The biggest, happiest surprise of our trip to DC last week was the unplanned viewing of Yellow Mountain: China's Ever-Changing Landscape in the Sackler Gallery. Containing drawings and photographs of Mount Huangshan, the images were truly breathtaking. The drawings were on scrolls, sometimes measuring 6 feet in height or 20+ feet in width and made with remarkable precision. The photos were confined to overhead projections, creating remarkable, beautiful scenes covering a large wall into gallery.

I was very quick to order the supporting book with Wang Wusheng's stunning photographs that evening. Even before the Olympic coverage of the country, I was considering how beautiful it would be to tour China someday. This collection may go a long way in encouraging that trip.

I think the heron is officially getting mad at me now.

I invade her space, constantly point a camera at her, and disturb her when she is trying to scavenge for food. Plus, now that the water is receding in her pond, I can walk a bit closer towards her home than she would probably like.

I realize this is a really jerky human way to respond. But then I look at my fun pictures and can't help but try it again. I suspect I'm going to end up on one of those funniest home video shows when a heron is pecking out my eyes.

But I bet I get a neat picture out of it.

Three books of short stories have been on my repetitive read list for the past year now, Margo Lanagan's Black Juice, White Time, and Red Spikes.

It is hard for me to assign these collections into a genre; while the basis is fantasy and/or sci-fi, it is rare that any setting or theme ever shines above the personal conflict that is impacting the lead character. I truly can't think of a writer who can, in the short span of a paragraph, create an foreign environment, assign a person to it, and tell a story that uses the sometimes completely unique situation as a mere backdrop for conflicts that expose the simplest fears and anxieties.

I don't always find the stories to be the easiest of reads. Sometimes a setting can be so unusual that I feel like I missed something critical after my first read and return to consume the story again. I'm rarely disappointed by the need and usually happy to find something new upon my second scanning of the text.

Like most short story collections, a few tales will stand above the rest. The title tale of White Time combines the anxiety of the scientific unknown with the equal anxiety of choosing a future career. Red Spikes' A Feather In The Breast of God, by contrast, is a compelling tale of an unusual savior. Finally, Black Juice's Singing My Sister Down is a horrific tale in its seemingly commonplace setting and possibly one of the best short stories I've ever read.

I'm anxiously awaiting the October release of Tender Morsels. And, to amusingly plug my never-ever-ever-accessed Amazon Associates links, one can find these books in the Marketplace for literally pennies.

Water Polo

This is a sport I've always had a fascination with even though the opportunity to watch it has been minimal. It sounds fairly stupid to admit, but I'm not sure I ever realized they played in the Olympic pool, meaning, that they had to tread water for the entire match. How the players can seemingly float stationary and pass, fire a ball into the net, or block a shot, amazes be nearly beyond words.

10k Open Water Swim

All I'm going to say is, I swam .3 miles yesterday and was pretty much dead the entire afternoon.

Marathon

I really don't think much of marathon running; to me, it seems to cross a line from sport to something that is just really wrong to do to the body. That said, to see 38 year old Constantina Tomescu from Romania win was pretty exciting, even if I did fall asleep for the apparently very moving final lap in the stadium.

Diving (again)

For as much fun as it was to watch the Chinese diving, it was equally fun to watch the Australian underdog Matthew Mitcham sneak out a win in the 10m platform final. Again for me to point out the obvious, I'm not sure I realized just how fast somebody falls when they jump from 30+ feet in the air; it was the wide-angle, far away shot during the competition that really made me realize just how...crazy?...incredible the diving really is.

Trampoline

An apparatus truly designed, commissioned, and implemented by the devil, there is probably not a more tempting, exciting, and yet ultimately painful thing to do in this world than jump on a trampoline. So when I see folks actually compete on it, I can't help but be envious. Actually, I missed most of the events this year but for the finals; I seem to recall watching the preliminary rounds in 2004 which was full of many more missteps and crashes. Commenting on (and, okay, enjoying) this probably makes me a small person, but I can live with that.

