synchronous snapshots.

We got two papers accepted in the last two weeks, so as soon as my house is clean I will start answering the emails and facebook messages from the last 3 months.

One of the coolest things I have ever done is go to the fish market in Tokyo. It is completely chaotic with people running around, buckets of thrashing fish, giant fork lifts carrying seafood and people in galoshes yelling and shouting. I should also mention that while plenty of tourists go and there are signs in English seemingly encouraging them to find their way, they are not really welcome there. At times, Aaron and I felt very in the way, but it was an awesome experience. The large fish auctions happen early in the morning and we arrived just as the vendors had started cutting up the giant tuna. There were also a lot of vendors selling the seafood they caught, mostly to distributors and local restaurants, and we saw all sorts of crazy things for sale, even fugu. I took some pictures when I thought it wasn’t inappropriate:

cutting a giant side of tuna

one of many aisles of vendors

want some coke?

octopuses

eel for sale

What you can’t appreciate from that last picture is that the eel were thrashing around and splashing still-it was pretty gross. And here is Aaron eating eel, for comparison:

Aaron eating eel, “his favorite”

The area where the fish market takes place is called Tsukiji, and around there there are a lot of vendors selling prepared food as well as ingredients and cooking supplies. The interesting thing was that you could watch everything being prepared in front of you.

street vendors selling food

a man cooking food on sticks

As an aside, Aaron and I both thought our favorite food was the kind the man is cooking above. It is basically all sorts of yummy things on sticks (for me, vegetables) cooked over open flames with dipping sauces. This man was cooking in the street, but this kind of food is sold in places called Yakitori-ya. You buy the sticks individually or in pairs and it’s really cheap. The Yakitori-ya also specialize in getting beer to the masses after work, so you can also see why this was Aaron’s favorite kind of place to eat.

In Tsukiji, near the fish market, one should really eat sushi, I hear, because it is likely the freshest sushi you will ever eat. At some establishments people were lined up outside to get sushi from a counter where people were making it as quickly as they could from live fish being brought in. Aaron and I went to a place you could sit down so I could admire the conveyor belt of sushi since I can’t really eat it. (even though I will eat fish I like it to be cooked and soy sauce has gluten.)

a sushi bar in Tsukiji

some sushi Aaron ate

me and my green tea

One thing that surprised us a little bit was that we expected sushi to be more ubiquitous there, when actually it is more of a specialty restaurant.

Amongst the vendors in Tsukiji, there were a couple selling fish and sushi knives and this is where Aaron got his souvenir from the trip, a nice fish knife.

knife sharpening

So, if you are ever in Tokyo, definitely go to Tuskiji and to the fish market, even though you will certainly feel out of place and in the way. It is too cool to miss. Oh, and don’t wear sandals- that was a bad idea.

sunrise, our first morning in Tokyo

Tonight is the last night that Aaron and I will be in Japan and tomorrow we will begin the long process of going home. We have had a great trip! The only downside was the couple of pretty serious earthquakes we had while we were here and lots of other tremors. You can see from the picture above that our room was pretty high up and we were in it each time, so I think it felt amplified. While I knew that being inside a well-designed skyscraper is probably one of the safest places to be during an earthquake, I still have to admit I freaked out the first time. The strangest part was seeing the other tall buildings visibly moving as well. Oh, and hearing the sounds the building made was pretty creepy too. Good thing Aaron is from SoCal and could reassure me that our building wasn’t going to break in half. I think it was still the largest earthquake he has experienced too, though.

We are in Osaka for the night now, but Aaron has forbidden any venturing out because he is ready to be home and tired of walking around. We have gotten to see and do some really cool stuff here and have been surprised how easy everything has been. Even though we have seen very few American tourists (but plenty from France and Italy) everything has been written in English in the subways and even in museums and on random signs in cities. Also, many people speak English and are much nicer about helping than in Europe, so all in all we haven’t had many problems.

We really got to see a lot of Tokyo, starting with the oldest area, Asakusa, where there are some temples and shrines.

the gate leading up to the Senso-ji temple

Aaron and I

a five storied pagoda

a shopping street, Nakamasie Dori
families have owned booths here for hundreds of years

Aaron buying snacks

We also saw another area, Ueno, with a park, temples, and the National Museum. I didn’t take pictures in the national museum, but it was very cool. It is amazing to see all of the art and think about what was happening in the western world at the same time.

a pond full of lotus

incense at a Uneo temple

So, I think I will put up more pictures after we are home, but in the meantime, I’ve started a Tokyo flickr set.

