Spiders & Socks

One thing we hadn't considered until recently is that we're in a country where people can keep all manner of creatures... One of the histology lab techs showed us around her spider collection - here's one of the more photogenic members of the party (scale is in cm):



It certainly gave us something to think about in terms of keeping a pet in a place where we can't have cats or dogs....

I haven't been up to much (apart from work) for a while.... Finished more socks:


Mended more socks using a sneaky darning technique I figured out (I'm sure other people have worked the same thing out many times before):



It's just a case of using a sewing needle to duplicate stitch over existing stitches around the edge of the hole, and knitting needles to knit across the hole... It's very quick, and would be fairly invisible if I had matching yarn.

In other news, I finally get my first rabies (ahem... Anti-rabies) jab tomorrow.

Newport

Last Sunday, Elena & Patrick took us to Newport for an afternoon at the seaside, the aquarium and the pub.

The sea lions were thoroughly entrenched at the pier, barking continuously and ridiculously like they belonged in a cartoon.






At the fish & chip shop, the catch is labelled with how it was caught and by whom, which is pretty cool.


The aquarium seemed to be quite modern, with a variety of interesting art & decor.



This was carved from a single piece of Big-leaf Maple:



As always, the lion-fish were spectacular - I was surprised to get any good pictures at all though, since I wasn't using a flash and had no tripod.



This eel has cool pointy yellow nostrils:


A universal favourite was the jellyfish area, with a fairly extensive collection of the little & not-so-little guys:


They were not included in the petting tank, however:



Heaps of anemones were really stunning (and photogenic):


And check out the chiton... Yes, this species is in fact an ambush-predator - awesome!


I name this abalone James Bondfish:



Californian sea otters have the market totally cornered on "cute", and they know it.


Puffins, however, are way too tough to care about "cute".


Watching more sea lions from a different perspective was also fun:



It's an Auk.


Thankfully, someone with pretty severe OCD had arranged the gift-shop by species:


And these were just growing outside - so jealous...


We headed up to Seal rock to check out the Pacific coast (from the other side) - it's pretty rough, but gorgeous.




After that, it was off to the Rogue Brewery for beer, dinner and beer - this is the way to the bar:


The whole place smelled strongly of hops, yeast, and happy. Spectacular beers, every one.



Kindly, they supplied tasters for a small fee:




An update on the hippo: Mineral analysis of the urolith revealed pure calcium carbonate, and there were tonnes of small thrombi in the cardiac vasculature associated with extensive, acute infarction. Probably, the brain was the same, but we didn't take it out for practical reasons. Essentially we think the hippo went septic, which induced a pro-coagulable state that resulted in diffuse intravascular coagulation.

Firearms & Halloween

Mort got to go outside last week - the son of the guy who replaced our dishwasher took him out to a firing range after the job was done. He's a reserve deputy County Sheriff.

This is where people go if they want to go to an official range to let off rounds (rather than finding a quiet spot in the forest): The bays circle around a hill, so it's a pretty big compound.




And here is some of what they bring:



Left to right: Glock in .40 Smith & Wesson; .357 Magnum; Taurus Tracker 7-shot in .357 Magnum; .38 Special +P 5-shot (with laser sight).

Mort is firing a Kimber Colt 1911-style pistol in this picture:


The Glock (standard issue) and the Kimber (Xmas present) are the ones commonly carried by Deputy Tyler.



And here is the Taurus Tracker:




We were spent Halloween with Elena & Patrick - they go in for the decorations in a serious way, even filling street-adjacent rooms of the house with props and black-lights...



Mort got to learn about pumpkin-carving:




He was plainly enjoying it.



Pretty effective, eh?


Here's the outside of the house after dark, including gravestones, a fog machine, screaming skulls, and many, many more....




And in case anyone wants to know, this is what voting in the NZ elections looked like to us: