Omaha Zoo pt 3 - A bunch of other stuff

After the Aquarium, we went to see stuff in the Butterfly and Insect Pavilion, Giraffe house, Orangutan house and Big Cat house.

Leaf BUG!!! It blows my mind that this is a bug.

This giraffe was intent on looking for food on the ground instead of eating the easy to get and abundant hay available located in many other spots. Love the splayed legs.

Contemplation

This tiger kept cracking open its eye to look at us while trying to nap.

Snow leopard

Omaha Zoo pt 2 - Aquarium

The Omaha Zoo also has a great aquarium. Trogdor loved seeing the sea turtles and even got to sit on one.

There was a penguin section and even a half sphere insert into the exhibit where you could get an up-close look at the penguins.

King Penguin saying hi!

Macaroni penguins and some boys

They also had a cool tunnel with a huge aquarium around.

 They also had a jellyfish display. I LOVE taking pictures of jellyfish. They are so beautiful and magical to watch.

Sea Nettles

 

 

 

This one looks like it is doing a excited jump to me!

 

Moon jellies

An alien mother-ship

Omaha Zoo pt 1

For Spring Break last week, we decided to do an over-night trip to Omaha to go to the Omaha zoo. We've been in the Midwest for over 5 years and hadn't gone yet so we thought that it would be a good time. We had a bit of rainy weather, however, we had already planned to mostly visit the inside exhibits since we're still rather cold in the Midwest in the middle of March. I thought I'd share some pictures that I took there.

We went to the Wild Kingdom Pavilion first and there were lots of cool exhibits of various animals. The coolest thing about that building was the Archer fish.The archer fish spray out some water to get their insect prey. It stuns them and then they can get the bug. The docent was telling us all about it. We were so interested in what she was saying that she ran back and got some crickets for us to feed to the fish. It was so fun to see them getting the crickets by spraying water up. The boys got water all over them. Mad Scientist said he remembered a book they read as kids that had a section about Archer fish and it was neat to see them in real life.

Cool spotted tree frog

This is one of the largest bullfrogs I've ever seen. The docent said they can get up to 1 or 2 pounds!

The curves of this snake was so aesthetically pleasing. I put it in black and white do emphasize the curves.

Cool looking horn nosed snake

 After that, we headed to the Desert Dome. It is a large geodesic dome over a desert landscape.

The boys thought this book looked like a good candidate for being an Angry Bird. He did look kind of grumpy.

I love these cactus trees in the red soil. Yes, and those are random ducks. Desert ducks?

CED contemplating the geodesic dome above.

The boys were very fascinated with all the cactus around. I had them take some funny cactus pictures that made it look like they were getting poked.

Trogdor doesn't look like he's in much pain.

Now that's pain!

This was my favorite cactus. It's the Teddy Bear cactus. I don't think I'd want to hug it even if it is kind of cute.

Long Time No Write

Sorry Folks. It has been a LONG time. I'm trying to mend my ways and hope to be posting more regularly. As a come back post, I thought it would be fun to write about Procrastination. From the well-beloved (in our home) website, Despair.com:

Unfortunately, Mad Scientist and I are both procrastinators. The only good thing about us both being procrastinators is that we procrastinate together! Yay!

Anyway. So, since we moved to Why-Oh-Uh roughly 5 1/2 years ago, I had so many dreams and projects for our new house. It was like a blank canvas waiting to be filled. I had a vision of some wall art for our dining room. I did the first stage roughly 5 years ago. Yeah. Here's my post on my succulent wall art.

I got an idea for the largest wall of the dining room that involved a fusion of some of my interests (math) and Mad Scientist's interests (bikes). I envisioned something with bike gears in the shape of the Golden Spiral.

I even put a call to friends and family for old bike cassettes and cogs. I asked to buy a bunch of parts off of a local bike shop and after describing it, they gave me a box full of parts for free. I had all these bike parts in our garage for 3.5 years. YEARS!! Finally, in fall of 2016, I cleaned off a bunch and sprayed them. I had to spray them before the temperature dropped too much otherwise the spray paint wouldn't stick. I was so proud of myself and thought, I can finally get the wall art up.

But, I found out I didn't have enough to make it look nice. I stored them and waited for Summer of 2017 to get more ready. I finally enlisted the aid of Mad Scientist to clean off the gears for me (he did an excellent job! They were really grimy.) And on one of the last days of warmth in fall of 2017 (yes, a whole year later!! Never mind that we had a whole lot of warm days during Spring and summer of 2017), I sprayed the last of the gears and got them ready.

By then, I was on a roll and I ended up putting it up in one afternoon. I borrowed a projector from a friend and we projected the spiral on the wall. Then we used some painters tape to outline the spiral on the wall. The next day, I laid the spiral out on the floor to make sure I had enough gears and I did! Then I used thumbtacks to put them up temporarily. Then I used my white nails (that I probably bought 4 years ago for the project) and hammered them all in. Finally, I was done! Here's the final project. (It is so geeky but especially apt since Pi Day is coming up in a few days!)

I added some cool faux succulent air plants into some of the larger cassettes. 

I guess I was able to finally able to finish one of my U.F.O's (Un-Finished Objects) and now I just have a dozen more to go. Maybe I'll get done before all my boys graduate and move out!