Tag: Nikon D80

Dallas Day 3 – Fort Worth Zoo Birds

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Hello and welcome to the first part of Dallas Day 3 – the day that was spent mostly in Fort Worth. I went through my zoo pictures and decided that there are a ridiculous amount of bird pictures so they get their own post…. Thursday (or Friday… life soooo busy…) will have the remainder of the animals/the rest of the Ft. Worth story. Yay!

First I want to draw your attention to that magnificent toucan on the top of my blog. I fell in love with him and we had a little photoshoot with him modeling and me clicking away. Seriously, Jem can probably tell you, I was saying “Yeah… yeah… now tilt your head a little to the left… aw yeah… perfect… work it!” :-/ Anyway, hurrah birds. I apologize in advance if you’re scared of birds but I hope that all the fun colors and poses of these birds will warm your heart anyway.

Let’s start at the top. We slept in again. Then A, Cobalt, Jem, and I all piled into Jem’s car to go to breakfast at this place called the Kozy Kitchen. For some reason, I can never remember the name – just that its name starts with a K…. Moving on. This restaurant had a lot of gluten free and organic organic options… but it also had a lot of tasty meat options as well. I got this epic omelet complete with venison sausage inside and Cobalt got buffalo tacos! Yum…

Once we enjoyed our amazing brunch, we headed to Fort Worth to go to the zoo with one of my best friends from high school C1 and her boyfriend C. C1 and I played trombone in band together throughout high school and she, the T (my maid of honor), and I were fairly inseparable during high school/band trips/etc. Much hilarity ensued…

Here’s C1 feeding a bird at the Forth Worth Zoo:

Anyway, so we went to the zoo! It was amazing! Definitely one of the best zoos I’ve been to in a long time. The animals had really neat habitats and the whole place was huge. We were there for three hours and we still didn’t get to see everything before the zoo closed (we got kicked out of the reptile house because they were trying to close it and we just wanted to see the lizards)! Epicness. It was also a perfectly warm day and we Coloradans were basking in our sandals and short sleeved shirts. Ahhhhhh…. so this is what spring feels like (for the record, we are supposed to get 6-10 inches of snow and “blizzard-like” conditions here today…). Anyway, enough babbling! Let’s see some birds!

The birds of the Forth Worth Zoo
We’ll start in the part where they let you go hang out with these little birds. We bought sticks with birdseed on them so we could feed the birds (like C1 is doing up there) but they seemed full – possibly because small children had been feeding them allllllll day… :-/ I was so excited about being so close to them that my birdseed stick went mostly uneaten as I ran around with my camera…

I like this guy because he’s looking at the camera… He looks a little wary of me. Not sure why seeing as I had a stick covered in birdseed in my hand…

This bird kept closing his eyes when I was trying to get his picture. :-/

I wish I had gotten these guys’ tails in the picture but I like that they are looking at the camera too.

After all the cute little birdseed stick fed birds, we moved on to the birds of prey which were scary/magnificent. Especially because many of them were being fed when we were there. :-/ This guy was kind enough to pose for a picture. I love how pointy his beak and claws are. Yikes!

Another picture of the toucan, just in case you didn’t believe that he is real (he looks fairly plastic in the first picture, I’ll give you that…). It was grooming time after he posed for that first picture.

This bird looked so shy with its beak hidden in its wing…

Yay penguins! These little guys looked so silly with their little ear tufts. I like them.

I love this picture because the tufty penguin looks like it is freaking out and the other two penguins are like “… awkward! We don’t know that guy…” Cracks me up! Look forward to more penguins next week from the Dallas World Aquarium!

Flamingos! These flamingos were not very pink but they did appear very fuzzy. I especially like the one scritching its back – its neck is so fluff…

This concludes your tour of the birds in the Fort Worth Zoo. There were of course many more so really you should just go visit and see them for yourself! Later this week – more animals and the rest of our day in Forth Worth. You still have time to tell me your favorite zoo animal and I’ll see if I have a good picture of it for you! :) In other news, tell me what you think about these birds? Any favorites? Anyone want to write some captions for the birds?

