Sunday, June 29, 2008

Trip down memory lane

My dear friend Amanda recently sent me a large group of pictures from when we were growing up. It was really nice to look back at some of the fun times we had together and remember some moments that I had forgotten. Here I will share a very brief collection of those photos from middle school (6th, 7th, 8th grades) and high school (9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades). The pictures are in chronological order--enjoy!

week at camp with all the members of the 7th grade from my school (here with Krysten and Abby)

Space Camp (here with Anna)

Marching in the Tulip Time Parades in Middle School

High School Choir practice (here with Abby and Amanda)

Tulip Time in high school--Dutch Dancing
eating lunch outside at school in the spring

group pictures at the beach--the high school crew

everyone at prom

camping trip after graduation (here with Denise)

Thursday, June 26, 2008

recent food adventures

In the last few days, I have been trying out some new recipes. The first was for cinnamon swirl bread, which is good and pretty easy, but it takes many hours (mostly for the dough to rise a couple times). It is good toasted with a little butter. Next time, I will add more raisins and maybe a little cinnamon mixed into the dough.


Last night, I made ceviche for the first time. I have eaten it before (yum), but I was a little wary of cooking raw meat with acid. It turned out pretty good though, although Brian says he doesn't like it because, even though it has lime juice on it, it "still tastes like fish."



Sunday, June 22, 2008

Some Tank videos

We made some changes these last few weeks to our tanks and wanted to share them here. It's kind of hard to see things in the small videos, but you can get a general idea (and always Google search for images using their names).

This first video is of our firefish. We added two of them a while ago. Hanneke likes that they flick their top fins. We both like their bright colors.


This next video is of the refugium we added to the back of our main tank. It has macro algae and a mangrove plant growing in a bed of sand. It helps aid in filtering out nitrates and phosphates, both of which we have too much of. As you can see, it has its own light too.


This last video is an updated video of our main tank. It shows first the new hammer coral we have; it glows under blue actinic lighting, but we don't have actinics on the main tank right now. I plan to add an actinic LED lightbar soon, though. The hammer can extend tentacles out from it that sting other corals, so it gets to be down by itself in the sand. The next coral you see is just passed by, a Stylophora, it's a pink cactus-looking thing in the mid-range height in the tank. I like it for its color and hope it grows a good bit bigger; it's growing gradually.

Then you see the Xenia again, the pink pulsing coral that looks like it has miniature hands grabbing at the water. Attached to the rock the xenia is on is a red coral of some sort, I think a mushroom coral, that came with the xenia unbeknownst to us. It has grown a lot; it started out as just a red dot that looked like algae.

Next up are the two sets of zooanthis, the green polyps and the black/purple polyps. They are slowly spreading towards the live rock they are on. I hope they will soon spread off the pieces they came on and onto the other rock.

Next is the coral Han just got, a flower pot coral called an Alveopora. It's pretty cool and I like that it waves in the water current (it requires decent current to be healthy).

Next you see the finger leather in the back, which is still a bit sick (as it has been since we got it) but seems to be doing well. I redirected flow onto it, hopefully that will help it.

Finally, you see the plate coral we got a while ago. When disturbed, it contracts into a hard stone-like disc, but when happy (as in the video) it is puffed out to twice its size, has a fleshy skin, and has tentacles. It has an orange mouth that glows neon orange under blue lights.

Also, you'll see Gloria (our orange fish with blue-gemmed eyes) throughout and, at the very end, Blenny will poke out from the rocks and then go hide again.


Hope you're all well. Another updated from me in hopefully not too long.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Disclaimer

I disclaim any responsibility for the birthday monkey contraption that is on the right of this blog. That is all Hanneke.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day!


Tennis

As usual, we played tennis on Saturday morning. Here are a few pics:




Friday, June 13, 2008

New Fan

Last weekend, Brian and I installed a new fan in the bedroom. The old one worked sporadically (loose wires anyone?), so we did not use it at all for safety. It is nice to have a working fan in place. It was really heavy to hold while hooking up the wires and attaching it to the ceiling, but I'm happy that it is up now.