Category: Tarantula

Those bad clouds

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What happens when you’re super excited about something, and then it doesn’t happen? That energy has to go somewhere, right? Last week, I decided to put my disappointment about missing the lunar eclipse into taking crazy double exposure photos of Tarantula and the moon. It was possibly more challenging than photographing the eclipse itself, AND it made me giggle, which cheered me up.

It all started last Tuesday evening, when I was nerding out about the Super Blue Blood Moon! I love taking pictures of the moon (as y’all know), and lunar eclipses (the “blood moon” part) are especially fun to photograph. Unlike a solar eclipse, you don’t need crazy equipment to keep your eyes and your camera safe. You just point the camera at the moon and click click click click. Yayyyy. Cool moon pictures.

The total eclipse was supposed to start at… 4:50 am on Wednesday morning here in Washington state. My friend K and I planned to get up at 4 am and meet up so we could witness/photograph the wonder together. Great plan!

4 am is quite a bit earlier than I am used to getting up, though, so I decided to pack my camera stuff the night before. That way, I could roll out of bed, grab my fancy new camera bag, and go see the moon!

I was getting everything ready when I looked up and saw the super moon watching me through the window. It was pretty neat. Some trick of the light made a mini reflection of the super moon right underneath the moon itself. I liked it because it was still a pretty detailed reflection. So I took a few photos. But not too many because I thought I would have way cooler ones in the morning.

I love my little blurry mini moon. It almost looks like the mini moon IS the moon and then there’s some crazy bright planet/star lurking behind it!

BUT when I woke up at 4 am, it was CLOUDY. Cobalt, nice husband that he is, even went on a mini walk outside to see if our apartment was blocking the moon. He came back with sad news. No eclipse for me.

I was so grumpy on Wednesday. People were posting such cool photos online. Blood moon over an observatory, blood moon over the ocean, blood moon, blood moon, blood moon! It seemed like everyone saw it! And yet, I had nothing. It’s not like I slept through my alarm, or I forgot to charge my camera battery. It’s just that sometimes, these things happen. It was out of my control.

On Wednesday night, when the moon rose, I glared at it. It was still kind of cloudy, but you could see the moon. It was taunting me. Oh now you decide to show up, moon.

A part of me suggested that maybe I take some full moon pictures anyway. My camera was already prepped for moon photos. So I grudgingly set everything up and took a few photos of the moon from our deck.

Dang. That’s a sweet moon.

Tarantula watched me from the back door. That’s when I got the idea. What if… I took a picture of the moon and then, using the multiple exposure mode on my camera, took a picture of Tarantula so that it looked like she was watching it?

Crazy challenge accepted! Finally all my grumpiness had somewhere to go: This photo was going to require some serious planning.

The way the multiple exposure mode works is that it takes two (or more, depending on what you tell it) consecutive photos and smashes them together into one photo. So I had to take two perfect photos back to back. Which was hard because the moon and the inside of my house are lit quite differently. Also Tarantula is quite a bit closer to my camera than the moon is. ALSO… I had to remember where I framed the moon in the photo and then somehow get my cat to look in that general direction.

It took two different lenses (take picture of moon, switch lens to portrait lens, adjust settings, take picture of cat) and a lot of trial and error.

This was my first attempt. Moon looks good, but T’s not really looking in the right direction. Also I didn’t really like the closet in the background behind her.
Cobalt was on cat-attention duty. He tried: saying KITTY!, snapping his fingers, and getting out her favorite butterfly toy to get her to look where I wanted her to look. This picture happened because she leapt out of the frame for the butterfly. I was going to redo the whole series anyway, so I just snapped a quick second picture of her and the camera smashed the two together. I think it looks like a record cover. What would the title be?

I’m still sad that I didn’t get to see the eclipse. But at least I got to have fun with my camera, which is one of the things I was looking forward to. I’ve been trying to take pictures that tell a story. Sure, a photo of the eclipse would have told a “Potassium got up super early so she could see this sweet lunar phenomenon” story. But these photos tell a pretty neat story too. I mean, how often do cats get to look at a moon in their own living rooms?

