Sunday, December 30, 2007
More of the choir
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Night time surprises
Friday, December 14, 2007
Year of the Breakdowns
Re the food processor: I had bought a bag of oranges from a roadside vendor for my annual marmalade production, and after the first two oranges my food processor broke and I had to finish the rest of the batch using a knife and slicing my hand. This is not easy, as I like the slices paper thin. I decided that I would never do another batch by hand, so I went shopping. Fortunately, I found a discount store and got a beautiful Cuisinart machine, a combo blender and processor for less than half price (but still costly for my Christmas-challenged budget). It is POWERFUL. In fact, it is so powerful that I doubt I will ever have to use the "high" button! It sits on my counter like a powerful beast that knows it is heavy, strong, and beautiful, and ready to leap into action. Needless to say I treat it with great respect. The first orange went through in a nano second and produced "microtomed" thin slices. Amazing. I love it. I will try to send a picture of my final product along with my (I hope) faithful friend.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Antarctica, Relative positions of my ship and Explorer
Deception Island was my first stop in my trek to Antarctica, The other end of the yellow line shows where the Explorer went down, about 113 miles NE near King George Island. I feel I can identify with those passengers to some extent, having been in such close proximity to the spot where their ship went down and having some familiarity with the weather, etc. I was lucky of course to having had milder weather in the late Antarctic summer, and calmer seas once in the lee of the Shetland Islands.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
I can't seem to get the hang of posting photos, as I either get only four out of the whole bunch I want to send or I can do tis collage, but I am not sure what good that is if you can only see the top layer. Bear with me while I learn. I may need hands on tutoring.
Give me advice if you can as to how I can have more power over this problem.
Antarctica trip
on. You may have seen the news lately of the sinking of the M/S Explorer. Mine was
the M/S Andrea.
It took two days of very rough seas to reach Antarctica waters and we spend 5 days cruising
and landing on a varietyof interestingsites to view wild life, mostly penguins and seals and birds. From the ship itself we saw many different whales some right along side the vessel,
humpbacks, minckes and orcas primarily. Of course there were dolphins and lots of swimming penguins also.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sinking Ship
Today a ship similar to the one I took to
It has been frustrating getting updates on the news, but I had fun reading the various reports, all pretty much a repeat of an apparent AP news story. The numbers of passengers varied somewhat from story to story, but basically it reported around 91 passengers and 54 crew being evacuated from the sinking ship. The ship I was on, the M/S Andrea, accommodated about the same number of passengers. The Explorer has a max capacity of 108 persons according to one site I visited.
Weather was definitely colder at minus 5 degrees Celsius for this bunch. I had much better weather in February, usually just above freezing, although we did encounter some light snow at one time. I found that exciting. Our landing below the
I thought the following comments from viewers on the situation were funny:
dahn_boehner wrote:
Why did Bush let this iceberg get off course?
SF_Mike wrote:
What the
Another post:
Let me see if I've got this straight. A bunch of rich liberals pay big money to go on an "ecological" tour of the Antarctic to see firsthand the effects of man's brutality toward our environment, using copious amounts of fossil fuel to do so. Aforementioned vessel strikes iceberg and sinks, polluting fragile Arctic eco-system with aforementioned fossil fuels from fuel tanks of sunken vessel. Oh, the humanity! I find this absolutely hilarious!
My comment: I am not rich and I am not a liberal, but there are kernels of truth in that last post. I was disturbed by the smelly exhaust from the outboard motors on our zodiacs. It was definitely offensive in that pristine environment. Otherwise the operators of the expeditions were extremely careful to enforce ecological discipline. For example, we had to wash our boots before leaving the ship to land on any of the places we visited. And we also had to wash them immediately upon re-entering the ship so as not to transport any possible contamination from one land to another. In order to accomplish decontamination, we had to walk through trays of disinfectants. And those who had walking sticks also had to decontaminate them.
Anyway, when you see the news of the sinking ship, think of me. I could just as easily been on that ship as on the one I took.