Six Mile Creek

Another post? Shock horror! What has the world come to?

Yesterday I took Cody out for a 2 hr walk to Six Mile Creek. It involved lots of walking, lots of stopping to pee on stuff and a bit of scrambling up/down steep slopes and trying not to fall in the river. It was good. I've got to get some film and take my real camera there one time. The photos from the little digital are not very good but they will have to do for now. Again, click on them if you would like to see them bigger.







These are from when I decided to have an adventure on the way home. It was fun, but we ended up having to back-track to actually get home. We just got to a point along the river where I could have gotten past, but Cody probably would have fallen in the river and pulled me in after. Didn't get any photos of that point as I was to busy tring not to fall in the river. Maybe next time!


This was taken after we climbed up a tiny hill and then walked along the ridge a bit. The only way down from here was to back-track, to jump off, or to scramble down a very steep slope. We opted for the latter, or at least I did. I let Cody off his lead so we didn't end up dragging each other down the slope and what did he do? He just ran face first down to the path and played with sticks while I tried not to fall face first down the slope. Ah, the benefits of having four legs and a tail.


Here is a photo from the bottom of the lookout. Couldn't really climb down there with a dog.


And last, but not least, a picture of Cody. This was the best one I could get as he wasn't being very cooperative with the camera. Maybe he doesn't like having his picture taken. Sorry about the shadow.

Salamanders

Gah! So after about 30 mins of trying to log into stupid flickr to upload the photos it still won't let me sign in. I give up! You can just deal with small photos and then click on them to get bigger ones if you want. So angry!

I went out at about 11pm last Thursday night to go salamander hunting. I went with a couple of my friends to a golf course where we wandered around in the rain and the dark looking for salamanders with torches. Salamanders are pretty cool.
Here is a male Spotted Salamander:


And a female:


And a juvenile:


They pretty much look the same, huh? If you look closely you can see that the male has a bulge at the base of his tail and that the female is fat and full of eggs. The juvenile was just smaller I guess...

We also found some Jefferson Salamanders:


These guys are really fast, but they get confused when you shine your torch on them or put your hand in front of them. Then they just sit there stupidly for a couple of minutes before racing off again.

Because it had rained all the worms were out, and I can tell you that the worms here are massive! Here is a photo I took with my feet for reference:


We also found a couple of frogs. A green frog (I think that's what it was) and a peeper. They are called peepers because they make a very high pitched repetitive peeping noise (surprise, surprise), which sometimes make it feel like your brain is about to explode.
Green frog:


Peeper (these guys are tiny):


We tried to find an elusive Leopard frog, but they were all really far into the marsh. Alas. Thanks to Abby and Jonah for taking me out with them!

Hello again. Aren't you lucky? Two posts in quick succession. This probably won't happen again.

There are several things on the agenda today. Firstly, I will tell you what animals and birds I have seen recently. I even have a couple of photos. Next, I will give you all a look at my lovely room. I even tidied a bit! And last but not least, I will tell you about my dinosaur. It's a great story.

1. Animals and Birds.
I saw a mink the other day. Apparently that is pretty rare. Yay for me! It was too far away for a photo, sorry. Also some chipmunks yesterday, again, too far away for photos.
Today at the Lab of O there was a Great Blue Heron in it's nest. That was pretty sweet. I also saw a Red-tailed hawk, both sitting above the door of the Lab and then again soaring on the thermals. I saw some other birds too but they're probably not that interesting to you guys.


This is the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), doing it's thing.


And some Canada Geese (Branta canadensis)

2. Here are some pictures of my room and stuff.


This is my desk. I practically live here. My bed is redundant.


Me drying some clothes. Terribly exciting, I know. (I just noticed that my owl shirt upside down looks like a robot. heh)



Cool poster I stole from a telegraph pole.

3. Now, this is what you've been waiting for! So, we went to the pub last night (a school night, in hindsight not the greatest idea...) and I saw this guy with some dinosaurs. Anyway, I convinced him to let me keep one. All for a look at my passport. People are silly.
Wasn't that a great story? I know right.


Apparently it is a Pinacosaurus. Oh, and those are my mountains of flashcards for Ornithology. Fun times.

I am hopefully going to Princeton to visit a friend on the weekend so you never know, you might get more riveting stories next week!

Boring post

Hello,

Seeing as I have been getting many complaints about the lack of updates recently I thought I would fill you all in on what has been going on. In short, not much.
In a few more words, since the snowman I have had two exams and two assignments due. My schedule for the two weeks since then and now went something like this: Study all week, don't get much sleep and then go to the pub on Friday. Not very interesting, right?
The one interesting thing that did happen in the past fortnight came in the form of going to a gig. Check it, it was pretty awesome:

http://www.myspace.com/johnbrownsbody


Spring break is but a week away so stay tuned for something more interesting. I may be heading up to Canada, but if not I will have some time to explore Ithaca.
Oh, and it's been really warm so all the snow melted.

