ok, i know i've been quiet on the whole colossal squid thing - busy week! all you need to know is happening on the blog and webcams though the te papa site here. see you online :)
i had some trouble uploading about half of the dive pics the first time, so here are the rest.
my grandmother is 97 years old today. that's pretty incredible on its own - three years shy of having lived an entire century. and at such an impressive age, one would be completely entitled to any help needed for everyday life. but get this. bestema gets around completely under her own steam - she has two teflon knees and has had eye surgery, lives in her own apartment, plays the organ, goes swimming, does crosswords, and is ON EMAIL for cripes' sake. my dad gave her a digital photo frame for her birthday and said someone would come over and help her set it up - but she's already done it. she is quite simply one hell of a granny. and not 'just' a grandmother anymore, either - three times a great-grandmother, with a fourth on the way! (but not from here.)
so in her honor i'd like to share a few of the memories i've gathered at her extremely capable hands, over the last almost 30 years' worth of visits.
during the early years of my life, we used to visit bestema & bestepa in florida at easter. these visits were full of tropical magic (compared to march-april weather in minnesota), with sunshine, palm trees, intrepid early morning anole-hunts, and pastel summer sun-dresses. sometimes our cousins would visit at the same time. we all dyed and colored eggs on the days leading up to easter, then went on a thorough search through the spiky grass, knobby palm trunks and prickly bromeliads, trying to recover them and any foil-wrapped chocolate eggs before the slugs found them. one year i camped out on the front steps with my cousin kurt in the hopes of catching the easter-bunny red-handed... and caught the easter-bestema instead. there were swims in the pool, trips to the beach and to the suncoast seabird santcuary to see the talking crows and the huge brown pelicans. dad would put me on his shoulders and hand me up slices of bread to feed the wheeling, diving seagulls. there were grapefruit fresh off the tree in the back yard. during these visits, bestema taught me almost all the card games i know. there were trips to sea-world, where i can remember seeing shamu and petting stingrays. i can also remember (with horror) my first roller coaster, at busch gardens - i think i was five and either they didn't have height restrictions in those days, or dad snuck me on. thanks, dad.
later on we would visit sometimes at christmas instead, at bestema & bestepa's newer house nearby. this one was a little different, but still included the necessary 'florida room,' and still had everything inside that let us know whom we were visiting - a night light in the bathroom made of christmas lights piled inside glass bottles, shelves of knick-knacks we had grown up loving and handling oh-so-carefully, and the grandfather clock that bestepa (appropriately) had built. the new house backed onto a golf course with a big pond, and came with a sense of adventure - sometimes there were alligators in the pond. we mostly watched birds - skimmers, ducks, and the occasional heron - but it was deliciously chilling to think about what might happen to them at any unexpected moment. here, too, there was a pool, and a community clubhouse with a pool table.
every year around christmas, if we weren't visiting, we received packages of homemade lefse. these packages were carefully guarded by our parents, and had to be shared out in small doses to make them last. the taste of lefse is still the taste of christmas for me. and there were other bestema specialties from the kitchen - lemon meringue pies, and the most supreme chicken and dumplings - mouth-watering to think about even now.
the first quilt i can remember was bestema-made. many quilts followed it, but the first one was particularly special - a crazy mix of fabric squares in all different colors and textures. my favorites were the dusty green olive velvet squares, which all wore thin from constant stroking. when i ran away at age 5 (to live in the hallway outside our apartment - this lasted an hour), i took a box of saltines and the bestema quilt. when the dog chewed a hole in it, i was distraught until bestema made it new again. some ten years ago, we converted my stockpile of high school t-shirts into a new quilt, and most recently bestema has been helping me on the first quilt i've ever undertaken (admittedly a rather ambitious pattern for a beginner, so still a long way from being finished).
recently, bestema moved to north carolina, to be near my uncle, cousins, and the new additions. last summer, dad and i stopped through to see her and the rest of the family. we took a trip out to the lakeside property where my aunt and uncle plan to retire, and bestema hiked down the hill with us, and then rode in the inflatable kayak back across the lake. i told you, she really is amazing. and we are so lucky to have her.
