Education Vacation

     My day job requires me to complete 20 hours of professional continuing education each year. Since I have to go anyway, I try to pick seminars in locations that are fun to visit. We are just back from a combination of education and vacation on the East Coast. The convention center was very nice. So nice, in fact, that I felt a little out of place there. This place was so rich that there was a vending machine in the lobby with $350 Bose Headphones for sale. Where I come from, vending machines are for crackers.
    Here is a view across the hotel atrium and out to the yacht club on the river. The atrium was set up like a little town with shops and restaurants in little buildings like the one you see on the lower right.

    This rocky stream courses through the atrium.

Outdoors, a wild Mallard Duck stops briefly at the hotel's  landscaped waterfall before flying on downriver.

    In front of the hotel, the limo drivers prepare for a busy day.

                           

     One morning we discovered a dirt road near our hotel that curved around a bend in the river. We were quite close to the convention center, restaurants, and shopping, and still we saw Mallard ducks with their babies, diving ducks, Canada Geese, and a Red-winged Blackbird. On the ground we saw deer tracks. Honey Bunny walked out there with me the following night so that I could get this shot, otherwise I would not have felt comfortable there alone. The convention center is on the far right. The purple lights are from the sixteenth floor night club.

                             

    Here are two more photos of the river. The bridge you see in the distance is a drawbridge. I always get the creeps driving over those. It is  1 and 1/4 miles long and carries twelve lanes of traffic. There is a concrete barrier to protect pedestrians who have their own lane. We saw people jogging there, but were told that noise from the traffic is deafening.

                        

                            

    This is part of a 70 foot sculpture that depicts a giant trying to free himself from the sand.

    That's okay. I don't want to get on your dumb old boat anyway!

                    

    The seminar we attended offered full time learning. Night classes, lunch-and-learns, and wet labs were all a part of the package. One morning I took advantage of the free continental breakfast in the exhibit hall, only to be bombarded by big screen TVs with advertisements from some of the vendors. None of this surprised me until I saw these signs paired together. I then had to wonder if the "full time learning" thing was getting a bit out of hand.

              

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Like A Twinkie!

     I went out early this morning looking for bugs. I stepped just into the edge of the woods and right away I found this Praying Mantis. Mantises sit very still until an insect comes close enough to catch. This one moved because she was startled. She looks so much like the surrounding plants that I never would have seen her if she had held still.

    It did not take long for her to catch an insect. Her spiky front legs helped her to hold onto her prey. She began by biting off the head.

    She was willing to tolerate me as long as I did not get too close. This ugly glare reminds me of my dog's eyes when she is in possession of a favorite toy.

    The black dot in the middle of her eye is a pseudopupil. Mantises have compound eyes, no pupil.

    Apparently the best part is in the middle. Sort of like a Twinkie.

    Now she is done with her breakfast and she licks the last bits off of her "hands."

    In some parts of the world there are mantises large enough to eat mice and toads. I don't believe I want to see that!

butterfly ears

  
    I found these butterfly wings beneath a tree in my yard. You might be thinking, "This doesn't sound good for the butterfly." You are right. Predators eat the thorax of butterflies because that is where all the high protein muscle tissue is, then discard the rest.
    The wings had a bit of dirt on them. They are so delicate I could not wipe them off with my fingers without tearing them. I had to clean them with puffs of air from a bulb syringe.
    Butterfly wings are so light weight that the smallest breeze kept blowing them off the table where my camera was set up. So I would touch my finger to my tongue to get it wet, then touch the wing. The wing would stick to my finger and I could pick it up without damaging it.
    Butterfly wings are made up of thousands of colorful scales. If you handle a wing the fine dust that seems to be coming off in your hands is actually the scales. The wings also have veins that aid in breathing.
    Butterflies don't have ears. At least not the type of ears we typically think of. But in Central and South America at least one type of butterfly has been found who has a primitive ear at the base of it wings.
    Here is a portion of the photo I enlarged so that you can see the scales better.