Now it’s your turn! Did you see the eclipse? What’s something that’s disappointed you lately? How did you handle your feelings?

First Snow 2017!

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Hellllooooo everyone! How are your Novembers turning out? Good I hope. Did everyone remember to vote today? Very important.

Anyway, this past weekend, Washington state got hit with its first snow of the season. On Friday, I saw a lot of pictures and videos of some wet snow falling to the west of us. But it was actually quite pleasant in the Tri-Cities. It was a little chilly but it was mostly sunny and beautiful. Then on Saturday, it was just cold. When Cobalt and I woke up, it was 27 degrees out. Yikes! Where did our brisk fall weather go? It stayed chilly all day and on Sunday we woke up to SNOW. Big, fat flakes that looked like soap suds rained down from the heavens on and off all morning. I might have lived in Colorado recently but I am still a native Californian at heart: The first snow of the season (no matter how wet it is) always makes me super excited. I jumped out of bed determined to take fun videos and pictures.

Because I lived in Colorado for 8 out of the last 9 years, my first-snow-of-the-season pictures usually look something like this. You know, with snow-coated mountains and such. We do have some hills here but I couldn’t really see them through all the haze. Plus I was intrigued by the clumpiness of the snowflakes.

So this time, I gave myself a new challenge: Photograph the fat flakes as they were falling. It was hard. I had a really fast shutter speed to capture the flakes in mid air. And I also had to manually focus on the fat clusters as they were falling. I took a lot of pictures and I still mostly missed my target flakes. But it was a fun challenge anyway.

There are a few in-focus flake clumps in this picture. Mostly I just like the out-of-focus red tree going on in the background.

Meanwhile, Tarantula was sitting on my desk chair watching the whole ordeal with annoyance. Humans… why is it so cold? And can you please turn on the sun?

Tarantula lit only by the snowy day outside. She looks so miserable. We’re going to have to get her one of those sun lamps….

Anyway, I want to point out that pretty much none of those fat flakes stuck so yesterday we were back to fall. Sort of. It was still super cold. But at least it was also super pretty…

PS: Today is my Sister in Law’s bday! Hurrah! Happy day! Can’t wait to see you soooooon! :D

Loafing about

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Hi everyone, how’s it going? I’m still pretty upset from all the craziness with the fires in and around my hometown last week. But today we are going to talk about bread.

Cobalt and I have been enjoying fresh bread from a local bakery. But then our friend K gave us a jar of sourdough starter and a recipe so we could try it ourselves. So on Friday night, we rolled up our sleeves and started the process. It’s long. Most of the steps aren’t really time consuming — just add some flour here or some water there — but there is a very specific order to things… and there are a lot of six-hour wait times. Also, there are a lot of steps where you only keep a little bit of the dough/starter and toss everything else, which Cobalt and I found wasteful. Oh well. Let’s get to the details!

Anyway, so on Friday night before we went to bread bed, we fed the starter. Turns out it eats flour and water, which is good because I don’t know if I could afford to feed a starter that liked steak or sushi. We got up on Saturday morning and took a little bit of that fed starter and fed it again. Same diet. Then on Saturday afternoon, we mixed some of that starter with more flour and water plus yeast and salt to make the actual bread dough. On Saturday night, we split the dough in half and set up an experiment. One loaf got to proof at room temperature and the second loaf got to proof in the fridge.

On Sunday morning, the room-temp loaf was huge. Waaaaay overproofed. We spent the morning quoting Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood from The Great British Baking Show. But we baked it anyway. And it didn’t turn out too bad (Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would say otherwise, I’m sure ;)). It still looked and tasted amazing, which is what really counts. Plus it crackled as it cooled, which we found heartwarming. It reminded Cobalt of a line from the movie Ratatouille: how the sound of the crust will tell you how good a bread is going to be.

It was a bit flat but still delicious. :D

Tarantula was very curious about our baking. We’re starting to wonder if it’s the smell of yeast. She was intrigued as we set up the overproofed bread Sunday morning and even more intrigued during its photoshoot an hour later. Crazy cat. You’re supposed to be a carnivore!

Endlessly curious…

The fridge-proofed loaf turned out much better. We baked it on Sunday afternoon and it just looks lovely.

