Sharks!!

[gurdonark]

I love sharks. Thus, I was particularly pleased that the Fair Park science museum featured the Cousteau shark exhibit. Life goes a little better with huge displays of prehistoric shark's teeth. Shark fin soup, not communism, is the greatest threat in the East.

After we finished touring the shark exhibit, my young friend and I visited the Dallas Childrens' Aquarium. I have been a fan of this aquarium for some 27 years. The aquarium was closed for a time, but re-opened with the childrens' monitor appended to it. It features mostly small tanks and small creatures, and that is fine with me.

Lately I think it would be fun to have a zoo without living animals and plants--just with video, as in the Kansas City Jazz Museum. I suppose, now that I think about it, that one could have such a museum on-line. I have this fantasy of buying a small radio-controlled boat with a glass/plastic bottom, and taking videos of the
bluegill in a local clear prairie pond [Park Hill Prairie]. Then I could be a bluegill underwater photography mogul.

We somehow went from Fair Park to downtown, ending up in heavy traffic attuned, I believe, to some imminent holiday parade action. Then we went to Good Records on lower Greenville, one of Dallas' handful of independent record stores. I got a CD of contemporary chamber music while my young friend got music that is fast, loud and unrelenting (a bit like contemporary chamber music, now that I think about it).

We dined at Subway sandwiches and then spent some time in the Allen public library.

When I arrived home, my wife wished to go get our Christmas tree. This year we went to Northaven Gardens, the lovely nursery in Dallas. I loved the mockingbird who landed on top of a sign advising one of discounts. We got a 6' noble fir, after my vote for a table-top tree or perhaps a rosemary live tree went uncounted. It began to rain as we got our ornaments from our storage space. But we got the tree home in good order. It is set up now, ready to be decorated. I tend to think the time to set up trees is about December 17 or so, but it's okay to be prompt. I felt a bit weary and irritable this afternoon, but tomorrow will be a day of rest.

A prediction of possible winter weather for Monday night appears to be abating. I hope this rain keeps on, though, as the look of drought is still heavy at Lake Lavon. The bridges over the lake cross over dry land, with foliage.

I love the open source free Tomahawk media player, which organizes one's computer music without trying to do an iTunes-like malware system takeover. I'm going to find a good science fiction book to read--I like my sci-fi pretty space opera-ish, without undue violence, and plot-driven.

Fans of my favorite college football team, the Arkansas Razorbacks, fret tonight because Arkansas will probably be the highest ranked team not to receive a BCS Bowl bid. I personally am not fretting, because
if anyone had asked in August would I accept a 10-2 record and a respectable if lesser bowl, I would have said "certainly". Meanwhile, the Baylor Bears beat the University of Texas. I see Robert Griffin III as a talented and fun quarterback.

The mails went a bit slow. The holiday season is upon us. I'm eager to make plans for the next few months. I'm waiting for one date to be set, and then to set up a vacation on down the road. But my daydreams are not set on vacation, but on a drive to the Texas panhandle, to wander in canyons and mesas, binoculars in hand, and see what might be seen. Very early this morning I finished a book about a man who makes huge sculptures in the desert--I liked that he came to his calling late in life, and that he never forgot to continue to improve his craft.

Comments

[sapience.livejournal.com]

Have you read Julie E. Czerneda's Web Shifter trilogy? I only learned about it a couple of years ago, and I think it's marvelous! It's some of my all-time favorite sci-fi.

I love stories about people who found their passion late in life, especially when it's an artistic one. I've got a book about Mary Delany in my pile of upcoming books, and I'm really excited about it.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I've read several of her books, but I don't think I've read that one. Good suggestion, thanks.

[lacachet.livejournal.com]

We got a 6' noble fir, after my vote for a table-top tree or perhaps a rosemary live tree went uncounted.

*Laugh* Oh,well :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

we live in a democracy without universal suffrage

[tuscendi.livejournal.com]

LOL! A benevolent dictatorship?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

A perfect equality, but as in Orwell, some are "more equal' than others.