Some of the awesome girls in my class back in the first week of our first year of grad school… awwww we were so young!
Helllloooo everyone! I finished my committee meeting yesterday so I am back! I think it went pretty well. I analyzed a lot of data and didn’t sleep pretty much for the past two weeks so that I could put all of what I know about my protein in my presentation for my committee members. They were helpful in telling me what they think I should focus on that will tell the best story (i.e. so that I can write a paper/my thesis) so that I can graduate within the year. Yeesh… It’s going to be an epic year. That’s all I can say about that…
Anyway, for now I am happy to be back in a world where I don’t have to analyze data and think about my project every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment. I have a lot of stuff to catch you up on but first, I want to talk about my two friends E and L who are both defending their PhD theses today! Congratulations you guys! You worked so hard and by the end of today you will be doctors!
And now a little back story. First, L is my first friend here in the state of CO. I met a lot of the people in my class all at the same time (recruitment weekend) but I actually met L at the University of Washington’s recruitment weekend two weeks earlier. The next weekend, she went to go check out a school in Canada while I checked out UC Davis and then we reconvened after that here at CU chemistry program’s recruitment weekend. I am so glad we both decided to come here. It has been an honor getting to know you L and I hope we keep in touch about what’s next for you!
Potassium and L (second from the right) with two other girls they met at the University of Washington recruitment weekend. I wonder where those two other girls ended up going to graduate school…
Now E! E is an organic chemist in my year but we decided early on that she is an honorary biochemist because we pretty much were inseparable our first year. E, I will never forget our horrible decision to go to Wendy’s and get milkshakes right before an indoor soccer game. It was worth it because we had to get caught up on everything but man… that was an interesting soccer game. Also E was my first photo buddy here in town because we got our DSLRs right about the same time. It was so much fun running around Boulder county learning how to take pictures with you. Also, I think we all had a blast at your wedding! I know you are about to head to Portland soon to join your hubby and I wish you the best of luck! Keep in touch friend, I will really miss being neighbors! :)
Potassium and E, photo buddies…
That’s all for today everyone but stay tuned because I have engagement pictures for you (hopefully) next week! :D So what has been going on in your worlds lately?
Turns out it’s really hard to get a picture in which 10 people are simultaneously smiling…
Hooray! Wedding anniversary pictures finally!* :D So before you scroll down to see the rest, let me tell you a little bit about the party. It started out a little sketch because Cobalt and I were running around like crazy building things from IKEA and we lost track of time. When the first guests arrived, they got to go with Cobalt to the store to get party supplies and snacks while I made sure the house was in order. Then when more people showed up we headed to the park by our house with a bag full of props for the photo shoot! It turned out to be really fun as you can see below (in no apparent order)!
K and A bravely started us off…I think J is rethinking saying yes to K’s marriage proposal now that she knows that sometimes K has yoda hands…Cobalt and T being sneaky in masksA has requested the name Titanium on this blog now… Love it. Also she totally rocked this mask.I love that C and L seem skeptical about the parasol while K seems so happy about it.The happy couple?J’s turn with the claws…Titanium modeling the parasol, the mask, and the backdrop!
Then we went to the playground to play with the props. Cobalt is especially happy with the lens flare in this picture.
After the photos, we had a BBQ, played Cards Against Humanity, and giggled over all the awkward but hilarious things in that deck. I think it turned out to be a really fun time and thank you to all of you who came out and celebrated with us! We really enjoyed it! Cobalt and I are already coming up with new photoshoot ideas…
What do you think of the photos? Do you have a favorite? Also, what have you guys been up to lately? We’ve been getting a lot of rain (almost a proper monsoon season if you ask me!) lately. What has your weather been like? Are you ready for fall yet? I think that I was so annoyed with all that May and April snow that we got that I am still dreading fall and then the inevitable winter…
In other photo news, I took some engagement pictures for my friends M and J yesterday. Can’t wait to show you my favorites! :D
*Unfortunately my posting schedule is probably going to get a little weird for a while. My committee meeting is coming up soon. For those of you who don’t know, that’s where I meet with 5 faculty members and tell them everything I did this past year and how I plan to graduate in a year or less (freaking outexcited not sure how I feel about any of that). Anyway, I have a lot of work to do to prepare for it. Also Cobalt and I are just plain BUSY right now. Craziness…
Remember back in first year we didn’t know each other yet and we bonded over dinosaurs (and languages apparently…) during the TA training?
