Trip to Washington

The weekend after Kit’s visit, I flew up to Washington with my mom. We spent the first few nights at Aunt Kate and Uncle Hal’s home. Hal took us to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. They have a pedestrian bridge next door with glass by Chihuly. One section has a wall filled with glass sculptures, while another has glass objects suspended in the ceiling. The organic, sea-life-inspired works were fascinating.

Portion of Chihuly Glass Wall of Scuptures

Portion of Chihuly Glass Ceiling

Hal and Mom Outside of the Hot Shop

Saturday night I got a rare chance to have dinner with some of my cousins. It was wonderful to get to meet their spouses and children.

On Sunday we drove down to Shelton to visit my paternal grandparents. They are doing well. I went fishing with my grandfather at low tide, but found it too cold to keep at it for long. Grandpa caught a beautiful silver trout and we called it a day. The following morning we went for a quick walk before we left for the airport. It is such a beautiful part of the world.

Visit from Kit

For a wonderful long weekend in the middle of February, my friend Kit came to visit. We went to Brazos Bend to see the alligators and birds. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring binoculars. But we didn’t need them for the alligators! This one insisted on sunning himself on the path to the observation tower. After several timid efforts to convince him to move, with only moderate success, we gave up and turned around.

Later that weekend, we explored the tunnels underneath Houston and went to the public lobby on the 60th floor of the JP Morgan skyscraper. Not being fond of heights, Kit only got this close to the windows by keeping her back to the view.

We also spent quite a few hours working on a cross stitch project. You can see a picture of Kit’s on her blog at: http://kitdunsmore.wordpress.com/

I’ll post a picture of mine as a reward to myself for finishing it. Right now, I’m a little more than halfway done.

Some interesting links:

The first one is a wonderful combination of science and art. These pictures are taken of polarized light being diffracted by ice. They are quite beautiful!

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16388-frizions

The second one is even more geeky. It’s an animation of the building of the International Space Station.

http://www.tietronix.com/anim/MoviePlayer.asp?myMovie=movies/assembly640x360.swf

Enjoy!

What I really did over the holiday…

On a whim, Brandon and I got out the LEGO’s and decided to build an elaborate castle. This is what we came up with:

Castle Front

Brandon built an ornate throne room inside, but there was no way to take a picture.

Castle front Close-up

Note the skeleton hanging from the chains in the dungeon.

Castle side

Note the spider web and the ladder leading up to the watch tower.

Castle back

This shot shows some of the defenses Brandon built, from the catapults on the right to the (not actually visible) cannons on the left. And yes, our castle has a stained-glass window!