In anywhere from eight to 12 weeks, I will be a mother to someone who is outside of my body. Time is starting to go fast now.
I got a surprise shower with my family at our annual girl's weekend. We better pray that Skeletor is definitely a girl because she got a lot of beautiful pink clothes. At worst Skeletor will be a cross-dresser for a few months. Men wear pink too, right? My cousin who had a baby girl a few years ago also gave me boxes of her old baby clothes, along with other baby things. It was really generous and Sean and I are very thankful for it.
I had to go for a non-stress test yesterday. It lived up to its name and was non-stressful. Just a belt with some sensors attached to my stomach to track the baby's heartbeat and movements. I need to get this test done once a week until the end of the pregnancy due to having elevated AFP levels (that's what made Skeletor's risk for spina bifida so high). It's more precautionary at this point I think, but better safe than sorry, especially when it is not an invasive or scary test.
So, we're still kicking, squirming and incubating around here.
Sourly eating sour cherry in a sour cherry tree, of course. Made with acrylic paint and cut up sweet wrappers on brown paper.
This is in the lobby of the NOAA. It uses ultrasonic vibrations to generate steam from water without heating it, then pumps it up into this large bowl which you can blow down into or run your hands through. It doesn't really serve any scientific purpose, really, but it's fun to play with.
The highlight of the tour for most of us was Science on a Globe. This a six-foot diameter sphere suspended from the ceiling, then four projectors use it as a spherical movie screen to project a globe onto it. This allows presenters to show any array of global information on the sphere, animated. The effect looks exactly what you would expect a hologram of the Earth to look like.
Topo maps.
The night side of the topo map shows the lights that are visible form human activity. Our presenter told us how to recognize the differen types of lights. White are electric lights - cities. Purple lights in the ocean (particularly near Japan) are fishing boats using lights to attract squid to the surface so they can turn them into calamari. Red lights are fires, usually big slash-and-burn operations. Blue lights are oil rig flares.
A view of the globe seeing the tops of the clouds color-coded to show the infrared spectrum. Also, the globe-like head of the kid in front of me apparently trying to simulate an eclipse as seen from beyond the dark side of the moon.
An animation showing the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
The next animation I have is a really cool one showing global warming from the 1870's (as based on ice core samples) and projected into the year 2200 (based on computer models), but the clip is bigger than the Vox limit of 50 megs. When I get back home I'll see if I can work it into a smaller file. All of the other videos I took were also over 50 megs. Hmmph!
After Science on a Sphere, the tour took us into a conference room where one of their employees demonstrated on a big screen the NOAA's experimental island in Second Life. It looked neat, but unfortunately my bandwidth at home just can't handle Second Life.
After leaving the NOAA, we went to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It was a much shorter tour and there wasn't nearly as much to see, but their building was neat, and they had a very basic science museum just inside the door.
The building was designed by architect I. M. Pei after visiting Mesa Verde National Park.
A view of the Flatirons Mountains from right outside the NCAR facilities.
Some door archways on the exterior of the NCAR facility. For comparison, here is a shot I took at Chaco Canyon National Historic Park:
Another view of the Flatirons.
Back inside the NCAR facility, a mural showing the different altitudes where various atmospheric phenomena exist. From this mural, I learned about a type of cloud that I hadn't heard of before: noctilucent clouds. They are much higher in the atmosphere that other cloud formations, and as such they can sometimes reflect light from the sun back down toward the night side of the planet, making them appear to glow. I wonder how many UFO sightings such clouds have caused. They're also interesting because scientists don't yet understand how clouds can form at such high altitudes or why we're seeing them in lower latitudes in the last couple of decades than we used to.
An early air sampler rocket, meant to take samples of air at high altitudes. This one was used at the White Sands Missile Range.
Finally, since we're going white water rafting Sunday and we forgot to pack hats to protect us from the sun, I bought a couple of floppy fishing hats at the NCAR gift store for Strix and me.
Yes, my face really is that round. Sad, huh?
It's time for lunch. More later!
The Fourth of July was always one of my favorite holidays in the US. Not that I'm terribly patriotic or anything, just...there are fireworks and BBQs and its an excuse to drink = HELLO PERFECT HOLIDAY.
Now, it of course means something else to me. It makes me miss home.
While I'll be having fun tonight celebrating Iain's birthday (it's tomorrow!) down by the Thames...there's a part of my heart that will be back home in my parents back yard, drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade and with a over excitable chihuahua at my feet. (Praying for crumbs.)
If I could fly back home today, even just for a couple hours and to see my parents and my sister, I would in a heart beat.
On the Fourth we'd always go to the same spot to watch fire works. My mom and my sister and I would lay on our backs and wait expectantly for the Sperm Fire Works.
If you don't know which ones I'm talking about, the you don't know what you're missing out.
They're the bright, white ones that look like tad-poles when they're first launched, but then go off in crazy directions...as if searching for a big, unfertilized egg in the sky.
It dawned on me a couple of years ago that they totally looked like gigantic sperm. I started laughing hysterically - only to notice that my sister was cackling to herself as well. Then my mom started laughing,
"OH MY GOD THEY LOOK LIKE SPERM!!!!"
Hopefully the Fourth of July Sperm Fireworks won't be nearly as fun without me this year...(If I can't have a fully complete Fourth of July THEN NOBODY SHOULD.)
Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans.
May this recession end soon, may the gas prices go down, and may all of your BBQ's be fully cooked so you don't end up with the shits all weekend.
This song reminds me of home...
Are you fucking KIDDING me?
After all my adventures last night, I get up this morning, and go out on the screen porch to enjoy my coffee. From the window well I hear an all too familiar dry leaf rustling sound. I look and over, yes, there's a teeny bun in the window well. Only I know it ain't my teeny bun, because he's still in the bathtub, enjoying his breakfast in bed:
Please meet Not-So-Teeny Bun. He's more like Teenage Bun and just as wily. Capturing him to remove from the window well was a bit more exciting, because he actually jumped in the window and ran around the basement.
Oy. Now I've got to figure out what to do with them, because if I just put them back outside, I envision having to fish them out of the window well every other day. Suggestions?
This lovely maiden was showing off her dainty ankle to me.
Taken at the Calaveras County Jousting Festival Sept 25, 2006.
In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.
In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.