Now let me get back to studying!

Here are some scribbles I did when my brain melted from studying.









Also, daylight savings happened last night and completely screwed me over sleepwise. gah!

Snowman 101

So we had about 2 feet of snow on Thursday/Friday and most of it is still there. It was pretty fun. Lots of classes got cancelled, there was a mega snowball fight in the Arts quad (which I missed unfortunately) and I went sledding!

I don't have any photos of sledding (sorry), mainly because I didn't want to kill the camera and also because we were sledding in the dark. I am so jealous of people who grew up in the snow. Sledding is ridiculously fun, even if you do end up soaked to the bone and freezing. Even if you do plough face first into snow drifts and end up upside-down. Even if you start facing forwards and end up sliding down the hill backwards with no knowledge of whether you are going to hit a jump or not. Even if you do collide with other people sledding on the same hill. Can't comment on the funness of sledding after hitting a tree however. I managed to avoid that one.

After we got tired of walking back up the hill we made a snowman. Well, we started to make a snowman but it turned into a rather self-conscious snowbear. You know how in the cartoons making a snowman consists of rolling a small ball of snow along the ground as it picks up more and more snow until it becomes a perfect sphere of snow? Well, that is false. TV lies people. Snowmen actually get made like this.

Snowman 101

1. First you grab a handful of snow and squish into a ball-esque shape. Then you put it on the ground and it immediately sinks out of sight into the snow.
2. After scrounging around for a while you give up on that snowball and make another, larger snowball. You then kneel in the snow and begin to roll the ball along.
3. The snowball does indeed pick up more snow, but it does this in such a fashion that your ball begins to develop angles and becomes rather cubiod in shape.
4. At this point you need to start to pack the snow, otherwise when you try to roll it you will just end up pushing bits of snow off your "ball" and you will not gain any additional snow.
5. Continue rolling (and by rolling I mean push the "ball" over on it's angles) and packing your snowball until it becomes too heavy to push any further. Be careful here as overenthusiastic pushing can lead to accidental destruction of the snowball as you put your arm through it by mistake.
6. Now you have a choice, you can either admit defeat and base the size of your snowman on the size of this ball, or you can call for help and continue along with the added strength from your friends.
7. Once your snowball has reached an appropriate size you can now attempt to reshape the cubiod into a ball shape. This can be done by packing the snow, or by adding extra snow to certain places.
8. Repeat steps 1 - 7 to make a torso and head for your snowman. Friends can be utilised here save time, and seriously, who makes a snowman by themselves anyway?
9. Once you have three hopefully semi-spherical snow balls of decreasing size you now face the task of putting them on top of one another. Friends are useful here as well.
There are two common methods of snowman assembly: the Lift and the Roll.
The Lift is relatively simple, however it may require a bit more strength than the Roll:
1. Lift the torso of the snowman onto the base.
2. Lift the head of the snowman onto the torso.
The Roll is a bit more difficult, especially if you are making a large snowman:
1. Roll the torso of the snowman up the side of the base until it rests on top.
2. Roll the head of the snowman up the side of the base and the torso until it rests on top.
10. Now that your snowman is assembled you should pack some extra snow into the joins to prevent the head/torso from rolling off.
11. If you like you can also take this time as an opportunity to reshape your snowman. You can make him look like a traditional snowman with three spherical segments, or you can add or remove snow to give him a more radical shape. Snow can also be used to add extra appendages, ears for example, or a tail. Sticks are often utilised as arms for snowmen, however, depending on your location they may be hard to find.
12. Once you are happy with the overall shape of your snowman it is time to add accessories. Traditional accessories are a top hat, a scarf, a carrot nose, coal eyes and a pipe. A straw broom can also be added for extra effect. Quite often these type of accessories are difficult to come by so you may need to improvise.
13. You should now have a fine looking snowman to call your own. If you are so inclined it is possible to pour water on the snowman to induce shininess and to help the snowman last longer before melting.

Happy building!

P.S. All the photos of the snowbear can be seen here, on the book of faces.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=157659&id=514591710&l=80445468fb

awkward times

Scene: It's Friday night, I walk into the kitchen. Two girls from my floor are sitting at the table.

Me: So, is anything exciting happening tonight?

Girl: Do you like God?

Me: ... ... ... err... I don't have any objection to him...

AWKWARD SILENCE

shortly followed by

AWKWARD LAUGHTER

They then continued on to their church club meeting.

