I’m not sure what to do with this blog yet; I will keep it for now. But regardless, I’d like to announce the opening of a new blog at this domain’s root page:

[some images from a Sunday evening wandering around downtown]

The day before I took these, I had found a handwritten receipt for shoes totaling about $6.50 from a Champaign business run by the Sholem family in the 1940′s. Their slogan, the “Home of Good Shoes”, was printed on the receipt, alongside their guarantees of superior workmanship. The next evening on our walk, I looked up to find the very building that this business had owned, still sporting the Sholem name and their motto. Awesome!

New glasses!

New springtime growth!

And new posts coming soon.

This was the scene in my parents’ back yard yesterday. It was a really gorgeous day.

Some photos from yesterday. The fluorite belongs to Dustin’s brother Cody, who collects mineral specimens like crazy. It’s sitting on a dissecting microscope I salvaged from a university lab equipment liquidation and gave to him.

[full set here]

As seen through my new macro lens, this is the test (calcium carbonate structural shell) of a small sea urchin that was unknown to science until one was purchased on eBay in 2006 and subesqently described by Natural History Museum scientists Simon Coppard and Heinke Schultz. I bought this test on eBay right around that time, unaware of this fact.

[PDF of publication abstract]

[BoingBoing post]

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Sea urchins are members of the phylum Echinodermata, which also includes sea stars, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, and crinoids. Like other echinoderms they have fivefold symmetry (called pentamerism) and a mouth locatted ventrally. This species is from New Caledonia, and this particular test is about 1.6cm wide.

Things are going on every night this week. This was Tuesday night at a local restaurant.

My family, Dustin and I attended this rally at the end of October (or tried to attend it; it was so crowded and massive we ended up not seeing or hearing much of anything). The crush of colorful humanity was fascinating. Lots of hilarious signs, happy people, and interesting costumes. The weekend itself was fantastic as a whole, and while the rally was an excuse to go to DC, I’m not upset we more or less missed it because everything else was so worth it.

[my full set of DC pictures I've posted so far]

I want to post more about the museums we visited soon, though you can see pictures of them in the above set.

Some moments from last weekend.
Life is a bit weird lately; things keep changing against the same backdrop. Future keeps approaching and backing off, getting foggy and morphing shapes. So I keep taking photos, ruminating (probably too much), and letting life go on.

I took a walk today around my neighborhood… I haven’t been taking as many photos lately, and I want to change that.