Welp, I am about to enter my 6th year of grad school which means that some of my lucky friends in my class are starting to defend their theses and then graduate! Since I’m probably going be talking more and more about defenses as we get more into the season, I thought I would take a minute to give you a run down about how grad school works in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry here at CU. So during our first year, we have this crazy schedule that involves classes, TAing (usually general chemistry or biochemistry), and trying to find a research group to join. We also have a written test about our knowledge of chemistry or biochemistry that we either took every first Saturday of each month until we passed a certain number of them (the Chemists did this) or that we took one epic day the August after our first year (We biochemists did this). Then our second year was full of finishing up our classes, doing research in our labs, and preparing for a scary oral exam where three professors spend two hours asking us about anything in chemistry and biochemistry to make sure we understand enough science to do our projects (the point is to see how you handle not knowing the answer so it’s a pretty awful two hours…). After that, the remaining years of grad school are full of science, going to conferences, (hopefully) writing papers about our findings, fighting with instruments not working/cells not growing/something breaking/procedures not going right after they worked perfectly every other time, making mistakes/figuring them out, etc until finally one day, it is time to write up everything we’ve done in a nice neat little package called a thesis, present our work to our faculty committee, our peers, and our families and then (after the presentation when everyone except our committee members leaves) defend our theses to gain the title of PhD. Whew… It’s a ride. And I’m not even done yet… but someone is…
This picture was taken when we were walking back from lunch one day and there was this crazy prop sale by the theater department…
The first of my friends in my class, P, defended his thesis today! Yayyyyy! P I am so proud of you! I remember back in our first year P and I used to do homework together and talk about graduating like it would happen at some point in the distant future. I also distinctly remember getting confused when I was teaching a lab and I ran downstairs to the lab P was teaching in so I could ask for his help. After our first year, we stayed friends and caught up over lunch almost every week. It was especially fun last year because we were both planning our respective weddings and so we could compare wedding planning notes in addition to catching up with why science infuriated/excited us that week. There was also much soccer and kite flying and other adventures. We even tried to take a kendo class together one semester at the school rec center but found that we both liked trying to stab each other/sword fighting with the shinais (kendo sticks) better. You made grad school more bearable and fun for me, friend and I’m really really going to miss you when you and P make your big move this fall but I am super excited for what happens next for you guys! Congrats friend! :D
Back on the dinosaur theme… this is us not paying attention in one of those TA meetings we had to attend after classes on Fridays during our first year…Also one time we went cross country skiing at night on the hill behind P’s house even though it was freakishly cold (3 degrees F?) outside…Even our stuffed animals (Scrarmpl and Munchers) were friends and got to go on adventures!
What are you guys up to this weekend? I think I am going to be sleeping. I know I say that a lot but seriously… this week was REALLY intense…
Today is a random assortment type of a post. Here we go:
Lately I’ve been:
Doing an Instagram photo challenge with my friends – some of my favorite entries are belowThis was day 3: 5pm
This was day 6: self portrait
Teaching high school students about DNA/heredity/genetics research. I got them excited about the concept by first having them extract DNA from strawberries using household supplies (dish soap, water, salt, and rubbing alcohol). The boys thought it was COOL and the girls thought it was GROSS but it got them asking questions.
This was also an Instagram Challenge pic. Luckily for me, the day of the DNA workshop was also day 4: food
Making delicious egg and bacon sandwiches in home made biscuits and pondering how to make Cobalt’s and my meals more healthy but also delicious while on a budget… Ideas?
Yummmmmmmmm
Running another glow in the dark 5K and actually running it this time (last time I was out of shape and it was so disorganized there was no way we could actually run anyway…)Potassium and A before the race with all their glowy stuff on
Potassium, A, and Cobalt being silly before the race…
Finally getting around to hanging the beautiful wall hanging Cobalt and I got as a (late) wedding present from a family friend
I am so mesmerized by the patterns on this quilt…. I could stare at it all day.
Getting excited about art and painting and the idea of art journals?