Sharks gnawin’ on my ears…

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So the other day, I was wearing my awesome octopus earrings to lab and my friend wondered why I didn’t have any shark earrings, specifically shark earrings that looked like they were eating my ears. I thought that that was a good question and began a google search for shark earrings in general. As it happened, I happened to find a google images search image of clay shark earrings much like the ones I had dreamed about. I drooled over them for about half a minute until I realized that that girl had posted a tutorial on how to make them! Hurrah! Craft time!

So I headed to the store, picked out the required colors of Sculpey III clay and earring posts/backs and set to work. It was hard work. I ended up making two sets of earrings because I would practice on the first two sharks and then try again for the second two sharks. Also, I was at a loss for how long to bake my shark earrings seeing as the directions on the Sculpey III package said to bake at 275 degrees for 15 minutes per 1/4 inch. Ummmm… how long for shark earrings? I ended up calling Cobalt to come downstairs and check out my earrings a billion times winging it – about 25 minutes – and then letting them cool overnight. Here’s an Instagram of the shark earrings fresh out of the oven…

Anyway, I LOVE them. I wore them to school yesterday and got so many compliments. Plus it just feels so me to have sharks eating my ears. I can’t wait to get more time to make more (such a perfectionist…). Also I have already decided that I want to try to make miniature alligator earrings too. Yay!

Your turn: what do you think of the shark earrings? Would you buy some if I sold them in an Etsy shop? Tell me about your latest craft project. How was it inspired? Did you just dive right into something completely new or was it something that you worked really hard on for a while to accomplish? If you don’t like crafts, tell me about a hobby of yours! :)

In other news, my friend/labmate K passed his oral exam yesterday – if you’re not in grad school, let me explain – think of a test that you study for for months and then three professors try to figure out what you don’t know and then ask you questions about that for 1.5 hours. Are you shivering? Yeah… it sucks. But passing it means you are an official PhD candidate (read: you now have a masters degree and can continue on the path towards getting your PhD). So yay K! So proud of you! :)

I love Comic Strips

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Yes… Cobalt and I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to comic books…

So I love comic strips. When I was growing up, my favorite thing about getting the daily paper every day was catching up with my favorite comic strip characters. I guess it didn’t help that I grew up in the town where Charles Shultz (Peanuts) lived… When I went to college, I was really sad that I couldn’t keep up with the comics via the daily paper anymore so I started reading the Seattle Times online every day to keep up with my news and my comic strip friends. I also have quite the collection of various comic strip books that are very slowly migrating from my parents’ house in CA to my house here in CO.

As you may or may not know, we’re sort of at the end of an era here with newspapers – no one is reading paper papers anymore and papers are losing a ton of money. Therefore, newspapers are turning towards their websites to make up the extra slack. Seattle Times.com is going to start charging you to subscribe to their website later this month – a prospect that makes me sad because as a poor grad student, I probably won’t be able to afford it.

Pretty much in time with the crash of the newspapers comes this film – Stripped, codirected by Dave Kellett, who writes Sheldon. This movie interviews a lot of comic strip artists (from Jim Davis who writes Garfield) to Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes) about how comic strips have affected society and what is going to happen to them with the death of newspapers. I think it’s going to be amazing! But they need our help – in order to finish the movie, they need access to various archives (such as the Peanuts short films) that are really expensive. If you care about comic strips half as much as I do, check out this website. It has a neat trailer for the movie, their goals, and rewards for becoming a backer. As of right now, it looks like they’ve reached their first goal now but now they are trying for a second goal (and even more exciting things for their movie). There are some pretty cool rewards for becoming a backer… :)

Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you think about comic strips. Do you have a favorite? I think one of my favorites (it’s not super well known) is Sherman’s Lagoon. I had the Sherman’s Lagoon screensaver on my computer when I was a teenager – you could hear fish getting eaten down the hall when we were eating dinner… :-/

By the way, today is Pi Day! Happy Pi Day! Go eat some pie and think about what an awesome number pi is… :D

One Slimer Cake Coming Up!