I’m home! Here are several views of the Eiffel Tower for you! The first 3 are as seen from Montmartre.

A view from Trocadero Plaza

And the following pictures were taken from the Eiffel Tower:

sort of a reverse of the last one
you can see the people taking pictures from the Trocadero

Montmartre and Sacre Coeur

the Seine and Paris as the sun sets

Pont I’ena
The Trocadero & Palais de Chaillot
La Defense on the horizon

almost sunset

One crazy thing, when we were driving past the Eiffel Tower one day in a bus, we saw a man hanging off the side. That would be terrifying! I am pretty sure he made it ok because I know they close the tower for the day if there is a death and we visited and went up in it a few hours later. It was causing a huge commotion under the tower, though.

the crazy and/or foolish man on the Eiffel Tower

You can check out some more of the photos I took or see these larger in my flickr set, which should be growing as I go through more and more of my photos from the trip.

Today is my last day in Paris. I have been here since last weekend with my mom and I think this trip has solidified the fact that Paris is my favorite European city. I love it here! I am incredibly spoiled in that I have been here a couple times before so this time I was able to do a lot of the touristy stuff as well as just enjoy Paris without trying to see too many sights. Since photos speak louder than words and also because I have a shopping date with my favorite Parisian girl, here are some pictures from the first day I was in Paris:

Notre Dame the morning we arrived on the red eye

Ile de France and the Left Bank

inside Notre Dame Sunday morning

I couldn’t eat this croissant, but it looked yummy

I prefer London’s “LOOK RIGHT” because this is very non-specific…

a cute little restaurant

This famous Parisian bookstore had a dog
but I think he thinks he’s a bookstore cat

bookstore interior

Sacre Coeur

a Monmartre street

Delilah, our new kitty!

This past weekend when Aaron and I drove to my parents house in South Carolina, neither of us were actually in the market for a new cat. However, that all changed when we (more specifically, Aaron) met this little grey kitty who has been living outside my parents house and slowly deciding that people are awesome. She is the cutest little thing! In spite of pretty much being a feral cat, she is so calm and friendly. I am thinking she is potentially a kitty con-artist because she has gotten a pretty sweet deal in the last few days, and managed to win over even the most “no more kitties” person ever. Even though we were trying to not get too emotionally attached to her until her FIV and rabies tests came back, within a few hours of deciding to take her home, we had gone to Petsmart and gotten her all kinds of fluffy things to sleep on, toys, etc. Right away she thought her bed and all the other things were way more awesome than being outside. (She had been sleeping in a flower pot!) The only time she has gotten really stressed out was when we first put her in her carrier to take her home. She started panting for 15 minutes or so, but then decided she was ok.

yikes, where are we going?

After a while, though, she was all chill again, and content to sit in her carrier the whole way home. We unzipped it to pet her once and she didn’t even want to get out so we left it open. She just wanted some attention every once in a while.

I’m the best behaved kitty ever.

Now she is living in the bathroom downstairs at our house until she feels fully integrated. Here she is in her little bed. It kinda clashes with her fur color and makes her eyes look yellow when they are mostly green… but Aaron picked it out, so don’t give him a hard time.

When I took her to the vet yesterday I suddenly got really worried that maybe she has been so nice and calm because maybe she is dying or something. The vet said she is totally fine, though, with no serious issues. She does, however, have a lot of signs of living a pretty tough life before she took up with animal-loving suckers (starting with my parents). She has a cracked off canine tooth and other signs that she had to fight with her food to eat it and her fur suggests she has been malnourished until recently. We thought she was only 5 months old or so, but also she is about 1 year old, probably, and just a little small. Saaaaaaad. It was sweet though, while she was getting her shots, she would push her face into my armpit and then when it stopped hurting, she would look back at the technician and want to be petted.

Delilah on the way to the vet

Oh, and she has met all the other pets now with mostly good reactions. Maggie was the funniest. I was really worried that she would be difficult since she is known at the vet as a “bad cat” and has some kind of post-traumatic stress reaction to seeing a lot of animals, like when she went back to the shelter or goes to the vet. We followed the vet’s suggestions and put Delilah in a big dog cage and then let Maggie find her. Maggie was like yammering on and on to her in kitty language, but apparently another dialect, and kept standing up like a meerkat and sniffing from far away. Delilah thought this was creepy enough to hiss at her, and I don’t really blame her. We are going to introduce them again today and see how it goes. Layla and Chester mostly don’t care one way or the other. I am not convinced Chester understands that we now have two cats, not just one that is magical and bends time and space and Layla just wants to know why we even bother talking to cats when they don’t understand English and also are terrible.