Finishing my challenge of reading 50 books this year (up to 53 now… guess I should go back to trying to tackle Crime and Punishment…)
Feeling super excited for all my friends who just got engaged or married recently!!!!!!!! So much love! Also, if any of my said engaged friends want some sweet engagement pictures, I happen to know someone who’s pretty good at that kind of stuff… her name’s Potassium… Seriously. Let me know! I would love to take some pictures for you!
This is the scene where something amazing happened! Let me tell you about it…
What do you do when someone seemingly out of the blue does something really nice for you? Are you like me and you spend the next few minuteshoursdays months going over the situation piece by piece and wondering what exactly you did that convinced that person that you were worth it? Do you just say Thank you and go about your day? Is it something in between? It’s always so amazing to me when something awesome happens to me and it makes me kind of sad that it surprises me…
Anyway, maybe I should go about telling you what happened and then we can revisit this topic afterwards.
So this particular instance happened in France (though another one just happened to me this week and it is currently consuming all my thoughts with amazed wonder about what I did to deserve it… :-/). To get to the instance, you need a little back story. So I have this friend F. I met her last year when she was doing her post doc here in Boulder but now she has a fancy industry job in her home country of France. A few weeks before I went to Paris, we got to talking about whether she would be around while I was there and it turned out she would only be around for my very first day. It turned out to be really awesome to hang out with her then because I was totally culture shocked/jetlagged/tired from talking about my project with my boss by the end of that first day. We met up at the institute where I was working and it was so great to see a familiar face (I guess besides my boss…). She took me on a mini walking tour of that area of Paris and then took me up the Montparnasse Tower, which is HUGE and has this crazy fast elevator that takes you to the top. At the top we got to pose for a cute picture (they green screened in Paris behind us) and now I am sad we didn’t buy it (even though they wanted a lot of money for it). ANYWAY. At the top of the tower, you can see ALL OF PARIS. It was a great thing to do on my first day because I could see everything I had only heard about or seen on maps previously. Sooooo cool!
I tried to take a panorama from the top of the tower! Look at that Eiffel Tower dwarfing all the other buildings around it!F and a jetlagged Potassium at the top of the tower with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
After we got down from the tower (elevators were not so fun going back down… there was much ear popping), we walked to a restaurant to get crêpes. They were kind of amazing. Like the best crêpes I had ever had. F told me that they are specific to the part of France called Bretagne (or Brittany for us English speakers) and she ordered their cider for me to try. It was AMAZING and totally ruined any cider I could ever have here… Anyway, it was a really great day and I am so happy I got to see F.
Fast forward to a week later when Cobalt arrived, I suggested we go to crêpes for dinner. We headed towards the Montparnasse tower and then I dragged Cobalt up and down a few streets trying to find the restaurant F and I had gone to. We got there and, after a brief awkward/hilarious incident of Cobalt and me being confused about whether people were standing outside in the rain because they wanted to or if they were waiting for a table, we were seated next to this other group of people (two men and a woman), who just got their food when Cobalt and I sat down. I oooo’d and awww’d over their crêpes and then ordered some cider for us (IN FRENCH… awww yeah… thanks F for telling me what kind to order!). Sometime after our food arrived, one of the guys turned to us and asked where we were from. I said Colorado and then Boulder so they asked if I knew about/went to the school here. I said yes I am a graduate student! They asked where I did my undergrad and I said University of Puget Sound, which not very many people have heard about but the guy was like “Oh yeah! We’re from Seattle! UPS is a great school!” The guy who asked me the first question went on to ask me what I was studying and I told them I was getting my PhD in biochemistry. He said he had an honorary PhD but that his wife had an actual PhD. She lamented that his honorary PhD diploma was bigger than her actual PhD diploma… Shucks… At this point Cobalt and I were curious about who these people were since they don’t just give anyone an honorary doctorate…
So let’s see… Seattle… famous enough to get an honorary doctorate…
Then they asked what Cobalt was up to and he said that he managed a coffee shop on campus. The guy smiled and said “Oh I know all about that… I used to be the president of Starbucks…” and then he and Cobalt had a nice discussion about selling coffee, working in the coffee industry, how Starbucks does in Europe (bad) compared to in Asia (great!), etc. Then we got off coffee and just talked about life in general. It was really neat! He and his wife (and it turns out the other guy was a cousin) have traveled all over the world and are planning on spending the next year exploring parts of the world for 3 months at a time. Cobalt and I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Then our check came and they took it and gave it to the waiter along with their check! The former president of Starbucks bought us dinner! And when we thanked him he said “I can tell you guys are going to do something amazing with your lives!” WOW!