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So my friend J wrote a blog post last week about this crazy vegan avocado chocolate cake that she made. I was intrigued because 1) what would a cake made with avocados instead of eggs taste like? and 2) it has freakin’ green avocado buttercream frosting to go with it. So I got the recipe and Cobalt and I set about making the cake. It turned out pretty good actually. It doesn’t really taste like avocados – mostly like chocolate and bananas strangely actually… Also, if you don’t like the idea of slime-green frosting, you can add cocoa powder to your frosting. I think it’s kind of neat green though. Might make for a fun cooking activity for kiddos…

Anyway, upon frosting our cake yesterday afternoon, Cobalt and I decided that it reminded us of Slimer from Cobalt’s favorite movie ever, Ghostbusters. Thus, Cobalt decorated our cake in proper Slimer fashion! Shown above – our claw machine Slimer gazes in awe at himself in cake-form. Below – slimer cake eaten… Yummmm…

In other news, I’ve been in kind of a photography funk lately. I tried to challenge myself this weekend – taking some self portraits of my new octopus earrings (Now I have black ones and I got some yellow ones as a gift too!) and taking some pictures of the ice we acquired from rain/snow on Saturday and I was frustrated with both activities. Booo… I just got some new photography books from the library… I’m hoping they’ll inspire me…

You know what time it is now… Your turn to comment on my post. How do you feel about avocado chocolate cake? Yay? Nay? Curious about that ridiculously green frosting? It’s REALLY sweet. I’ll tell you that… How about hobbies? What do you do when you’re feeling frustrated with your hobbies? Any advice?

Make snow lemonade?

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Lur the great snow shark….

On Sunday, I had a very fun adventure planned. Cobalt and I were going to spend the morning and early afternoon in Denver with our friends and then watch the Oscars in the evening at our house with anyone who wanted to come over. Then it snowed 5 inches before we even got up on Sunday morning… The roads were a mess and it was still snowing pretty hard so nope on the Denver plan. That left me feeling pretty conflicted because I really wanted to go see my friends in Denver but it never snows 5 inches here in Boulder so I also really wanted to go play outside in the snow. Since I didn’t want to drive up to Denver in crazy snow, the only option was to play! So play I did.

I was in luck because my friend L was planning on cross country skiing with her dog along some of the running trails here in Boulder and it turned out she wanted company! I was dressed in all my snow gear and hauling my cross country skis out of our “Harry Potter closet” (it’s under the stairs if you didn’t guess) within ten minutes. L showed up and we frolicked around in the snowy wilderness for the next hour and a half. It was lovely. We had wonderful conversations, skied happily through the snow, and hung out with her adorable black lab. Meanwhile it was still snowing….

Later in the day (now we’re up to 8.5 inches of snow), my friend A came over for the Oscar party but she showed up an hour early so we could play in the snow in Cobalt’s and my backyard. We sat down in the snow like children and proceded to build an enormous snow shark spanning our entire backyard pretty much (it’s not that big… we live in an apartment complex…). His name is Lur and you can see him up there at the top before he got his magnificent pinecone eyes… Here are some pictures of me and A with Lur!


The adventures continued yesterday because Gustav wanted to meet Lur. Here are some pictures of that encounter…

I love that Lur totally dwarfs Gustav…

I think they liked each other because of this Instagram pic…

A and I then escaped lab early yesterday because hey… we rarely get this much snow at once and then on top of that, it rarely stays around more than a few hours (the weather here is weird… 70 degrees one day, snowing the next, 50 degrees after that, you know…). A has a new snowboard and she wanted to play around with it on the hills we have here before actually taking it to a ski resort. So we bundled back up and took my cross country skis and her snowboard up to the hills right by our houses. It turned out to be a fantastic day for playing around in the snow – the sun was very bright and warm and there was sooooo much snow to play with. Some pictures of those adventures…

There’s so much snow you can barely see her snowboard!
Don’t judge my lack of coat/hat in this picture. I had just skied a bunch of laps and I was totally overheating… I was cold after A took this picture though and retreated back to the warmth of my coat…

Whew! I am tired now from all this crazy snow playing. It’s supposed to snow again today too! Too bad I actually have work to do though… ;)

Anyway, I’m sad that I didn’t get to see my friends in Denver yesterday but so happy to have gotten to play in the snow instead. I guess the moral of this story is: when life gives you snow lemons, make snow lemonade!

