Life in the swamp, and out of it

This won't be new to those of you who read my LiveJournal, because it's essentially a clone of an entry there. I'm thinking of maintaining that as a "clone" of content, just because. We'll see in time; the essential point for now is that there's no need to read both of them.

Second of all, life's been crazy lately. I'm in Florida with the family, trying to stay out of the sun and catch up on rest. I say "trying" because I'm running around madly trying to get ready for England - a million more things always seem to come up at the last minute. Fingers crossed and all that. In my free time, I've been going to the gym and getting caught up on my reading while I'm on the elliptical trainer. I haven't been so good at keeping up with the correspondence - I owe e-mail to everyone.

A few weeks ago I did get to spend some time in New York and visit my relatives in the area, as well as some old friends from my undergraduate days. That was really nice - everyone seems to be doing well, and the city wasn't even ungodly hot most of the time I was there. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens were lovely, as they are for much of the year; the rose and water lily blooms were especially impressive. I also went to the Frick, where I'd never been before. It's a nice little collection, with some Vermeers and lovely medieval altarpieces, but I must say I got the impression that Frick gave his agent instructions simply to raid the studios of Gainsborough and Whistler. Whistler I adore, but I've always considered Gainsborough overrated as a portraitist, both on technical and expressive grounds. I suppose that makes me a philistine, but such is life.

I also went to the American Museum of Natural History, where I would never go ordinarily - looking at taxidermied animals is not my idea of fun (even if they were shot 100-150 years ago, Before Anyone Knew Better), and the dark lighting and boatloads of screaming children hardly add to the appeal. But they had two special exhibits I really wanted to see. The first was one on frogs - more than 200 live frogs were there in terrariums (terraria, properly), on loan from a reptile conservation centre. So many species - miniature golden frogs from China, huge American bullfrogs, poison dart frogs and mimics (more than in Montreal's Biodome, even), Vietnamese moss frogs (guess how they got their name), ornate horned frogs, and my personal favourite, the Mexican dumpy frog. It's far from dumpy-looking - it's a gorgeous, almost iridescent jade tone, with golden spots and - this is the best part - golden flecks in its eyes. Absolutely beautiful.

There was also an exhibit on mythical creatures, which runs through next January. What they've done is to divide a major wing of one floor into four sections: water, fire, air, and earth. They've got both papier-mache/fibreglass "life-size" creatures (dragons, sea monsters, unicorns, giant eagles) of their own creation and artifacts from cultures worldwide - engravings, prints, masks, amulets, costumes, totems, and other materials depicting all kinds of mer-people, dragons, sea monsters, giant birds and bird hybrids, flying horses, unicorns, you name it. There's a bit of rationalization in the tone - "When the Greeks wrote of Cyclopses, clearly they'd seen x fossil and were misinterpreting" - where it wasn't justified and more credit was due to imagination, but overall I was very impressed. There was another exhibit, co-sponsored by Tiffany's, on the geological and cultural history of gold. I went because it was three-for-two admission, but I was rather disappointed: it explored only a few historical/cultural periods, all in a very cursory fashion, and went with a lot of huge displays of mass-produced ingots and coins minted in the last 30 years. The bad lighting didn't help. On the positive side, at least I didn't have to pay to see it.

Closer to Florida-home, the butterfly garden is flourishing despite the heat, and there always seem to be a couple of swallowtails and yellow sulfurs flitting about, as well as metalmarks, various kinds of fritillaries, and the occasional hummingbird. Mom saw a bunny in the yard today, and one of the wrens has recently taken to hanging around one of the shrubs where the dogs like to bark and sniff for lizards. (They never catch any - the barking in advance tends to alert them.) I hope she finds a good spot to nest; she usually does. And a few evenings ago, Hops pointed out an owl on our evening walk. I hear them all the time, but it's hard to catch more than the occasional glimpse. But Buddha was intently sniffing something and refused to move, and I noticed that Hops, rather than getting antsy, was staring up at the top of a light post, and actually "pointing" (it's reflexive for [part-]labs and pointers). I followed his nose, and there was a barred owl, sitting in the light and watching us intently. I pointed it out to Dad, and we spent a few minutes just staring us. It stared back and watched us as we went on. Hops did feel compelled to bark at it at that point, probably to say hello (knowing Hops), and it flew off to a nearby tree. It was incredible. The evening walks are terrific, actually, if I remember to apply insect repellent - about a week ago, I was able to watch a bat dancing in the air on its bug-catching routine. It's a pity so many people dislike bats; vampire ones excepted, they are beautiful, beautiful creatures.

The heat's a little much, of course, and on Tuesday I'm off to visit Montreal, with a possible side trip to Toronto. I'm looking forward to that, although I should get an edited copy of my thesis ready first. Before I do that, though, I should make good on my promise to provide pictures of my other animals, as they are in fact the loves of my life. That said, they're pretty photo-resistant, so I will simply provide links to images of breed representatives that are not a tenth as pretty. Violet, the love of my life, seems to be a flame-point Siamese who is far more beautiful than already-cute cats like these ones - these examples really don't do her justice, but she hates cameras. Zeke, as far as we can tell, to be a red Doberman, a far cuter version of this. He, too, has natural ears, although the vicious idiots who had him before our vet got him into the rescue league did dock his tail, which we certainly never would have done. The dear departed Freckles, when sleeping, looked astonishingly like this. He had a "tuxedo" coat and amber eyes, and liked to lick butter straight out of the tub. His predecessor, Cato, was a tall, fat, black-and-white short-hair with yellow-green eyes. He had a dull personality but a very good heart.