happy 97th, bestema. we love you!
that is all.
i know that's super corny, but i like the way it looks, with the backwards 'd.' like someone spelled the whole treacherous word right, except for one tiny detail.
i digress.
in the slanting pumpkin-colored rays of the sunset (on my walk home form work at 5pm - thanks, daylight savings), a spiderweb gleamed, slung between the lowest branch and the trunk of a licheny tree.
it was well-enough maintained that i thought there had to be an orb-weaver lurking somewhere nearby, probably camouflaged against the bark. and sure enough.
and then i found $20.
every once in a while, rumors of freshwater octopus or squid crop up (usually right around this time of year, in fact, as discussed over here on TONMO). some people are, in fact, very taken with the idea; these folks may or may not also be fans of the tree octopus. but sadly, no species of cephalopod has ever made the transition from sea to fresh water, as far as we can tell.
... until now! ;)
tomorrow marks the end of an era for me. (don't get all excited - it's not the phd, not yet.) it will be my last (currently scheduled) sleepover at kelly tarlton's, auckland's aquarium and my place of employment for the last 3.5 years. kelly's is not the world's most glamorous aquarium, but for what it is, it's pretty impressive, and it has a great history. in the early '80s, new zealand underwater explorer and archaeologist kelly tarlton wanted to bring the marine world he knew from diving to the public of new zealand, so he began looking for a site to build an aquarium. he realized that the old underground sewage tanks of auckland city had been unused since the '60s (and what a pleasant realization that must have been) - four concrete tanks each holding more than 1,000,000 liters. within ten months he had converted the tanks into two large aquariums and two equally sized filtration beds, pioneered the underwater viewing tunnel technology now used in aquaria worldwide (and molded the acrylic himself in a massive home-built oven), and filled the tanks with around 2000 animals inlcuding sharks and stingrays. all this funded, no less, by treasure kelly recovered from the wreck of the ship elingamite, off the coast of new zealand.
tragically, the 18-hour-days kelly was working in the months leading up to the aquarium's opening in 1985 proved too much, and he died of a heart attack in his sleep six weeks after the opening. march 17 marked the 23rd anniversary of his death. he was 47 years old.
there are some drawbacks to cats. and i'm not the only cat-lover who thinks so. there's the early-morning howl for food, especially on weekends, in every imaginable pitch and duration, produced at varying distances from your face. we get the piteous crying to be let in when one of the neighborhood feline bullies corners him against the front door (even if your skeezix-in-distress is bigger and weighs more). there's the allergies, but hey, can't really blame that one on him. there's the occasional appalling noise and/or stench from the litterbox while visitors politely try not to laugh or gag. there's the adventure, four times a year, of getting the pills swallowed (that's plural, if your special woogums happens to be too big for even the 'large cat' worming tablet). there's the inticate pattern of puncture-marks where someone just had to kneeeeeeead your lap to make it a little more comfortable. and there's the awkward pacing of the driveway late at night, crooning 'kitty kitty kitty' and rattling the food box, when he snuck out through the open door or, better yet, hopped up on the forbidden kitchen counter and went out the window, but needs to be let in before you lock the door for the night because there is no cat-door. yes, these are pleasures indeed.
but then, somehow, it all gets balanced out when you are lying in bed like a soggy sponge, sneezing your brains out, and he decides there is no more appealing place for a nap than your rattling, wheezing chest. whereupon he stretches out full length upon it and cranks up the purr, full volume.
not that he will look pleased about it, mind you. let's not get carried away
we celebrated easter in style - i'm sure thousands if not millions of others have done this before us, over several millenia, in honor of the spring (?autumn) festival... but it still felt gooooooood to stand with the thickening darkness at our backs, a roaring blaze painting our faces orange, and a swollen, silver moon sailing through woollen clouds and treetops overhead.
