Aquatic Adventures

The Shedd Aquarium is one of those places that I like to visit approximately once every eighteen months. Any more frequent and the cacophony of the touristy, toddler-laden crowd puts an irksome damper on the experience; any less and I start to wonder about the new exhibits or if a baby beluga whale has been born.

This time I went with the boy and some friends from work. We all bought Groupons that included full access to the aquarium and all its exhibits, a live aquatic show, and a "4-D" movie. The latter was a roughly 15-minute 3-D film with some physical elements like water being sprayed and the chair rumbling at opportune times. Then there came a scene where something would pop out on screen and our chairs would poke us in the back! A thoroughly unsettling experience indeed.

On this trip I also brought my trusty T3i along in hopes of getting some fun shots. I realized rather quickly that taking pictures in an aquarium can be fairly tricky. Lighting is often pretty low, glass can be smudged with fingerprints and your subjects are usually wriggling to and fro. An excellent opportunity to practice shutter speeds and exposure. Luckily among the many blurry and underexposed duds I took, I managed to find a few decent or otherwise fun shots to share.

Beluga whales: nature's Apple product

These elusive guys were digging a hole by scooping rocks in their mouths and depositing them elsewhere.

Blue freckled stingray

Grandpa fish

Obligatory Nemo picture

Sacs of baby sharks (wriggling inside)! This was all sorts of fascinating.

A trip to the Shedd is always a pleasant reminder of how extremely diverse our waters are. This particular visit has inspired me to return on another quiet morning and practice taking some more pictures. Look for that post to come out in oh, say about 18 months or so...

Homestead Farms

On a cloudy October day, I frolicked on a farm with friends and family!

On second thought, perhaps "waddled" may be a more accurate description, given the enormous amount of Indian food we'd consumed prior to venturing outside. (Waddup, Minerva lunch buffet at the intersection of 355 and Shady Grove!)

Anyway, with bellies full of naan and ambitions set on picking apples, we went forth onto the farm, starting at the pre-picked pumpkin patch.

J defied Y's orders to pose with a pumpkin. REBEL!

My sister had to pose with the wartiest pumpkin of them all.

I dub thee "veneral disease pumpkin"

Family pumpkin portrait!

We then moved on to the farm animals.

This fellow had bad teeth.

Really bad teeth.

Goats are the weirdest.

After the animals, we started our trek towards the apples... or the pumpkins... we weren't sure.

Where are we going.

Nobody knows.

She'd rather be studying for the SATs

Finally, after some and retrospecting about what we were doing with our lives, we steered ourselves back on track and found the apple orchard. Galas and braeburns and pink ladies, oh my! 

Some silliness ensued along the way.

Juggling with braeburns. Also woefully unaware of being snuck up on.

When bears attack. Clomp clomp clomp.

Someone said something funny.

Y after taking this picture: "You look like you are having diarrhea" THANKS

Her hands overfloweth

Putting those years of orthodontic work to good use.

We made away with about 23 lbs of hand picked apples. I've been eating them nonstop ever since. At this rate, I will never see a doctor again. 

Cafeteria Lines

This is how the cafeteria at work is set up to look like. The lines are implemented through ropes to guide payers.

But often this is the reality. One lonely cashier and two lines.

Unfortunately, our brave cashier quickly gets swarmed with patrons.

Usually not long after hitting critical mass, cashier one enters the stage to help. The single line now serves two cashiers, while the other line remains empty. This setup is less-than-efficient as now, a.) the person in the front of the line sometimes must gage which cashier to go to and b.) there is more time being spent walking to the cashier than there would be otherwise.

This also creates some awkwardness - to switch and essentially butt in front of everyone, or to stay and remain "fair"? Usually I've seen that people who were already in line 2 tend to stay there, perhaps out of respect to the patrons they've spent the past few minutes standing in line with.

But then! Enter a new person altogether, with no context whatsoever. They see two lines, one full of suckers, the other completely empty.

And so our brave new person treads forward, annoyed looks from line 1 patrons notwithstanding.

And as more patrons come in, the balance is thus naturally restored.

This behavior pattern is something I see a few times a week in the cafeteria. Its consistency never ceases to amaze me. Women, men, managers, interns, tall, short, young, old - regardless of what demographic or group, almost everybody follows the pattern described. If you already were in line, you don't switch. But if you're not, you usually carpe that line diem and step right up.

Humans are funny creatures.

fuck it, i'm eating a chicken patty.

sometimes you come home from a long day and all you wanna do is eat a chicken patty. in my book, a chicken patty is just a big chicken nugget, and is therefore the ultimate feel-good comfort food. there's something aesthetically pleasing to its perfectly round, unassuming shape. something nostalgic that brings back memories of grade school and little cartons of chocolate milk. something about it that just says, "oh rose please eat me, i will make you so happy."

here is how i prepare my patty:

i begin by microwaving the frozen patty. i pull out some leftover kale and slice up half an avocado while it's nuking.

next comes mayo

then i add avocados

top off the sandwich with sauteed kale

and a fried egg on the side. voila!

i wash it all down with a tall glass of almond milk

there you have it, the chicken patty dinner. it may not be the healthiest meal, but it's better than my other "fuck it, i'm eating _____" default, which is ramen with roughly a billion % of my sodium intake. bon appetit!