What’s the weather like where you are? Is it spring yet? Do you get a lot of snow or no snow? What are your thoughts on snow? I hate driving in it but I love playing in it/watching it from the warmth of inside…

Happy Snake Year!

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In honor of the Chinese New Year this weekend, Cobalt and I had friends over to make dumplings! It turned out to be a hilarious endeavor because the recipe was written entirely in Chinese (meaning that only my friend T could read it) and instead of discrete amounts of ingredients, all of the ingredients were listed “add to taste” so T ordered us around in the kitchen – chop this, cook that, let’s wait for this – for a bit while we made the filling.

While T and our friend L were busy cooking the filling, A and I felt that there were too many people in the kitchen and retreated to the living room to make snake jewelry in honor of the year of the snake. As you can see from that top picture, I made a snake choker and A made a snake headband. Here’s another picture of my snakey choker.

Once the filling got made, we were all recruited to make dumplings. T taught us this super nice way to fold the dumpling skins so that they look professional. Look at these dumplings all ready to be cooked! I think we made at least 70 of these guys!

Then we cooked them and then we ate them! Yummm… they were delicious. We actually put sunflower seeds in a few of them so that if you ate one of those, it was extra luck for the new year. Unfortunately, the sunflower seeds went pretty well with the filling so we had a hard time telling if we ate a lucky one or not. We all found sunflower seeds on our plates after eating though, which suggests we are all lucky!

Tasty dumplings ready to eat (some of them exploded in the cooking phase but they were still equally delicious)!

Did you do anything for the Chinese New Year? How do you feel about the year of the snake? Tell me about it! Have any special plans for Valentine’s Day coming up this week?! Tell me about that too! Cobalt and I have plans but I think grad school is going to prevent them from happening on Valentine’s Day proper (boooooo lab… whyyyyy) so we will have to celebrate this weekend instead! :)

To tame the perilous trail!

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We left the shark backpack at our lunch spot and went to go explore a little. It looks like he’s feeling a little left out…

This past weekend, Cobalt and I went on a hike with Cobalt’s friend A, who just moved to Boulder! It turned out to be much more perilous than we had intended as most of the trail is in the shade and, while most of our snow in Boulder has melted, apparently this shaded trail snow has yet to get the message. It was a nice weekend and there were a lot of people out on the trail, packing down the snow and making it a very slippery hike, even in hiking boots. I was very envious of everyone who had crampons strapped to their hiking boots. Cobalt, A, and I got within a quarter mile of our destination and were so tired from sliding up the mountain that we decided to stop for lunch. It was a fairly secluded spot and gave me a great view for some photography!

After lunch, we slid back down the mountain (A actually slipped and rode part of the way on his butt – this is after making fun of me for slowly making my way down in front of him…. ahaha).

Now it’s your turn. Tell me about a scary hike you went on and why it was scary. Or tell me about your favorite hiking story or your favorite trail to hike in Colorado. The title of this post comes from a song we played in band in high school called “To Tame the Perilous Skies” by David Holsinger… I thought it was appropriate.

One more thing. Today is my friend HtomSirveaux’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday friend! I hope you have a great day!

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit eating gluten…

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(Oven) Mitt Nomney did his job of helping me get the hot pan out of the oven and now he wants some breakfast bars as payment!

So some of you may know this but I love eating. I would eat even if we didn’t have to to survive. I also eat pretty much everything, even if it’s something I claim I don’t like. If I am hungry enough, I will probably eat it. Really, the only surefire way to keep me from eating something (if you are Cobalt trying to protect your food from the hungry Potassium for example), is to eat something that could kill me or makes my stomach hurt a lot. Basically, that leaves the nuts that I am allergic to (pistachios and cashews) as the only foods I will definitely not eat. Pork makes my stomach hurt but sometimes ham and bacon are just so delicious that I will even steal a bite of those things.

