NYC Aquarium!

Weird fish!

Seahorses!

Fur Seal!

Sea Lion Show! His name is Osbourne

Dancing!

Jumping!

Face!

Cyclone! This was a ride at Astroland, near Coney Island.

Kristen, on an escalator at the MoMA!

The Iris Exhibit! This was a HUGE 3-walled video with relaxing images and sounds, with a HUGE eye-shaped couch in the middle. You were invited to sit down, lie down, stretch out, sing, dance, whatever.

Same exhibit.

These are the pictures. I hope you enjoyed them. All in all, the trip was great, also, in the future, expect a post about restaurants, and the Honeymoon Day 6 post.

I’ve never been terribly big on holiday decorating, but I’ve got to admit, I had a lot of fun putting up a tree, decorating it, and all that. Of course, it couldn’t really be as simple as all that. First of all, it isn’t a real tree. My mom was kind enough to give us an old fake tree she had, which was great, because that meant we didn’t have to buy anything. She even supplied most of the ornaments and lights and whatnot to go on it.

We put the tree together, and I strung the lights. We started to hang some ornaments, and that’s when everything just went horribly wrong. The tree is old, and its stand is plastic. One of the feet of the stand broke, and the tree began to topple, no axe required. I caught it, but not before a couple ornaments fell off, with their typical POP and resulting tinkle of thin glass exploding on the hardwood floor. We got a new stand, and reset the tree, with minimal damage done to the lights and the tree.

Well, there was some confusion in setting the bolts, and the tree began to promptly fall over. Fortunately, we had taken all the ornaments off before transplanting our poor tree, so nothing broke this time, especially because neither of us caught it before it hit the ground. Frustrated, we left it lying there on its side, vowing to try again later.

We tried again, and got the thing set, and began the process anew of arranging the ornaments. We finally finished, and were rather happy with the outcome. We put on the tree skirt, and stood back and enjoyed the moment. This was ours. Our tree. In our home. For our first Christmas together. Gushy and mushy as it may sound, the feeling was profound, and I’ve never felt more at ease or felt things were so right, even if the tree did fall over a couple times in the process. According to the countdown over there in the side bar, we’re about 18 days away from marriage, and although I may be a little nervous, I’m excited at the prospect.

Our tree. In Our house. For our first Christmas Together.

With our puppy, Thalia.

We even have a wreath.

We think she’s pretty awesome. She’s a 4-month-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, and she’s got tons of energy. Well, sometimes. She can run around in circles, chasing who knows what, but sometimes, she’d rather just sit. Particularly when she’s on a leash. In fact, the first time we put her on the leash, the only reason she moved was because the electric door of Petsmart closed behind her and scared her. She’s a special one alright.

We’ve named her Thalia (Tall-ee-uh) after the Greek goddess of festivity, and muse of comedy. She certainly fits the bill with her rather strange demeanor. She’ll run around exploring, but when she gets tired of that, she’ll come into the room, look at you, and promptly flop on her side, as if some invisible hand suddenly pushed her over. Sometimes, though, she forgets to stop running before she does this, and proceeds to slide for a few inches before coming to a stop. We’re hoping she’ll figure out how to lie down.

One of the best things about Thalia, though, is how she acts when she gets tired. We already knew she had some trouble lying down, but she has picked one spot in our office that she likes, even more than the little doggy bed we’ve provided for her. It’s, well, just have a look:

That’s our dog, alright.

Make sure you head over to Rachelskirts.com to see the guest post I wrote for her.

The text in question is Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella Sonnet #5, and I’ll be presenting a new critical analysis of those 14 lines of poetry. Have a look:

Here’s the text, with some of my annotations. Yes, it’s just the little part, not anything around it.

Next is my trusty Moleskine notebook.

And finally, you can see the two together, to get an idea of what I do with textual analysis.

That’s pretty much it! Go check out my Flickr page to see those pictures and some extra explanation about them.

One more day! Whew! It’s been long, but I’m glad I’ve made it thus far!

My friend, Phony Bone, got cold, so we built a fire for him.

Here he is, just saying hi, being warm by the fire.

Oooh. Toasty!

My friend, Phony Bone, from Jeff Smith’s Bone decided that he wanted to live in my camera bag after he and I took some portraits a few days ago, so he tagged along.

As soon as we got there, he was wanting me to take his picture. “Look at me! I climbed this tree!”

While he was running around, I decided to snap a couple of pictures of the tree that was across the pond from us and its reflection in the water.

The clouds rolled in a little later and added a cool effect to the sky. Oh, and the ducks in the pond decided to stop in for a picture.

Well, he decided that I wasn’t paying enough attention to him, so he insisted that I take a picture of him next to the largest pine cone in the world. I mean, look at it! It’s huge!

While he was attempting to roll the giant pine cone away, I decided to snap a couple other pictures before he started pestering me again.

At this point, I was getting pretty tired, so I decided to head home, but he wanted to explore the mammoth caves that are around the pond, so we waved goodbye, and off we went in our separate directions.

All-in-all, I’d say it was a pretty good day of adventuring around the pond with Phony. I wonder what other adventures he and I will go on together.

Instead, I thought I’d share this picture that I took just a few minutes ago, as I was fiddling around with a lamp and some stuff on my desk.

I hope you like it!

I call it simply “Still Life” because I’m not too creative when it comes to titles. Click the image to see a couple more like this. I was having fun with office supplies and lightning.

NaBloPoMo Entry #10.