June is even over, but here is a little more May…

Over memorial day weekend, we also attended a wedding! Our friends Ollie and Brandon got married in Georgia, so we were able to pop down to the wedding for a few hours in the middle of our memorial day weekend with Aaron’s family. It was a beautiful wedding, which is to be expected because I know she has been planning it pretty much her whole life. It was also one of the most fun weddings I have ever been too. Even though my camera is on the fritz, I took some pictures:

walking around eachother

when the rabbi said something about God there was a giant clap of thunder… for reals

after the ceremony was moved inside due to rain

cupcakes!!!

It was pretty awesome of her, she also had her caterer make me a special gluten free carrot cake cupcake so that I could have cake too! Isn’t that SO SWEET????! It was dElIcIoUs.

So the only annoying thing to me was that my camera was not working properly the whole time, due to the fact that I dropped it a few months ago and it really doesn’t like changing the shutter speed anymore, amongst other problems. As a result, there have been quite a few missed shots in the last few weeks. Since repairing it cost about as much as getting a new camera body that I found on super sale, I decided to do that and pass along my old camera to Aaron.

So in other news, the last weekend in May we went for a little road trip to North Georgia to spend Memorial Day with our niece and nephews. It always seems like we spend most of the time driving there, rather than being there, but it was still good to see everyone. They are growing up so quickly!

adorable little Bridget

the funniest little kid in the world

CHOMP!

look who just graduated from kindergarden!

that’s quite a catch

when the sharing was still going pretty well…

There are more photos from our weekend at the lake in my updated memorial day weekend flickr set

Aaron took this picture of Layla and Chester for me on his iphone one morning this week because he knew it would make me explode with happiness.

my Easter orchid is still blooming!

May was pretty busy around here… I started doing things on the weekends besides work in the lab for the first time in months. Although, I didn’t document everything as well because my camera is a little broken. I am not totally sure what is wrong but, to begin with, I don’t think it is correctly changing the shutter speed. Also it insists on randomly starting its self-cleaning program and gets a little too warm after it has been on a while.

Anyway, one of the coolest things that we did this month was go on a series of farm tours. Since I have to get most of my gluten free food at Whole Foods and such we end up buying a lot of local products, so we decided to go to two local dairies that make our milk, and some cheese we often buy. When we saw the cows that make our milk I felt like I was meeting a whole herd of celebrities.

Baby Celinda, future milk producer!

where our milk is collected

here I am with an adorable little goat

Some of the local birds were unhappy about the tours
…particlarly that Aaron went on the tours, I think

Also, at the beginning of the month, we had visitors! Although only for enough time to have a quick bite to eat, I got to meet this awesome little person:

here, she’s telling me all about something…

So here’s the crazy thing. Last year Kathryn and Tysen visited and there were two of them, and now there are three. Wow. I’ll let you wrap your mind around that until the next segment of My May.

This totally blew her mind.

someone needs to go to boxhab

Two weekends ago, I went to Atlanta for the weekend for a surprise 60th wedding anniversary party for my grandparents, planned by my mom and aunts. To state the obvious, that is a long time to be married, and it really emphasizes to me that it also means they have been taking care of all of us for 50+ years now- wow. I hope Aaron and I will be married for at least that long… which makes me wonder who all will be at our 60th wedding anniversary party… Anyway, my family is awesome, as you can see:

The rest of these are mostly of my cousins:

two of baby chicks my grandparents are raising

Of course, you can click on the picture to the right to see a larger set on flickr.

I have been pretty bad about keeping up with all sorts of things lately and for the past year or so posting on here has been one of those things. I am making a new resolution to make an effort to keep this site more up to date, though, starting with this post of pictures I took of our nephews when we went to Disney World with them for a weekend in February.

Parker and Mason as vikings

this is the kind of thing Mason does all the time

Brady is the sweetest baby in the world
he is always happy

I didn’t take that many pictures while we were there, but you can look at a set I made of them on flickr.

I just got an email that the CDC has these awesome Salmonella outbreak widgets! Sweet!

It totally snowed this morning! There are like… several inches and it’s still snowing. School wasn’t closed but I decided to take a snow day since I worked all weekend and on MLK day and seriously, what are they thinking?

Layla in the snow!