Yay bread! We saved some of our starter so we’ll definitely have to make more soon. Maybe even next week? What fun recipes should we try next? So many options…

Apparently Tarantula likes cinnamon

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It’s been a rough week, you guys. There is so much going on right now, and I’ve been feeling super anxious. It helps to make my kitchen an absolute mess while I bake something delicious. Unfortunately I get the idea to bake something after the sun has gone down so we have some less fancy iPhone pictures for you today.

Two weekends ago, in honor of Fall, I decided to make apple cinnamon rolls! I have a tasty cinnamon roll recipe from an old version of Joy of Cooking (apparently my version is too healthy to have the recipe for something so buttery…). Then I scoured the internet for how to make them apple-y. Turns out it’s easy. Just add chopped up apples!

So the kitchen turned into a cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter mess while I rolled out the dough, painted it with tastiness, and sprinkled apples everywhere. While I was bustling around, Tarantula showed up, apparently very interested in what I was doing. She even stood on her hind legs to try to get closer to the dough! CAT! Go away! I shooed her away because I was pretty sure cinnamon isn’t great for cats. But she didn’t get the hint. She spent the rest of the evening hunting for cinnamon chunks in the kitchen… even after I cleaned the whole room and hid the cooling apple cinnamon rolls in the microwave.

She was back at it again the next day when I was trying to photograph the completed rolls (see that pic above). Who would have guessed that she liked the way cinnamon smelled?

In other baking news, this past weekend Cobalt and I made Smitten Kitchen’s red wine chocolate cake. After we’d served a few pieces, the cake started to look like a pac-man.

For some reason, Cobalt decided to spread the whipped topping across the cake like it was frosting…

That’s all for today! What do you do when you have really bad anxiety?

With the cat in the car?!

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Cobalt and I have moved to California! We migrated across the country with a (rather large) Uhaul containing all our stuff, two cars, and a cat! Luckily my parents flew out to Colorado to help us make the move back to CA! My dad and Cobalt drove the truck (with my car towed behind it) and my mom and I drove Cobalt’s car (with a cat inside).

Cobalt can tell you all about the newfound respect he has for people driving large trucks and/or towing cars but today I’m going to tell you about moving with a cat. Tarantula is a pretty chill cat so the vet thought she wouldn’t need sedatives for the drive. Instead she gave us a sample of “Composure,” which Cobalt describes as “cat-herbal tea,” and told us to give Tarantula half a Composure treat for every 12 hours of traveling.

Let’s discuss what happened:

  • Day 0:
    On the day we moved all of our stuff into the Uhaul, Tarantula got to spend the day and night with our friend Titanium. Titanium’s cat Meow and Tarantula had previously met and weren’t huge fans of each other (see below) so we gave both Meow and Tarantula half a Composure. The day passed relatively smoothly with Tarantula and Meow meowing at each other through the door of Titanium’s spare room, where Tarantula was staying. Tarantula seemed a little loopy though and even missed the litter box (this is something she has never done!).

    Flashback to 2014 when we introduced Tarantula and Meow. There was a lot of hissing and growling followed by Tarantula taking over Meow’s stuff, including this chair.
  • Day 1:
    Our first day of driving was the most epic – we had planned to end the day in Winnemucca, NV (~13 hours driving with no cat/big Uhaul truck). Mom and I picked up Tarantula from Titanium’s house and set her up in a giant cat carrier the backseat of the car. The carrier contained a litterbox, some toys, and a bowl of water. After the loopiness of the day before, we decided to try no Composure first. As soon as we got on the road, Tarantula spilled her water all over herself, the litterbox, and the toys making a wet, crunchy mess in the backseat. Then she howled miserably for the next hour and a half while Mom and I desperately tried to reach a rest stop. Once at the rest stop, we gave Tarantula a third of Composure and let her out of the cat carrier while things dried. She liked this much better because why be trapped in a stinky cat carrier when there are humans to cuddle? She finally fell asleep in the back of the car between some boxes and backpacks, which was great for all of us because it’s kind of stressful having a cat meandering around the car while you are trying to drive.