Cobalt and I were kind of star struck about it afterwards and totally googled him when we got back to the flat. It was so cool to see this guy’s face pop up on my screen. :)
Okay so back to the main question. What do you do when that happens? How do you keep yourself from overanalyzing the situation and just be happy that it happened? Also, tell me something awesome like this that happened to you or that you wish would happen to you? Also, any comments about this very long winded post are greatly accepted. :D Any plans for the weekend? Cobalt and I have one: SLEEP. -_-
This pinecone and its friends are the reason why I have crazy allergies right now… but I still like this pic. :)
My apologies for the short post but this week is crazy for me. I’ve got to squish 5 days worth of labwork into 3 because then Cobalt and I are heading to see his family for his mom’s 60th bday! Yay! Happy birthday to my MIL!
In other news, this weekend was nice. Cobalt and I made ricotta pancakes on Saturday. They were fluffy and delicious. See the pic below for tastiness (yeah yeah… they look like “normal” pancakes but they are way fluffier and tastier than them). We also tended to our little garden (the plantys are getting so big!!!), invented our own version of lavender lemonade (yummmmm), and went out for some tasty Italian food on Saturday night with some friends.
Tasty pancake… why did we eat all of them?! :(These mixed peppers are probably ecstatic that it’s finally decided to be over 90 degrees here. The rest of us are not so sure we like it…
On Sunday, Cobalt and I, along with some other graduate students, took some of the students in the summer program I work for on a hike near Boulder. It is really fun to take people who don’t know the area at all on a hike because they are so excited to see everything – reminds what a cool place we live in. After the hike, we took our exhausted students out to lunch at The Buff, another staple of Boulder (hint: it was on Man Vs. Food). In the evening I went swimming with two of my friends from my grad program (we all started grad school together many many years ago… craziness) and we practiced some French. It was quite a lovely way to end the weekend.
Speaking of French, look forward to more France posts coming your way next week! Something you will definitely see next week: why Cobalt and I now have a fondness for Starbucks (hint: it’s not because of their coffee or any of their products)!
Did you guys have great weekends?! Tell me about them. I know some of my friends celebrated their 1 year wedding anniversaries.. Hooray! Congrats! Also, let me know if you’ve thought of anything you’re dying to know about France, or my current life in Boulder, whatever. Finally, don’t forget to wish my MIL a happy bday! :)
A and Potassium showing off our awesome t-shirts and glowy items pre Rave Run.
You guys… I am really tired. I have been working pretty much nonstop this week (seriously… two 12 hr days in a row) so this post might not be as awesome as I was originally intending it to be. We might have to revisit it later when I have more time!
Anyway, the Rave Run. Cobalt, A, J, K, another A, and I all ran/walked the Rave Run 5K in Denver last Saturday. We dressed up in everything glowing and then headed out to the race, which had a lot of lights and color and music but less than what we were expecting. It turned out to be more of a fast walk simply because there were so many people out that it was more or less impossible to run (especially at the finish line :-/) but it was still fun. And we got sweet t-shirts! I have to say though that doing a 5K less than a week after the Boston Marathon tragedy really fell heavy on my heart. My thoughts were pretty much constantly with everyone involved in Boston even as I was bobbing up and down to the beat. A lot of people had signs honoring those fallen during the Boston Marathon, which I thought was really nice!
In other news, doing a 5K at night surrounded by music, lights, and tons of people all glowing the dark turns out to be a great way to make me want to run (we kept weaving between people so we could actually run). I am so excited that I might go ahead and sign up for the Firefly Run 5K coming up in July!
Potassium and Cobalt just after the finish line! We did it (and I acquired glowy ears between the first picture and this one)! :D
In other other news, Cobalt and I have been reading The Great Gatsby together in preparation for the movie coming out soon. We started reading books together when he still lived in New Mexico and I lived here in Colorado because it was something cute we could do together since we couldn’t be together. Once, when we were reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I got so annoyed with the book that I couldn’t read it anymore. Cobalt recorded himself reading a few chapters and sent them to me to keep me reading. It was adorable and I grudgingly finished the book, just for him.