1 second before picture: “Yay I love snow!!”
… “BURR enough of that”

Layla and I on our back patio

Aaron and Chester prints

Aaron makes a snowball

throw ME a snow ball!!!

well, this didn’t turn out so well, did it?

a very cold doggie

I found all sorts of things I didn’t expect when I got 2 rolls of 35mm film developed that I had lying around here. I think I am going to have to have a couple re-printed because they cropped off significant portions by not having the pictures centered correctly, but I’m not in a big hurry to do that.

a little overheated on a hike

Aaron took this one of me at the beach

Sunset from our beach house this summer

apparently, I took my fisheye to Belgium two years ago
and apparently, I took one picture.

These others were taken at my parents’ house in South Carolina:

weeping willow tree

Here are two pretty bad quality videos I made of our pets the week before Christmas. It’s really dark, but you can see what happened when we gave Chester some socks (he’s always cold in the winter) and how cute Layla is playing with her red tetherball. Don’t mind Aaron’s whistling in the background…

Thanksgiving is over and that means it’s nearly Christmas time! Santa Cat is already making her list…

As we were driving down I-85 last weekend the sunset was so beautiful, so I thought I would share some pictures I took.

I just want to put up random photos from my Fall, most of which I took with my iphone.

at the NC state fair

Aaron and me at the state fair

Bob’s number 2!!!
(the bunnies are my favorite part of the fair)

check out the photographer in his glasses

my lab mates dress up for Halloween

Annie came to visit me!

her doggie Oscar loved our coffee table…

…and the fishy I gave him!

uranium glass marbles glowing on the UV light box in the lab
serious work…

knitting with kitty

…and now I will get back to the serious business of preparing for Thanksgiving! Aaron and I just forgot to add the sugar to our pumpkin cheesecake. whoops!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The more I have to do, the more I do that is totally unnecessary… so I thought I would share a few things worth reading out of the many useless things I have been clicking on lately. There is, perhaps, a sciency slant.

• what’s so special about the creature above?
• this is the best explanation of cancer I have read in a magazine
• did you know babies aren’t smart yet because it’s good for them?
• a use of sticky tape you haven’t envisioned
• a few lessons from the IRA
• sweet pictures of the sun
• interesting, but they forgot to calculate in the value of moving the field forward
• learn about my new favorite bird (other than green-cheeked conures and blue-footed boobies, of course)

Burrrrr. It’s so cold! I already miss summer. This past weekend was really nice in spite of the cold. We met my family in Asheville to enjoy the fall color in the mountains and go to the craft fair (yay for pottery!). Even though it was cold, we had a good time. We bought some Christmas presents, went for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and visited the Biltmore Estate. Aaron had never been there, so we did the house tour, the wine tasting, and even visited what was left of the gardens. I haven’t been taking that many photos lately because I have been so busy, but I brought a couple of cameras with me for the weekend, so here are some of the non-film ones:

driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway

I was enjoying making some of the leaves look blurry

I love the really orange trees
the one in the center is almost the right color

this was in the gardens at Biltmore

another Biltmore view

Koi inside the nice warm greenhouse
this one I’m adding because those green leaves are my favorite color

When we got home, Chester, Layla, and Maggie were all, “oh thank you for rescuing us from the vet!” and were extra cuddly.

I know, I’ve been bad about posting… I’ve been really busy with work, particularly since Aaron started his new job and is gone all the time now between work and school. So here is another cop out post, but I hope you enjoy it.

Back in May I got the first 120 film developed from my Diana and now I just got a couple more rolls back. This little camera is super addictive. It is also both fun and infuriating. I got back 2 rolls of slide film and 1 roll of black and white negatives- some of them were from my trip to Norway and the rest from the trip to the beach with my family. A roll of color negatives were unfortunately destroyed, most likely by radiation on my way back from Norway according to the company that processed my film. That is a bummer, but I am trying to be easy going about my expectations of the film from this camera. I always say that just the process of taking pictures makes me notice and enjoy things independent of the results, so I have mental pictures of a lot of the shots I took with that film, which is still something nice to take away. Also, taking the pictures with the Diana is really more like a collaboration so you have to be willing to compromise a bit. There is one that I really like that wasn’t scanned during processing for some reason, but here are some of the other results:

the top of a stave church in Oslo

taken from a train in the central mountain range of Norway

Litchfield Beach on the 3rd of July

a sea bird in flight
(probably my favorite from this set)

bar chairs at a restaurant where we ate at the beach

lots and lots of light leaks

I actually think that last one is pretty cool and interestingly abstract. When I saw it, instead of thinking, *hey look, my lame cloud picture is ruined*, I thought *SWEET*. I am learning to embrace chance like Jackson Pollock.

While age is usually relative, last night I went to my 4th new student picnic and realized that I am really old. I have almost spent as much time here in Durham as I did at Tech, which is really hard to believe. Since my program has an indefinite time frame, I have no idea if I have made any progress, though. Hrm.