Okay, we are getting majorly off topic here – the point is that I love eating but I also am realizing how important it is to be aware of what I am eating. I’ve been noticing that I kind of just shove food in my mouth all the time without thinking about how many other bagels I’ve already eaten today or how I should probably not eat this entire block of cheese (or I do the “T-rex” when Cobalt and I make pot roast for dinner – eating waaaaay more than I should because it’s so freakin’ good, I can’t stop). So I was thinking about diets like the paleo diet and gluten free diets where people just totally abolish certain food groups from their life (though sometimes the gluten free diet is necessary for those friends with celiac disease). I am not sure I could force myself to stop eating such tastiness like cheese and bread and rice completely but I think I like the idea of thinking about how MUCH tastiness like cheese and bread go into my body every day. So as I was pondering all these diets and what my life would be like if I stopped eating all that tastiness, I had a horrible thought cross my mind. WHAT WOULD I EAT FOR BREAKFAST?!?!?!

So breakfast is really important to me, partially because I get hangry (hungry/angry) if I don’t eat regularly. If I fail to eat breakfast though, I get hangry and super out of it and it’s just bad. In general though, most of the breakfast foods I eat would not be allowed for someone on the paleo diet. So I went on a mission to learn about what people on the paleo diet eat for breakfast and I found this delicious recipe for Blackberry Breakfast Bars which are: gluten free, dairy free, and paleo appropriate. Then I went to the store and got all the ingredients and made them. Here are some pictures from my adventures:

Yay! I found all the ingredients (either after digging through our cabinets in the kitchen to find them or running through the store to find them)!

I decided to make my own coconut flour out of coconut chunks – mostly because all of this was really spontaneous and it was actually kind of late on a weeknight and I didn’t feel like driving to the health food store to get coconut flour. However, it turned out to be really easy to do once I figured out how to work the food processor.

The final product cooling on the stove! It was delicious. Tasted like banana bread with blackberries and coconut in it. If you had fed them to me, I never would have guessed that they weren’t your typical flour and milk type banana bread bars. Yum.

All in all I think it was a good adventure for me because 1) it really did make me think about all the food groups and what I eat every day and 2) it was actually really good even though it was slightly more of a pain to track ingredients down for. In conclusion, I’m probably never going to switch to a diet like the paleo diet but I appreciate the recipes for forcing me to think about the amount of carbs, milk, etc I put in my body.

What do you think? Are you on a diet like the paleo diet or other diet? How did you give up cheese (and bread?! Think of the bagels!!!!)? Would you ever consider going on a diet like that? What is your favorite kind of food?

Look at this cat

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Yesterday I was going through my recent pictures when I came across all these adorable pictures I took of my family’s cat when Cobalt and I were in California for the holidays. This one is by far my favorite of the 50 or so I took of her… She just looks so regal. I had originally wanted to photograph her because she’s all fluffed up for winter and she looks adorable. I think you can see some of her puffiness in this pic.
In case you are unconvinced about how soft and cute this cat is or if up close cat pictures scare you, here’s another picture of her being similarly adorable/puffy/soft:

Thoughts? I love being a crazy photographer with the cats when I’m home because 1) they are interesting subjects to photograph and 2) then I can look at them when I’m feeling homesick throughout the year (this happens a lot). One day Cobalt and I are going to get ourselves a cute kitty but until then, I guess we’ll be okay with our stuffed shark friends… :-/

Cobalt, Potassium, and Finn, Christmas 2012… This was shot using my infrared remote for my DSLR… You can even see it in this picture. Look how tiny… Don’t you want one for your DSLR?

Do you have pets? Tell me about them! Show me pictures! I love animals. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet or a marine biologist (not sure how I ended up in grad school studying biochemistry now, looking back…). Even though I grew up with pet cats, I worked at a vet in high school and had college roommates (one of them is the reason why I met Cobalt) with multiple pet reptiles (a story for another day). These events have not only continued my love of pretty much all pets (cats, dogs, snakes, hamsters, bunnies, etc) but also taught me how to take care of them. Cobalt, you better watch out or you might come home one day to a house full of creatures! ;)