In other Cobalt and Potassium news, here’s today’s hint for what we’ve been planning: it has to do with a part of our proposed ideal honeymoon. Can’t remember? I think it’s somewhere in one of my many Wedding Wednesday posts if you want to go hunting for it… or you can just wait till next week and I’ll tell you. :D
Now it’s your turn. What do you think of doing a 5K? What do you think of Cobalt’s and my reading books to each other? Any fun plans for the weekend? Seriously, you guys have been pretty quiet. What’s going on with you all? Something exciting I hope…
Potassium, A, and C on their respective horses (Misty, Max, and Andy) after a lovely morning of horseback riding…
Even though it’s been crazy snowy during the weeks here (apparently we’ve gotten over 35 inches of snow over the month of April), it’s been absolutely beautiful and warm on the weekends (Colorado is weird…). A few weekends ago, A and I went to our friend C’s family’s ranch, called the Fifth Element Ranch, to ride horses! They have four horses on the ranch that C’s mom (T) uses for horse therapy workshops during the week but this weekend was all about fun. C, T, A, and I all got to ride together. Seeing as I was the least experienced in horseback riding (I have ridden horses a few times but they were all a long time ago…), I got to ride their mare Misty. I was really nervous at first but T was awesome at teaching me how to work with and interact with Misty. After Misty realized she was going to have to listen to what I wanted us to do we got along pretty well. It turned out to be a really fun day and the weather was awesome! I can’t wait to go back and ride more!
Some more pictures (Thanks to T for the photos!)…
Potassium and A explore the ranch…Potassium and Misty
In the evening, A and I headed to our friend J’s house to have art night with J and our other friend L. It tured out to be a fine ending to a neat day. First we had pizza for dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and doing art. J, A, and I painted while L went through fashion magazines for a project she’s been intent on starting. At one point, L found all of our horoscopes in Italian and cut them out for us! I decided to incorporate mine into my painting and I think it looks pretty neat. Check it out below!
Materials used in this painting: Japanese paintbrush and ink, acrylics, and magazine cuttings. I wasn’t really sure where it was going at the beginning but I actually really like the way it turned out…
So I have to admit that I am kind of stalling about telling you guys about something super exciting that Cobalt and I have been planning recently. Partially it’s because I want to talk about the fun that happened on these past few weekends first and part of it is that it’s hard for me to believe that it’s actually happening. So I’m going to end today’s and Thursday’s posts this week with little hints and then we’ll get to the excitingness NEXT WEEK.
Today’s hint: It partially has to do with my work (and no I’m not graduating… but this could possibly help me graduate sooner than later…).
Now it’s your turn. Is there anything about your work that you’re excited about right now? What do you think of horseback riding? Awesome? Scary? Finally, is it spring there yet? I’m so sick of snow. I have been telling myself that it will lead to a beautiful summer but I am getting really impatient for that summer!
Hello and welcome to my last post about our Dallas trip. I’m warning you, this is going to be a long post (and very pic heavy) but hang in there! I think it’s a pretty awesome story! :)
All right so where to start. On Tuesday we left off at the aquarium. From there, we headed to this amazing deli called eatZi’s for lunch. It was amazing! It is like a bakery, deli, and wine market all in one place. It was pretty much the place to go for lunch – they had prewrapped foods like sushi, sandwiches, and salads; they had a sandwich and salad counter where you could request the ingredients and they’d make it in front of you; they had a bread counter and a deli counter; and on and on and on… I was so happy in there. I think I would probably go there every week if I lived in Dallas. We each got epic sandwiches (mmm prosciutto…) and other things to share before heading to Klyde Warren Park, which is a park over a freeway, to eat our lunch. It was a fantastic day outside and everyone was out enjoying the sun. After lunch, Jem and I took our cameras for a walk through the park to work on some street photography. Here’s a pic of us in action…
After Kylde Warren Park, Jem and I wandered around the nearby neighborhood and I decided to play with my zoom lens a little. That’s where that crazy picture of Cobalt comes from. How this works – I set the shutter speed to pretty slow (tenths of a second instead of hundredths of a second) and then as I was taking the picture, I would zoom the zoom lens out or back in, creating this awesome blur effect. I think it looked particularly cool with people and cars so that’s what I’m showing you today…
My first attempt at playing with the zoom lens:
Jem taking a picture of me.