Photos swiped from http://en.beijing2008.cn

Yep, I'm a shameless Amazon shill

The primary reason for our trip to DC the other day was to see the Jim Henson Fantastic World Exhibit at the Smithsonian International Gallery. I was excited to see this, but at the same time had low expectations, figuring it would be a small exhibit of puppets (Muppets) and maybe a few videos I've watched numerous times.

I'm glad I was wrong.

Yes, there were Muppets and videos, but also lots if early photographs, sketches, and storyboards showing the evolution of a young Henson into a visionary who made a unique mark on television that nobody has ever equaled. The videos were fun as well; there were many old clips of shows including commercials prior to the significant Muppet-fame that I had never seen before. I even enjoyed watching young kids run around the play area which was highlighted with a cool video feed to a puppet stage that kids were able to freely put on chaotic shows.

I respected the "no photography" rule, but not the rules of web-etiquette, so here are some images I swiped from the Smithsonian website.

We took a long-needed day off today and spent it downtown, visiting (amongst other things) the new Newseum, the first time we had visited it since it moved from its previous home in Rosslyn.

The new building is a fairly remarkable structure, boasting a beautiful terrace view of the Capitol, a fancy set of Wonka-esque glass elevators to get visitors up there, and an army of green-suited well-positioned employees who spend a good deal of time explaining every detail of the museum. There is also the exhibits, a variety of historic news papers, daily front pages, history lessons, photographs, and icons of news history.

It is also big; much more roomy than the old location, with apparently no expense spared in making it look modern and slick.

I suspect, during the planning, that there was a lot of discussion as to how best represent 9/11 without making it the 9/11 museum. Really, they did this well. For a good deal of the tour, 9/11 is a significant news story, but not more than any other event. But then there is a dedicated exhibit to the tragedy, flanked by a large portion of a damaged antenna that stood on the north tower and video/audio footage of reporters and camera operators intimate experiences, including a series of last shots from a photographer who perished in the fall of the second tower.

And yet, it still took me a few minutes to realize why there were tissues in fancy boxes around the exhibit. Face it, they don't pay me to think on my day off.

I've heard some criticism of the new home for the museum, and it certainly was a long time coming from the previous home. And while I can be a hard sell on these types of things, by the end I was happy we made the decision to visit.

We are now just about five days from the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics and both Nicole and I are starting to find it sad that it is nearly over.

I'm also kinda sad to realize that, come 2012, I'll probably remember virtually nothing about the events of this two weeks. It is strange, but for what is so compelling now (and was in 2004) is destined to be lost from my brain by a wave of Simpson's episodes and microorganism photographs.

So, here is what I have enjoyed, with the thought that maybe I'll read this in four years.

Swimming / Michael Phelps

Yeah, the coverage on this guy is getting a tad bit overwhelming, but when you are the best in the world at something, that tends to happen. It really was exciting to watch him dominate so many races, and the two miracle .01 second wins did have a certain destiny aura about them.

Diving

The last time I tried an actual dive off a diving board, I hit the water forehead-first, producing an immediate and long-lasting headache that has encouraged me to not try the maneuver again. Long before I get into the fascination of the synchronized diving or the dominance of China's team and Guo Jingjing, I'm just amazed they can perform these feats with such grace, little splash, and apparent lack of headaches.

Gymnastics

The true thief of my sleep this week, as much as I try to not get sucked into these competitions, I just can't look away. Lots of controversy around the judging, as usual, I suppose, but at the end of it all, just about every deserving character (Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Cheng Feicame, and the rest of the exciting Chinese team) came away with a Gold and many Silver medals, so I suspect it is all good.

Badminton

That's right, badminton. And China's Lin Dan who just went into a goofy rage after winning the Gold, including firing his shoes into the crowd...which I'm not sure is such a great souvenir.

More later...

(images swiped from http://www.cbc.ca, http://www.chinadiving.com, http://results.beijing2008.cn, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn respectively)

It is what the title says.

Went out early today to see the heron.

Then, back in the afternoon, when he was scurrying for food.

And then she got mad.

There were some great yellow finches also, but they were just no match in the attention-gaining event.

