When bloggers collide-- Part 2

The DS/PP extravaganza has drawn to a close, and while she is off to the sunny beaches of Southeast Asia, I am alternating between an office with no windows and a lab with no windows-- even though I can just feel that sunshine waiting for me just beyond these walls.

While I slowly pine for the breeze outdoors and collapse under rickets, here are some smatterings of lessons learned and images from our bloggie collision:

There is an art to fish throwing, though I know it is not something I should ever try my hand at.



Americans apparently don't use the term "kitty corner"-- they just say diagonal to, which is nowhere near as cute.

No matter how frequently I may catch a glimpse of the ocean through a train window, it always brings me peace to be on the seashore.

You can make guitar trees! And apparently even play them... from afar! (courtesy of the Experimental Music Project)

My long standing notion that I have no rhythm was confirmed by my attempts at playing the guitar, keyboard and drums at the EMP. DS, however, has hella drum skillz.

The idea of skunks running about downtown Manhattan is ridiculous, despite the fact that they are a nightly summer hazard on my side of the world.

The Space Needle can bite me. Zzzzzz

The Seattle-ites of yore didn't have tremendous success in the human waste realm. Initially, the unlucky folks residing at the bottom of the steep hill that used to make up Seattle were the lucky recipients of the sewage of those above them. However, when the newfangled Crappers were all the rage (that is actually the technical term for them, from the creator, Thomas Crapper. I swear), the city dwellers rushed to the harbour to purchase some for their home. However, Seattle-ites were again the victims of poor planning, because the sewer pipes ran directly into the ocean, with no concern for the flow of the tides. As such, at a particular time of day, if someone was lucky enough to flush their crapper, the pressure of the waste coming down the tubes from the hills above and the tide coming in from below led to a veritable explosion of sewage the exact opposite direction as expected-- up!!

Another brilliant Seattle plan... after the entire downtown core burnt down because of a paste fire (yep, from someone who left their paste on the stove for too long), the city decided to try to flatten the giant slope on which the downtown core was situated (the whole human waste fiasco seemed reason enough). The merchants did not want to wait for this construction, and thus rebuilt their businesses at ground level immediately, while the city went about raising the roads, sometimes as much as 30 feet, meaning that customers would have to climb down tremendous ladders to access the front door of the general store or the saloon. The city tried to cover up the high tumbling-induced death rates by labeling them accidental suicides!
Eventually, the merchants caved in, and filled in the sidewalks in front of their buildings, and raised their front entrances up a level.

All this info was gathered from the Underground Tour.
That's one of the skylights below.




DS and I apparently both turn into squealing children when in the presence of nerdy science fun. A sample of our conversations: "Oh my God! That dinosaur moves! So awesome! I'm gonna pose with it and pretend that I'm a dinosaur!"
Even the 7-year olds were rolling their eyes at us.

Giant praying mantises are scary, especially when their pincers moved. DS actually ran away from this one.



Butterflies, on the other hand, are always spectacular. Even when they are divebombing you.











Yeah, so I went a little overboard. Whatever. They're pretty.

You know what else are pretty?? Naked mole rats!!!


I hope these look familiar. They are prestigious winners of my Ugly Animal Pageant.
They are also exceedingly entertaining. We spent around 10 minutes watching this wee little mole rats clamor his way up a slope, only to have another, big (mean!) one literally climb right over him and push him back down the slope. They also have the tendency to get stuck on their backs in the middle of tubes, which is sheer comedy.

DS does genuinely have the worst travel luck on the planet. Outside of Mr. Dirty Customs Worker, my bus trip down was relatively smooth. However, the moment we got through the doors of the Seattle bus depot for our return trip, chaos erupted. People were scattered about in every which direction, with the clusters showing more resemblance to dodecahedrons than straight lines. Apparently the computers and the printers were broken down, with only two workers to stem the disarray, and DS without her confirmation number for the ticket she was supposed to pick up. The line was literally moving at about 1 person every 5-10 minutes for sometime, leading me to wonder if, despite arriving 45 minutes early, we would be able to get on the bus. DS and I frantically mouthed things to each other across the room... or, rather, she read my lips, and I tried to read hers, and ended up mostly just shrugging my shoulders.

Thankfully, the transport curse let up, and, tickets in hand, we maneuvered our way through the pseudo-line, where we managed to get the last two seats together on the bus, and bothered the kilted man in front of us with our chatter before he eventually decided that conversating with us was infinitely more interesting than eavesdropping.

Back on my side of the border, my lesson was apparently that life always gets in the way, visitors or not, so I had to squeeze meetings and errands in with my hostess duties.

We did, however, manage to go traipsing about through the tree tops!


It turns out that I apparently have better balance when dangling 230 feet off the ground than I do when my feet are firmly on solid earth.





I miss my tree house.



Apparently you don't see leaping trout every day in the Big Apple.


It was all rounded off by a display of chopstick and table barbecuing skills.

~fin~

(Because I can think of no wittier way to end than that)

PS. The mysterious Indie Bloggers post will indeed be appearing tomorrow!