Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Single Most Important Day of My Life

I am a penguin fanatic. See exhibit A:

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We own no fewer than 3 stuffed penguins, one of which is a 3 foot king penguin who sleeps in bed with us--his name is Captain Duvet. So when we found on that the Edinburgh Zoo has the largest penguin exhibit and the largest population of captive penguins in the world, we had to go.

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The Gentoo penguins had just begun their nesting season, so we got to watch some amazing nesting and coupling behavior.

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There was even a baby King penguin.

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The most amazing part of the visit, however, was the penguin parade. I was a little bit worried about the parade because zoos sometimes make me feel sad if the animals don't look well-treated or well-adjusted. I had visions of keepers parading the penguins around for the pleasure of spectators. Also, I expected all kinds of fan fare that would make these little birds anxious. I am happy to report that the parade was very well-handled. All of the spectators lined up along a path and were warned not to touch the penguins as they walked by (they bite). Then the gates were opened and any penguins who chose to walk the "parade route" between one part of the enclosure and another part were allowed to go at their own pace, closely supervised by the keepers.

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They get higher parade participation in the Summer months, but we got a group of 8 Gentoo penguins who walked the parade that day. Needless to say, it was a rare opportunity to see these beautiful birds up close.



Click here for more photos of our visit to the Edinburgh Zoo
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Monday, March 15, 2010

Edinburgh Redux

Eddy recently traveled to St. Andrews (birthplace of golf) to give a talk. What better time to revisit Edinburgh?!

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We spent a fabulous day at the Edinburgh Zoo. We took in a couple of museums and loads of shops. We ate way more pies and bangers and drank way more beer than I care to remember. We bought a lot of scotch from our favorite store.

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And we also hugged quite a few statues of dogs.

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On our last day, we took a spontaneous trip down to the ocean and saw the lovely Leith district of Edinburgh.

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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Yeehaw!

This is our friends Dave and Dana at the Houston rodeo this year:

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We went with them and we took a lot of amazing photos to share on our blog. Then Eddy's pocket deleted all of the photos off of the camera before we got home. Rather than Photoshop-ing our faces over all of their pictures...

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...I thought I would just tell you about what we did and post a few pictures of them looking super cute.

So the first and most important thing we did that day was eat rodeo food. Here are the boys enjoying some giant turkey legs:

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And here's Dana holding our just-deep-fried OREOs. Delicious!!

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And just to prove that I was actually there too, here is a photo in which I turn my butt towards the camera to pet a calf.

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We also saw lots of livestock and some ropin' and ridin'. Some of the highlights were the baby sheep, piglets and calves (accompanied by a graphic video about how to birth farm animals). There were also bees behind glass. Thankfully, we got to see my favorite event from last year--the chuckwagon race! And there was a carinval. Heck, yes!

The Vindaloo Challenge

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We frequent a British style pub here called the Red Lion. In addition to delicious pub fare, they also offer several Indian dishes. Among these is the beef vindaloo. Our friend, Alan, ordered the Red Lion vindaloo and proclaimed it too hot to handle. This led to much trash talking between Eddy and Alan about whether or not it would be unbearably hot for Eddy--a spicy food lover.

On Friday, March 12th, the opponents met on the field of battle. In the end, Eddy was able to defeat an entire bowl full of vindaloo--though I think he regretted it just a little later on that night.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Thursday, March 11, 2010