Funny thing, when I went out this morning, I walked past the gang of folks and dogs (see two posts down) and was greeted with remarkable, angry howls from one of the German Shepherds. When I got close, the beast lunged at me, much to the surprise of his owner (who, oddly, didn't think that angry howls was anything to be upset about prior to the attempted mauling).

Well, perhaps it wasn't that funny of a thing, but I suspected that the cause of the doggy agitation was either caused by the devil being in my eye (rare for me to wander out early on a Saturday with camera in hand, especially after staying up late to watch the Olympics), or perhaps I couldn't fund a scrunchy to hold back my bedhead hair...combined with a couple days of beard growth, I probably looked a bit more apeman than human.

Our resident black squirrel

When we stand out on the deck with a peanut, he'll come right up to us to beg for a treat. Yesterday he gave my toe a long smell, but thankfully determined it wasn't food.

A group of people, walking a group of dogs, walking towards them, fingers pointed, yelling, "is that a baby heron!" quite loudly.

It is possible that young herons dislike many things, but the description above is one I'm certain of. For the record, it doesn't make folks taking pictures of them very happy either.

That said, I totally get the joy in spotting these birds. There are four now that are hanging around the local swamp, two great blues (including the youngster above) and two green herons. They are starting to attract a small following as well; as I sneaked into a wooded area trying to get a picture of the birds from behind their wet fortress (receiving about 20 mosquito bites in the process), I must have watched 30 or more people walk or bicycle nearby, all pausing to peek at the wonderful creatures. Some days I can bike for over one hour on these trails and pass maybe 10 or less people, so perhaps the birds are supporting healthy hikes and rides for our lethargic neighbors. Good for them.

Although I don't do much hardcore programming at my job anymore, sometimes I take on a small project just to keep myself sharp as well as avoiding the need to outsource an easy project.

Nearly five months ago, we put an online registration live to support a free conference downtown. Because it was free and didn't require a login to join, there were a few problems along the way with somebody using a bot to register bogus entries through a transparent proxy. But, for the most part, the site held true and no real problems surfaced.

With the conference starting this week, I woke up 2 a.m. on Sunday morning with a substantial fear (possibly from a nightmare) that I had captured the data wrong and that nearly 1,500 people were all going to wrong breakout sessions because of my coding errors. I kept myself awake for probably 45 minutes debating if this was possible (of course it was possible) and if I was dumb enough to make this error (of course I'm dumb enough).

But, as of this afternoon, there hasn't been any panicked calls about participant riots at the conference, so I'm fairly comfortable either my data collection has been accurate or folks are too stupid to know they are in the wrong breakout session.

Seriously, I have had some awful jobs and job situations over the years, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times the workplace has kept me awake. I'm usually very good at calming (or suppressing) my daily life to get a reasonable amount of sleep, but this one site...probably the least stressful aspect of my job over the past few months...really got to me. Weird.

There aren't too many things that cause us to not go out for dinner on a Friday night, but the opening ceremony to the Olympics did the trick last night. With a pizza ordered online, we plopped in front of the television for four hours last night from the opening countdown to the flame shooting high into the sky...and all kinds of neat stuff in between.

And my favorite related news headline comes from leSoleil, the online Quebec newspaper: Spectacle d’ouverture des JO: WOW !

Yep, wow.

A number of weeks ago, I collected a few pond water samples that I have let fester in jars by a window in our rather warm upstairs.

And stuff keeps growing.

I blindly bought what turned out to be a fairly nice book on microorganisms which, I'm hoping, will eventually allow me to say, "look at this picture of {intelligent sounding name} instead of "weird swimming thing."

But for now, it is weird swimming thing. Actually, it got all hung up in a glob of goo and was fighting like mad to get free. In this shot, it just about cut loose.

Okay, here is the cute kitten picture.

The shot is entirely uncharacteristic of her insane personality. This is probably a better indication of how she acts most of the time.

Poor Oz; he really couldn't be more patient with her.

Sasha is much more used to the nut running around now, but still prefers to watch from a distance.