    She slept like this for hours. I don’t get it.

    We stopped in Salt Lake City where some family friends met us at a park and brought us dinner! Loopy Tarantula got to escape her car prison and hang out in the park on a leash. Don’t let the picture fool you, she’s not that great on a leash.

    After dinner, we locked her in her cat carrier once more and she fell asleep for the remainder of the drive to Winnemucca. We arrived about 12:30 am (!!!) and Tarantula spent the night exploring our hotel room and trying to convince us that she needed to leave the room to see what else was beyond the door.

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  • Day 2:
    The second day of driving was relatively short (~8 hours). Mom and I decided to give Tarantula a small chunk of Composure before getting in the car because we didn’t want a repeat of the howling incident. We also put her in her cat carrier again, much to her disappointment. Tarantula then proceeded to cry for the next 100 miles or so before passing out and waking up close to my parents’ home town where we stopped for the night. She spent the next two nights hanging out at my parents’ house, which she loved exploring, minus the “scary” ceramic cat she found in the living room.

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  • Day 4 (we skipped Day 3 because it was Labor Day and everyone deserves a day off – even kitties):
    This day was the best driving day ever! We only had a 2.5 hour drive from my parents’ house to our new apartment! Cobalt drove the truck and I drove the car containing the cat! Because it seemed to take Tarantula an hour or so to calm down after taking the Composure, Cobalt and I fed Tarantula the tiniest sliver of Composure with her breakfast (~an hour before we left) with the idea that she would sleep during the drive. FALSE. She was unhappy about being in the cat carrier again and spent the first hour and a half mewling at me and trying to break out of the cat carrier. Somewhere in the middle of a huge traffic jam in San Francisco, she finally calmed down and we arrived at the new apartment an hour later. I set her up in the bathroom while the movers helped us drag all our belongings out of the truck and up three flights of stairs. She tried to stage multiple escapes until we unpacked one of our desk chairs, which I rolled into the bathroom for her. She jumped up onto it and promptly fell asleep. Once the movers had left and we had organized the boxes a little, she was allowed to escape and explore her new home!


She’s a California cat now!

Before we get to your comments, I want to talk about the fate of this blog. As many of you know, this blog was wearing a few hats for a while – it was both a photo blog and a science blog. I found the whole thing a bit confusing so this blog is going to go back to what it is best at – showcasing photography! Never fear, my science readers. I have made a new home for science-y posts on my website! It’s not too exciting now but I am sure it will be filled with interesting stories soon enough… I start my Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz this week!

Lots of changes going on here – including a new layout for the blog! Ooo so crisp and clean! I hope you like it as much as I do!

Your turn! Have you ever moved with a cat? What did you do?! Was your cat pretty chill like Tarantula or more skittish? Btw – if you want to leave a comment and you don’t see the comment field below the post, there is a button on the top of this post now.

Did you forget to vote?!

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Someone should probably inform Tarantula that cats can’t vote before she freaks out any more about forgetting…

Greetings blog friends! It’s your long lost Potassium here to take another shot at this whole “blogging” thing. It’s been waaaaaay too long and I really miss it! I especially miss taking really neat pictures and sharing them with you. This weekend, I spent two hours a bit looking at all my blog posts for the past five years and it made me sad that I haven’t posted anything recently. Some of those posts are really cool (at least I think so) and I think having this blog here really helped me channel my creativity and inspired me to work on my photography and blogging skills!

Sooooo let’s start it back up again! I know what you’re thinking. I said that before and then look what happened……. but seriously. I want to try again. Plus it’s November, which is famous for NaNoWriMo and such, so I should challenge myself to write blog posts instead of writing a novel. We’ll start off slow with one post a week just to try to ease me back into the swing of things. Woooo. I pick Tuesday. Done.

Next step. What to talk about?! So much has happened since I last wrote in here! Cobalt and I went on vacation to Hawaii with my family to see my uncle’s and aunt’s sweet farm! We also went to Germany for Esther’s and Felix’s wedding! I co-taught not one but two biotechnology summer camp courses for high school students. I co-founded a new seminar series at CU that focuses on retention of underrepresented students and postdocs at CU by providing new networking and mentorship opportunities. You probably can see updates about that on my Twitter feed —–> (since that seems to be the only thing I seem to tweet about). Oh oh! And the big one! What the heck am I doing with my life now that I finally have my PhD? Well wouldn’t we all like to know? Let’s figure that one out together, shall we?