I like this picture a lot.
They turned out pretty cool, don’t you think? I think my favorite is the one of Cobalt up there. He decided that it will be the album art for any music he ever puts out… Wahahaha…
After street photography, Jem and I dropped our cameras off at her house and then Cobalt, A, Jem, and I headed out of Dallas to see the town that Cobalt grew up in (before his family moved to New Mexico)! It was so cool seeing Cobalt’s old house in his old neighborhood. We also got to drive past his old elementary school and church. It was neat. After taking Cobalt down memory lane, we stopped at Krispy Kreme donuts before heading back to Dallas.
Jem, A, and Potassium being odd
Back in Dallas, Jem took us to see her work. It was exciting. I met Jem because we used to work in the same lab together back when she was a graduate student. But now she’s all fancy with her PhD and works in a new lab in Dallas. I always like seeing other people’s labs just because it’s so interesting to me how the same basic procedures get done in different labs (sometimes they are surprisingly different…).
We continued our tour of Dallas by heading to Deep Ellum to see The Traveling Man, a series of three robot sculptures that pop up kind of out of nowhere by this train track. They are super neat so here come a bunch of pictures… Ready?!
Each robot sculpture is surrounded by these little adorable bird sculptures…
Of course Cobalt wanted a picture of him riding one.
This one, called Waiting on a Train, was my favorite.
Jem and I were both sad that we’d left our big cameras at her house and had to resort to our iPhones for pictures. I immediately downloaded a fisheye app for mine because I thought the robots would look neat with a fisheye lens (don’t happen to own that for the DSLR anyway…).
Cobalt and I got photobombed by this Waiting on a Train guy… It was awkward… :-/
This is the second sculpture, called Walking Tall (We kind of saw these out of order, I think Walking Tall is technically the last sculpture in the series) through the fisheye iPhone lens… I love how it turned out. Also, notice that in addition to the bird sculpture the robot is holding, there’s a real bird perched on his shoulder…
Here’s me and the Walking Tall robot as viewed on this bird’s head. I tried to make it look like he was holding my hand. Weren’t the clouds amazing that afternoon?
Another angle of the Walking Tall robot… I like this pic a lot too.
Finally, the last sculpture (but I think technically the first sculpture) is called Awakening. Also, notice that cool art on the wall behind the robot.
The Traveling Man is a really cool and inspiring series of sculptures. They are really close to each other too so I highly recommend that you check them out if you live in the area or ever choose to visit. Next time we visit Jem, I am definitely going to go back to visit my robot friends.
At this point, everyone was getting a little grumpy because the donut high was wearing off and we all realized how hungry we were. So we headed to The Alligator Cafe for some cajun/creole food. Holy crap, this food was amazing. Everything that we got we loved. I had been craving fried catfish the whole time we were there so I got the Catfish Ponchartrain which was seriously soooo good that I am drooling right now just thinking about it. Yum. Highly recommend this place too!
AFTER DINNER (I know what you’re thinking… there’s more?! Seriously, I told you Day 4 was a long day… remember that on top of all this stuff we went to the aquarium too… don’t worry… we’re almost done.), we met up with some of Jem’s friends at a bar called The Ginger Man. It was nice to meet Jem’s friends and see a little bit of Dallas at night. Hurrah. Also, A and I decided to play around with the fisheye app on my phone and we got this gem of her…
In the morning we got up early and A, Cobalt, and I loaded up the car before driving allllllll the way back to CO. It was kind of a sad drive because we all really enjoyed our trip to Dallas and then we had to go home! Things got epically boring in Kansas and we brought out the license plate game to keep entertained. Turns out that a lot of people from all over the country drive through Kansas!
