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The Monthly Trip: June, NYC
Cassie and I first met ten years ago this June, so we wanted to do something fun to mark the event. As luck would have it, one of our favorite musicians, the amazingly awesome Mr. Scruff, was playing an event in Brooklyn. We've both been huge fans forever, but as he rarely does shows in the USA we hadn't yet caught a live performance. The perfect weekend getaway! And it got even better. The venue was an amazing outdoor space in Brooklyn along the Gowanus Canal, known as BRKLYN Yard. Parties all summer long are put on by Sunday Best. As it happens, the New York Time recently wrote an article about it. It was an awesome time with great weather and a great crowd. Thoughts of moving to Brooklyn were unavoidable. You can live vicariously through Mr. Scruff's three hour set available for download here (awesome).    Labels: Brooklyn, Photos, The Monthly Trip
The Monthly Trip: April, Opening Day
We cheated a bit in April. After finding no external justification to travel, and lacking the funds to do so just for the continuity of this blog, we took a trip down to Fenway Park for opening day. Red Sox games are always a blast, and neither of us had been to an opening day ceremony. A good start to the Boston "summer", the weather was real nice in the first inning!  But as lifelong New England residents, we were prepared for the April afternoon.  And as a bonus, the Red Sox actually won, which does not generally happen when Cassie is in attendance at Fenway. Labels: boston, Photos, The Monthly Trip
Architecture: Marcio Kogan
The Monthly Trip: March, Colorado
In March we went to Vail for a visit with Cassie's twin sister, to celebrate their birthday and enjoy some snowboarding. As we were leaving Boston, a snowstorm was moving into the region, eventually depositing a foot of snow on New England. Conversely, the first thing I saw after stepping out of Eagle airport was a convertible with the top down. The thermometer hit 60°F every day of our stay, and not just at the base of the mountain. Being my first trip out west, I was a little disappointed to not experience Colorado powder, but BBQs in short sleeves at 11,500 feet more than made up for it.    Labels: Photos, The Monthly Trip
The Monthly Trip: February, San Francisco
This one was a freebie from work, as we were traveling to meet with a large customer in Silicon Valley. Normally I wouldn't count business travel as a trip, but as we only had one day of meetings there was enough free time to enjoy the city. Additionally, the customer is awesome to work with, and my boss lives in SF, serving as a dedicated local guide. After checking in at the Intercontinental hotel downtown, I made a beeline for the California Academy of Sciences, which had recently opened and contains a great aquarium. They have one of the largest indoor coral reefs, and I had visited their temporary facility and coral aquaculture center the last time I was in SF.    Labels: Aquarium, Photos, The Monthly Trip
The Monthly Trip: January, Dominican Republic
This year I am attempting to go on at least one trip per month for the entire year. It may be as short as a road trip to a ski mountain, or as far away as I can afford to go on a jet, but hopefully I will have managed to get somewhere interesting one every month. As Liz Lemon would say, I want to go to there. January started off with eight days in the Dominican Republic. I've been here several times before, but this year we tried a new hotel, Excellence Punta Cana. Adults only and low key, it was a relaxing trip with typically perfect Caribbean weather. As is our custom, not much happened beyond daily migrations between the beach and the pool, reading, drinking and eating. After the holidays and a few months of New England winter, you don't really need much else.     More photos here. Labels: Domincan Republic, Photos, The Monthly Trip, Vacation
Aquarium Blog
I'm going to pretend ten months having passed since this blog was updated ain't no thing, and follow up on the last note. Since January I have converted my planted aquarium into a coral reef tank (making it 29 gallons, and not the original 15 I had planned), kept a blog about it, and moved to a new apartment. Eye candy to follow.    Labels: Aquarium, Blogging, Photos, Projects, Reef Tank
California Trip
This past weekend I visited California for the first time. We flew into San Francisco and spent a few days there, then rented a car and drove down the coast to LA to meet up with some friends. Along the way we drove the cliff road of Big Sur, and stopped at the Monterey Bay aquarium. All the photos are here.    Labels: California, Photos, Vacation
Aquarium Photos
I took a few snaps of the aquarium this week to update the monthly photo log, and also to take advantage of some new fish being acclimated to the tank. While they're still in the plastic bag its easier to get a good macro shot because their movement is limited. This is a trio of hatchet fish, Gasteropelecus sternicla, natives of the Amazon and possessors of an unusual trait amongst fish, the ability to "fly" for short distances above the water. I'm also excited about the quality of the photos, which has improved drastically due to a few changes. One, I got a tripod. Two, I finally started messing with the manual focus on my camera, which seems to deliver much better results than the automatic macro setting for shooting the aquarium. I also tried out a larger range of aperture and exposure length combinations. Not too bad for a four year old digital.     Labels: Aquarium, Fish, Photos, Projects
Back from Vacation
Snowboarding at Sunday River
We went up to Sunday River for Cassie's birthday. They had just received a foot of snow, and it kept on snowing most of the time we were there. The good news is that snowboarding is like riding a bike, or electric shock enforced behavior: you don't forget it. The bad news is that the muscles involved never get used for anything else. Never the less, we toughed it out through two solid days getting in a lot of good runs. And the heated pool / hot tub condo at the Jordan Grand wasn't so bad either.    Labels: Photos, snowboarding, Vacation
Carnivorous Plant Terrarium
Today I kicked off a fun little project: a carnivorous plant terrarium kit that I got for Christmas. It includes a number of different plant species, and everything you need to grow them. The seeds are selected at random from the following list, so I don't really know exactly whats going to grow: -Venus Fly Trap ( Dionaea muscipula) -Cobra Plant ( Darlingtonia californica) -Misc Trumpet and Pitcher Plants ( Sarracenia) -Misc Sundew Plants ( Drosera) Following the detailed instructions, I added the peat mix to the container, mixed it with distilled water and added the seeds. The next step took me by surprise: you need to place the container in the fridge for 8 weeks, a process known as 'stratification'. I assume this simulates a winter season to get the seeds ready to germinate. Anyway, don't expect many updates after this until mid-April. Cassie has already expressed mixed feelings about a bowl full of dirt taking up space in our fridge.    Labels: Carnivorous Plants, Photos, Projects, Terrarium
Back From Vacation
We're back from another successful vacation. I managed to make it through eight gorgeous days of beach and pool lounging without any notable sunburns. I worked through five novels and still managed to run out of reading material. A few of the books I had randomly selected from the MIT Coop, specifically The Rum Diary by Hunter S Thompson and Islands in the Stream by Hemmingway, turned out to be particularly excellent Caribbean vacation material. I'll cover that in more detail later. Below are a few pictures, the rest to be found at Flickr. Also don't miss the video of Cassie doing a cartwheel on the beach which you can find on my Brightcove personal channel.    Of particular note, the clever sand and seaweed marketing attempts documented in the last photo did not instill any sense of emergency/terror/fearmongering in either the local Dominican residents nor the hotel guests. Labels: Domincan Republic, Photos, Vacation
New England Aquarium
I went to the New England Aquarium last week and took a few photos. The line was really long, so went inside and became members (tax deductible!) in order to skip it.    A few more photos here: flickr.com/photos/nattarbox. I'm going to resize this column so I can use the Flickr auto-blog-post-o-matic function to send photos here at their full size. Labels: Aquarium, Fish, Photos
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