Spring in Cambridge certainly lives up to the adage "April showers bring May flowers". Today was a lovely April day and in between thunder storms I captured some cloudscapes.
Well, mostly between showers. That black cloud at the top of the "Spring Rain" shot got me :-)
Much of the world is able to observe a lunar eclipse tonight.
The moon is accompanied by Saturn and Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. It's an extended show, starting before 9 pm, peaking around 10:30 pm and continuing until midnight. (All times EST since we're at home in Cambridge).
While in Belgium (visiting Aileen) we endured a week of sullen grey skies and intermittent rain. It was ideal for squelching about in wellies or staying inside but didn't hold much promise for photography.
Then finally one perfect day dawned - glorious light, blue skies and Magritte-style clouds. This was the view from my bedroom window early that morning.
As an added bonus the waterbirds decided that it was spring and time to argue about territory. This year the lake has a new pair of swans, younger and more athletic than its former inhabitants. The cob (male swan) put on a great display, claiming the lower end of the lake and its island as his own, and trying to chase away the Canada geese. This was a largely futile effort since there were dozens of geese and they seemed to take great glee in taking turns to taunt the swan. The geese are smaller and generally more agile than the swan, but a couple were surprised by the cob's speed.
We also had the rare treat of seeing the swan fly. The cob is a massive heavy bird: it takes great power for him to achieve liftoff - see the continuous sequence of shots. In contrast, when he circled back to land he skidded across the water at enormous speed while holding his wings aloft to slam on the brakes.
Though the show was fun, it might be unwise to argue with a territorial swan :-)
Yesterday I posted some shots from my recent trip to Belgium. These posts must have had magic dust or perfect timing - it seems Blogger picked it up and the blog received over 240 visitors from 27 countries. That's a spike relative to my usual friends-and-family and random-passers-by visitor rate :-)
The Washington DC photos are now all up. If you looked at them the other day, scroll down since I hopscotched around in history when posting.
Google allows me to track non-feed-readers who visit my blogs. Visitors include friends and friends of friends, as well as an increasing amount of search engine traffic. A lot of people come here looking for images of oceans and continents [sorry to disappoint - try my images across the earth photoblog or just use more specific search terms], as well as traffic relating to specific experiences/destinations. What amuses me is that recently we have received visitors looking for goat testicles. Really!
Just to be sure I googled goat testicles and sure enough Peter's culinary story shows up as hit number nine on the first page of results.
What I want to know is... why are these people googling goat testicles??
Our most recent trips were to Tucson for Seline and Dylan's wedding, and I went to DC to buy an application form for a new passport. The latter is a long story...
On the topic of Tucson, we missed our original departure from Boston to [Dallas Fort Worth] Tucson due to the never-ending delights of the TSA. There must have been at least three hundred people in the security line: even the airline staff were wondering out loud what the heck was happening. People ahead of us whose flights were due to depart after ours were allowed to skip the line, but we were told to keep standing in the queue... and eventually raced to our gate to see that the jetway had just been pulled back from the plane. The people who'd been allowed to cut the line (whose flight was due to leave ten minutes after ours) ended up with a delayed flight, so they had to wait airside too. Fortunately the staff of American were helpful, and Peter's BA status got us into the Admirals club lounge, where a star by the name of Maureen re-routed us through Chicago. We arrived only a couple of hours later than originally planned: good thing we were booked on one of the early flights [though if we had been flying later perhaps the TSA would have been more manageable?]
As for DC, the passport tale isn't done yet so rather than jinxing myself I'll wait to tell the story until I am able to travel internationally again. The upside was that I saw one of my business school classmates, Faheen (and her eight month old son Zain), and after all the embassy hoo-ha had a beautiful autumn afternoon of wandering around DC to see the White House [tourists + protestors] and war memorials [more tourists + a massive school group]. I have posted some photos and will post more over the coming days.
Oh, and there was *no* line at the TSA in DC, though I had hours of time to spare before my flight. The TSA staff manning the checkpoint I went through told me they'd been on duty for almost an hour and I was the first person they'd dealt with that day [they were a few checkpoints down from the end of the line]. Perhaps Dulles could send some of their extra TSA staff and scanners to Logan?