Okay folks, it’s time to end this epic post about our epic trip to Dallas. I hope you all enjoyed reading it. And now it’s your turn… What was your favorite part of our trip? Is there anything you wished you could have heard more about? What are you doing this weekend? Something fun I hope? Tell me! Jem is actually coming to Boulder this weekend to visit (yay!!!) and Cobalt, A, our friends J, K, another A, and I are all running in a 5K called the Rave Run. I am normally super grumpy about running (I just hate hearing my inability to breathe while running so I only like it when it is connected to soccer or some other sport…) but the Rave Run seems right up my alley. It’s at night so there are going to be flashing lights and colors and music and glowy things… I will probably just dance the whole way through… :)
Helllloooooo and welcome to today’s post on the last day of our trip in Dallas. We’re going to wrap up this series this week I think because there is a lot of exciting stuff going on right now that I want to talk about! So today will be about the Dallas aquarium and then later this week (Thursday or Friday) we’ll wrap up Day 4. Be warned, the entries this week will be picture heavy…
So let’s start at the top of Day 4. Cobalt, Jem, A, and I got up early because there was so much stuff that we wanted to get done! To start the day off, we headed to the Dallas World Aquarium because they feed the sharks at 11:30 am! Jem and I brought our cameras along and we had fun photographing all the aquatic animals!
So let’s take a look, shall we?
We got to the aquarium right after it opened so we got to witness the sloth being brought out to its tree. It immediately started climbing to its favorite spot which made for a pretty cool picture… :) PS – When you see a sloth do you think about Kristen Bell freaking out or is that just something I do?
I don’t think we had any pictures of monkeys from the zoo so let’s remedy that right now! Aquarium monkeys!
I like this one – the manatee swimming out of the shadows and crazy catfish hovering.
My MIL loves frogs so I always try to get a picture when I see one…
or two… I think this one is my favorite.
My sis in law loves penguins so I tried to get a pic for her. :) This one looks like he just got done with a swim!
These guys were fun to photograph. I was playing with manual focus on my camera and I love how this guy is just popping out of the side of the picture.
This picture is just beautiful. I love this guy.
These fish were creepy. Their angry eye-like spots were all you could see… I liked them because they look mad and grumpy creatures make me happy. I am not sure why. I just know that the rule is: if it’s fat, furry, grumpy, has sharp teeth, or wings (or any combination of those things), I will generally like it.
I think we’re at the shark part of the post. The sharks were swimming in this big tank with a glass tunnel underneath. You could stand in the tunnel and look up at the sharks or walk to the end of the aquarium and look down into the open shark tank. I had a lot of fun standing in the tunnel trying to capture the sharks through the glass…
One of my favorite things about taking pictures in the tunnel was that I could capture sharks and passerbys so that it looked like there wasn’t glass between them. In this picture, I especially like that the shark looks annoyed at that guy. He’s like WHO SAID YOU COULD TALK IN MY TUNNEL?!
The rays were also in the shark tank and they looked really cool too. I like this picture because I like the kid watching the ray. I wish I had made the depth of field better so that the ray was more in focus… oh well.
We did get to see the sharks get fed! The tunnel was packed with people but I managed to snap a few photos of this sawfish eating a squid. This little kid was pointing at the chomping the whole time so his hand is in all of my pictures… Oh well… at least you know what to look at!
The Dallas World Aquarium was really fun! They did a really good job making unique habitats for all the animals. It was like being whisked away into an exciting and magical world of all sorts of animals. Usually, I feel like it’s obvious that I am at an aquarium but for some reason this aquarium seemed more magical and exciting… I wished it could have been a bit bigger though… Though considering all the craziness planned in the rest of our day maybe it’s a good thing it wasn’t. Stay tuned!
In other news… wtf Boston?! I was horrified to hear the news yesterday (seriously… I was like a broken toy repeating “SO SCARY!” over and over again, ask my lab mates…). Plus I had friends running in the marathon. They’re okay but my heart goes out to everyone who was there/was affected by this tragedy. :(
Your turn – Do you have a favorite picture? Which pictures did you like better: zoo or aquarium? What is the best aquarium you have been to? I really like the Monterey Bay Aquarium but I have heard that the Shedd Aquarium is quite amazing. I am so excited to go one day. Also, what is the weather like there? I am so ready for spring. It has been snowing nonstop here. They even closed campus early yesterday (not like it matters for us grad students who practically live in the lab anyway though)!
Potassium Photography 