Hawaii- Evening 1

So even though Dave and I fucked up and didn't get in touch with Liz to hang out with us this day, she so kindly set up a wonderful evening with fire spinners and a beach, with a big moon, and occasionaly wetting showers. It was a shit ton of fun, and I ended up talking to a sexy French astronomer for an hour. NICE.

Hawaii- Day 1

Hawaii rocks. We did two dives on day one, and one dive on day two. Some of the best diving I've ever done. On the second dive, we sat in a cave and watched the surf knock down some air bubbles that shimmered and slowly rose up to the top. It was beautiful. We sat there for a good 10 minutes just chilling watching the action. Later a sea turtle (Honu) with a missing front leg =( was swimming by, I caught up to it, and did a little roll. Apparently (s)he found that interesting enough to do two circles around all of us and then took of into the deep blue.

Better?

So I realized something tonight, those cut out things with black and white is a form of spatial color mapping (I think). Which is basically the same concept as and HDR image (exposure mapping, maybe?) except you use different color balances in different spots on the image rather than different contrast values. Software for this anyone? Doing it by hand would be tedious if it weren't just a cute lil' lady(man) bug.

Fat Cells

A recent study came out of Sweden that says that adults have a fixed number of fat cells, the same number that you have when you leave adolescence and join adulthood. What changes is the size of the cells, not the number of them. Also in this report, subcutaneous fat (under the skin) isn't anywhere near as bad for you as the fat that surrounds the organs and connective tissues (I can't remember the name of this- help!). Another things is that the fat you get on your ass and hips is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids which promotes brain cell growth and some other good stuff too. Basically women's kind of fat (ass, hips, and thighs) is much much healthier than male's kind of fat (mostly abdominal). They also found out that the ass fat actually promotes good health, and counter acts the bad effects of the abdominal fat. This doesn't mean that you should head to the ice cream parlor ladies, but it does sorta make you re-think what the word 'fat' means doesn't it?

Weekend Weddings

I went to Mark and Lisa's wedding this past weekend. I think this is the beginning of a string of weddings- strange to be at this part of life. Anyway, I didn't get any good pictures of the wedding (was too intimidated by my geeky friends huge lenses hehe), but I got some neat close ups and some dew covered stuff in the morning.

Sunset at O'Hare

Got delayed by 4 hours today! Sweet!

Hey at least I get overtime, muaahaaaaa.

Our transportation systems are falling apart, gas at $4/gallon and airlines have been decaying pretty rapidly b/c of the fuel prices...need/want trains please now thanks.

Mom and Al in the Bean

People Eat Too Much

and the food they do it isn't what I would actually classify as food. The bad weather in the midwest fucked up all of the flights so there was tons of people chowing down on McDonalds...the worst is seeing little kids being fed this dog food. Makes me a very sad panda.

The Chicago Jelly Bean #2

So Mom and Al came to visit me while I'm in the Windy City, and we decided to get downtown at least once while I'm here. Got a chance to see Millennium Park which has a beautiful outdoor auditorium (crappy clouds made for bad pics), and this super sweet Stainless Jelly Bean. I could probably spend an entire day just taking pictures of this silly thing. I heard that there was some crazy requirement that it last thousands of years when they commissioned the project and artists were bidding for the monies. Anywho, I thought these were my two favorites out of all of them.

The Chicago Jelly Bean #1