Now it’s your turn! What have you been up to?! Did you go on cool vacations this summer? New jobs? New other stuff?! Tell me everything!

P.S. It’s election day. Go vote.

P.P.S. It’s also my mom’s birthday! Yay happy day, Mom! :D

We got a kitty!

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Yayyyyy! Look who’s posting again! It’s Dr. Potassium! That’s right! I am (unofficially) a doctor now! I need to edit my thesis and turn it in to get my diploma and officially become a doctor but the hardest part is over! Whew… it’s been an insane few months, you guys. INSANE.

But let’s save all that insanity for another post because today we have much cuter things to talk about! Cobalt and I got a cat and named her Tarantula (really, are you that surprised?)!!! Look at this adorable little puff.

So a few weeks ago when I was feeling really stressed out from all the craziness that goes into writing your thesis and then having to make a presentation to defend your thesis, my friend Titanium picked me up and we got coffee. It was great because we went up into the mountains above Boulder a little and sat on a rock overlooking the city. So pretty. As we talked, we decided that petting kitties at the animal shelter could make the end of our coffee time even sweeter! So we headed to the Boulder Humane Society to check out all the cats. They’ve seriously updated the cat area and now instead of rows and rows of cages, there are big rooms with tons of toys and shelves for the kitties to hang out and play/sleep all day! Titanium and I went into the “playroom,” the biggest of these rooms, to play with the kitties there. We met each of the cats there, including one super sweet but super skinny orange and black kitty. After we met all the cats, we sat on the bench in there and Miss Skinny came over and hopped up on the bench with us. Titanium put her on my lap where she proceeded to fall asleep! Awwww….

Soooooo I pretty much immediately fell in love with this cat and asked the Boulder Humane Society if I could put a hold on her so that Cobalt could come meet her the following day. However, we ended up having to wait almost a week for Cobalt to meet her because the Humane Society wanted to monitor her eating and make sure she was generally healthy before they released her. They finally determined that she was going to need some dental work done before we could take her home but that we could come in and see her before then. We got that news the day I defended my thesis which meant that my family (my Mom, Dad, sister, and sister in law) was in town! So the next day we all went to the shelter to meet our potential kitty. Cobalt fell in love with her too so the day of her dental surgery, we went to two different pet stores to prep our house for our new little puff and then we brought her home the next day!

I think Tarantula is feeling quite at home here now. She’s already looking a lot healthier and she is practically inhaling her food. Plus she loves snuggling and purring. At first, she was super distressed when Cobalt and I weren’t both in the same room but now she has calmed down about that. Awww yay! She also loves to look outside windows and has commandeered almost every window in the house for her personal viewing (downstairs in the morning, office after dinner, bedroom at night, etc).

Hey human! What are you doing outside?! Come inside and pet me!

In case you are wondering where the name Tarantula came from: one time, Cobalt and I went to go play with kittens at the local Petsmart. There was this adorable calico kitten named Tarantella but Cobalt and I read her name wrong so we kept calling her Tarantula! From that moment on, we vowed that one day we would get our own Tarantula (read: a cat named Tarantula, not the spider, much to Cobalt’s disappointment) one day. From the moment our Tarantula fell asleep on my lap, I knew she was purrfect. :D

Tarantula says “Stop talking about me and come cuddle with me!”

Finally, today is my mom’s birthday! Happy birthday Mom! What a great day to start posting again! :D I’m going to try to do twice a week but we might have to wait a little for me to work my way back up to that… Hopefully I’ll post on a semi-regular schedule again though. I’ve missed you guys!

Now it’s your turn: tell me about your pets. Tell me your favorite story about when you first got your pet! If you have a kitty, is she/he an inside/outside cat or just an inside cat? I grew up with mostly outside cats so it’s been fun learning how to have an all indoors cat. :D