Anyway, I had a pretty nice summer. I worked long hours, but I also got to go out of town several times to weddings, to Norway, to the beach for a week, and to visit family. I still have pictures from a few of those things that I want to put up, but just haven’t yet. I never want the summer to be over, but this fall should be easier than any before since I have NO CLASSES (and no TAing like last year). That means I will not have to take, study for, or grade any exams on my birthday. That may not seem like a very big deal but really, it will be the first time since I was a little kid.

A few weeks ago we went to Atlanta to go to Meg’s wedding and I really like these pictures so I am going to put them up a little late. Our friends from Tech are awesome and going to the wedding reminded me how much we miss them and how much fun we have when we do rarely get to see them.

my favorite part of the reception!

me with the bride!
(Aaron took this picture-he did a good job!)

Jay (Aaron’s roommate when I met him) and Amy (sister of the bride)

all the Alpha Gams at the wedding

I sat beside Maria!

with Baillie (who is so adorable, by the way)

driving away in the wreck

There are just a few more to see on my Meg’s Wedding set on Flickr

Layla on the road

We just got back from visiting my family in South Carolina this weekend. It was great! First of all, I love sleeping in my old room because my mattress is so comfortable, then there are the billions of little dogs running around… and of course there is just the fact that South Carolina is a wonderful relaxing place. Some things we did this weekend: We went to downtown Greenville where I found my new favorite restaurant… but of course I can’t think of its name right now. We walked around in the woods with Chester who cried the whole time because he hates being outside. There was even a mystery to solve, as in why a weird lady rang the doorbell early this morning at the house, then disappeared, only to break into the house across the street she said she was renting by breaking the double paned sliding glass door rather than any of the windows on the ground floor. Creepy. It was a good weekend though, and when we got home my package of specially ordered film had arrived! Hooray!

I have been really busy lately. I will catch up and write a couple posts to let you know how we (and most importantly, Chester, right?) are doing… eventually. There are many fires at work that must be put out first…

Here is a picture I took blueberry picking at my grandparents’ house because all posts need pictures.

Aaron decided last night to take an offer from a new company, so in a couple of weeks he will have a new job. We are really optimistic about this opportunity, although it was a tough decision for him to leave his company. He has been there for a while now and been through quite a bit. The company was acquired twice and the second time they let go most of the people on his team who he really liked, which was disappointing. He has been working remotely since we moved up here for me and it is probably time for him to start going into an office and having co-workers other than Layla and Chester around during the day! Also, he is ready for a more senior level position, which he will have at this company. I think he is only disappointed to leave his boss who he has always really liked and respected, but hopefully he will keep in touch with him. Anyway, things are changing a little at our house, but hopefully for the better.

On a totally different note, I’ve been meaning to put up some pictures from the 4th of July at the beach. The coast of South Carolina is probably my favorite place in the world. While we were there we did a lot of playing with our Wii, Aaron read some comic books, I took a nap one day, we walked miles and miles on the beach, went to a state park to see marshes and also got attacked there by really scary beach bugs, did some grilling, saw the fireworks on the 4th of July, and only got a little burnt. I took 3 cameras with me, but I only have the pictures to show you from my digital one.

Litchfield Beach

Aaron and I

the beach at sunset

tide pools - where little minnows lived

Kimie and Dale

a really cool bird that kept eating minnows from the water

beach house at sunset

This is also cool. A while ago I posted that a company called schmap.com asked to use one of my photos in their online and downloadable travel guides. I got an email yesterday showing me how my photo looks in their new iphone application. You can see it here, which is pretty cool.

Anslee and Chris

This weekend I am going to another friend’s wedding, which got me thinking… I never put up the pictures I took at my cousin’s wedding. My official job was to take pictures of her getting ready, but I snuck a few during the reception too, such as the one above. I have picked out a few of my favorite pictures, mostly of her or of her sisters:

I also made an Anslee’s Wedding Set on flickr with about 100 pictures I took of her getting ready and the rest of the preparations. I will probably leave them open for a few weeks and then make them private, so take a look if you’re interested. As always, send me an email if you want a copy or something.

And here is one last one that Aaron took of me (in the middle of course) with the first two people I knew my own age. It appears that we are all grown up now and well on our way to living happily ever after.

the “big three”

30 seconds on the Carolina coast

I spent the 4th of July with Aaron, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend on the coast of South Carolina. It was fun and pretty relaxing. I love the ocean! Anyway, we picked up all the pets yesterday an now it’s back to work…