put in my souvenirs box.

Butterfly Amaryllis (again)

Our visitors missed seeing this year's Butterfly Amaryllis blossoms by just a few days. This opened up today.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Solar powered light. We got this at an arts-n-crafts fair.

A Day at the Wild Animal Park

On Tuesday, we went to the Wild Animal Park. They've replaced the monorail ride around the big, open spaces with The Journey Into Africa, an open-sided, soft-wheeled tour vehicle. That's where we headed to first.

Mei wanted to sit in the front row of the first car but there was a sign saying it was reserved for wheelchairs. So we went back towards the second car. As we were looking for a place to sit we heard somebody call "Charles!" It was our friend, Lou. You remember Lou, don't you? She goes to a lot of the cultural events Jerry and I see at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and now the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts to movie theaters. She's the one Mom had sent the artwork from all the return address labels that charities send her. So Mom and Lou got to meet each other. Wasn't that nice?

We then went to see the baby elephant that was born 18 days earlier.

We first went to the main pen outside the elephant barn. Here we watched an elephant retrieve some tidbit just outside of its pen.



The new baby wasn't there so we kept going. We found it in the small pen to the side of their barn.

We then went to Lorikeet Landing where we fed the beautiful birds.

Of course, there was the Petting Kraal.
There was a baby rhino in a pen in the Petting Kraal (over Xin's left shoulder) but we couldn't pet it. My camera can't take pictures through mesh fences so you'll have to take my word for it...baby rhinos are cute.

We saw meerkats. We had an overpriced lunch.

We had fun.

A day at the beach

On April 1st, we went to the beach for a little fun. The temperature was probably in the mid-60s. The water temperature was around 56 degrees. Brrrrrrr.

Here's a little home movie torture that you can subject yourself to. Mei and Xin start out a little hesitatingly but quickly warm up to the idea of playing in the ocean.



After this, we went to El Indio for lunch.

We went back to the beach the next day because this was so much fun!