Don't get me wrong, those girls are my friends, I just thought I had to share the moment with you all.

I will post more news shortly, but for now, enjoy this photo of a streetlight in the snow that looks like stars.

squirrels ^_^

SQUIRREL TRACKS! They go bouncing across the snow. So cute!







They're pretty quick so the photos aren't that great. I plan on getting more though. Most people have gotten used to me pointing and yelling "squirrel!" whenever I see one though.

MEGA POST

Yeah I know, it's been almost two weeks since I last posted. Sorry, I've been busy. Never fear though, I will reward your patience with several posts!
Lots of stuff happened during O-week but as I am still not very good at taking copious numbers of digital photos I only have photos of a few things.

After I moved into my room I went to dinner with some people from my floor. They're pretty cool. We had "tex-mex" - Americanised mexican food. It wasn't too bad, but that could have been because I got vegetarian... no photo, sorry.

The next morning I woke up to snow falling outside my window!

Though by the time I left to meet up with the other exchange kids for lunch it had stopped. I did take some photos on the way to Collegetown though.





There are heaps of utes around with snowplows on them which I find pretty amusing. I am yet to get a photo though...

Anyway, lunch was good. Collegetown Bagels (CTB) is a place that I think I will practically live in this year. CTB is seemingly staffed almost entirely by cute boys ^_^ plus they make pretty good sandwiches.
That night my new friends (from floor 3) dragged me out to a frat party. Some guy called Afroman was playing there. All the yanks semed pretty excited about it, and the fact that he was playing in their living room was pretty awesome. Unfortunately his "music" sucked balls (look it up), was not original AND my little brother Connor has a better afro than him.
I attempted to take some photos but they aren't very good. I was also told that frat parties usually aren't like that. We shall see....


The party scene in Ithaca seems to be centred around frat parties, mainly due to the fact that you can easily drink if you are underage.

The next couple of days were filled with orientation events where I met a bunch of people ane ate a lot of free food.
We had a trivia night (our international group failed spectacularly at all the America sport and history questions), casino night and Rec-o-rama (where we played wii bowling and rock-band-hero-whatever). Turns out I'm pretty good at wii bowling (5 strikes in a row) and half decent at imaginary guitar.

We also had a tour of the Johnson Art Museum. It has some pretty cool stuff in it, including a Monet (on loan), as well as an awesome view of the campus and lake.



Well, that will do for now. I will post some more random photos shortly.

<3 ek

Phase 2 - Getting to Ithaca

Upon arriving at my hostel I was greeted by a full dorm room and a top bunk with a very spiky mattress.
There was a European couple who insisted on sleeping in the same bed, a skater dude from DC, some bogans from the Gold Coast (more on them later) and a pair of Canadian sisters (Sarah and Judie).

Now, Sarah and Judie had come to NY for a couple of days to go see Spacehog (cyberhog, spacepig, intergalactic swine) and were driving back to Toronto the next day, conveniently driving right through Ithaca. They offered me a lift. Usually I would politely decline and get the bus instead, just in case they were axe murderers, but they were roughly parent-age and were very nice (one had kids and the other was a Sunday school teacher). I was going to go with them to the gig but it was sold out. Instead I stayed in and went to sleep (or tried to sleep on my mattress made of springs with fabric on top).

The next morning we got up to leave and were regaled with stories of the bogan's night out. Apparently they had gone to the meat packing district (not sure if this is a euphemism for something else or not) and had paid $800 to get into a club. Once inside the club they then paid a further $500 for a bottle of vodka. They must have bought more though as they said their final bill was in excess of $2500. This is US$ mind you. They then preceded to brag about the fact that they got the bill lowered to $450 because one of their friends got peed on.
What are you supposed to say to something like that? Well done guys? Wow, that must have been fun? Stupid bogans.

Anyway, before we left NY we got some pizza for lunch. It was pretty tasty. And the pieces are so big you have to fold them over to be able to eat them.



Also, a photo down the street outside the hostel.

The trip was pretty uneventful. I jumped in some snow at a petrol station and they didn't murder me and bury me in the woods. Judie had some pretty whacky stories to tell though. Including one that started with "One time I had a hooker stay with me for a while. She robbed banks." That's not a phrase you hear every day.

We got to Ithaca at about 6pm so it was dark and cold. I stayed the night at a B&B owned by a very nice couple, Colleen and Evan. After I put my bags in my room Colleen drove me to the supermarket to get some food and then in the morning she took me to my dorm.
I took some photos of the B&B because it was amazing. It's an 1863 house that they fixed up. I was going to take more photos this morning before I left but I forgot to turn the alarm on so I overslept (I set it, just forgot to turn it on).




And some photos that I took from the top of the stairs this morning.



So much snow!