Stand Together!

Okay, so yesterday Dad, Ian and I went to the sweet action Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point! Here are some pictures (sorry there are so many and that they are poor quality--)

A triceratops:A giant ancient turtle
Two T-rexes chewing the fat...
A brachiosaurus taking a nap while a few raptors offscreen give it a massage...
a stegasaurus
A supersaurus
An angry t-rex
examples of living fossils...
a baby mammoth that looks like it's being abducted
a raptor saying hello
a cassowary or its ancient equivelant...
a sabre-tooth thing reaching for lunch
a bad view of a brachiosaurus...
..Dad and Ian looking stretched and wide in front of an allisaurus..
A galymymus or something giving the news to a triceratops...
Two friar tucks having at each other...
Some Iguanadons or somesuch...
Yup. I have no clue how to spell most of those names.
Anyway. There was also a pretty lame 3-D "Dinosaurs of Patagonia" movie that made you crosseyed and gave Dad a headache.
But the museum was super awesome and well worth the money paid.
You should go.

le bebe

So this is from when we were getting the room ready from the baby and Nathan was being a good boy and helping Jared with some stuff. Good job.

Then like that night or the next day I can't remember, Megan went into labor and had the baby. Wow!
She's darling.
7 lbs 7 oz and 21 inches long. Curly dark hair, blue eyes (for now). No name yet. Procrastinators.
Tres chouette.

Polar

So whilst I was working at the fountain today, I glanced down to see a pile of blue coconut slush someone had poured onto the overflow grate.

The first thing I thought of when I saw it was how remarkably it looked like one of these sorts...

I called out, "Look, it's Antarctica!" But no one seemed to care, so I spent a few minutes trying to get the perfect shot of it so I could share it with all you folks on my blog where people listen to what I say and tend to agree with me.

Put This In Your Pipe and Smoke It

I'm following the crowd:

The Big Read says that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read
2) Italicize those you intend to read.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (maybe)
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (the most retarded book I've ever attempted to read. I got over half way through, but it was just so stupid and frustrating I had to put it down.)
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (I remember this as a picture book, so I probably haven't really read it, but I should one day.)
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (listening to it on tape as a wee one doesn't count, since I imagined the elves as tiny people, even though Mom said not to)
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen (read over 1/2 of it but I need to finish it)
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams (I friend of mine checked this out thinking it was about War. When I told him it was about bunnies, he quickly exchanged it for something more gruesome)
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell (I read the children's adaptation, and I count that, because it was depressing enough)
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer (a very strange book. I kind of want to read the sequels though...)
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (someone once told me the only people who read this have to for school or have something to prove. Or was that War and Peace? Same principle.)
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (read part of it but it irritated me a lot)
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Well, there it is, 30/100 (Unless I miscounted). I think they should revise their booklist. I agree with Madre, maybe I should do my own "100 best books" or whatever. Well, it's off to church for me!

Hi Megan. This is the easiest way for me to put a zillion pictures in one spot. I hope that your computer is not being tempermental and will let you look at all the pictures.

Here goes:

This shows the dress with a coat on:

And leaning over (see how it comes up?):

Without a coat:

Reaching up:

Reaching down:

Shoulders up:

From behind:

And the shorts, in an outfit:

Without a jacket, from behind:

From the front:

Shirt untucked, and sans shoes, because I decided I didn't like them:

Behind the Scenes

If you ever wondered why your food was sometimes late at a fast food restaurant, this may be the reason why:
Yes my friends, meet Von Cone and his evil Tot Minion. He used to have several minions, but they were quickly devoured. Von Cone is maniacal, evil, and very scary. He is so evil he purposefully slows down the kitchen workers as his evil plot.
Actually the real reason your food was late was because we were all standing around laughing at this creation.
Really, though, we waited until there was a lull in the amount of the customers.
Welcome to Sonic.

Howdy.

So there are a few things I'm currently obsessed with...the new layout gives you a few clues.
My job at Sonic is okay. Some days I really like it and some I just can't wait to go home. Today was particularly hard, mostly because dumb DeeJae!!! feels the need to yell at me whenever she gets the chance. Stooge.
Also today I was pretty homesick. But I went through all my music on my computer and it made me feel nostalgic and stuff, so I feel better now. Anyway, yeah. Megan hasn't had the baby yet, and there isn't really any other news. Just a new post to go with the new layout.
Here is a picture of le workplace from the drive-thru side of the building that I didn't take--
Anyway, I'll try and post something more interesting later, like maybe when we go to the crater for SCUBA.

Brrrr...

Since Adrien and I dropped our geology class and I stayed up really late the night before leaving for the reunion just to get most of my required 2-page field report done, I figured I'd not let the work go to waste, so here is my ONE page on Glacial Till!!!

What is the reason for a giant metamorphic boulder to be in the middle of a field filled with sedimentary rock? The large rock was probably dragged there by a glacier many hundreds of years ago, a phenomenon known as a glacial erratic. Glacial till is a kind of rock that is generally sedimentary, but is created in basically the same way as the boulder might appear in that field—that is, deposited by a melting glacier. Because of this, unusual types of rock may appear where they are not expected to be. In the case of the rocks in Rock Canyon, one may find sedimentary rock amongst the quartzite crystals. The sedimentary rock found there includes large clastic boulders as well as layers of fine clay and other types of rock.

A glacier is a large body of ice that moves much like a highly viscous river, flowing through the landscape and carving it out as it goes. Both glaciers and rivers are able to carry rocks large and small down the path they take and deposit them wherever it becomes impossible to carry any longer. In the case of glaciers it is most often when the glacial ice melts to a degree that it becomes impossible to keep large boulders (or smaller rocks) frozen in place, thus dropping the sediment where the glacier was.

Another way glaciers deposit new material is by pushing rocks and soils off to the side as the move downhill into a new area. These glacier-created structures are called moraines. A moraine is like a deposition of glacial till. The material that makes up a moraine is deposited there by glaciers as the exposed sides melted and dropped material that had been both picked up earlier and pushed to the side as the glacier moved along.

Glacial till shows no stratification (1). That means there are no visible layers in the rock. When normal sedimentary rock is formed, there are visible layers. The layers are usually formed by the continuous deposition by waves or landslide over a long period of time, each layer representing a separate wave or landslide, for example. Glacial till is deposited basically all at once, so there aren’t any real layers. The material is very scattered and unorganized.

When glacial till becomes rock, it is known as tillite (2). The term for this process is lithification. This usually occurs over very long periods of time, when all the water is able to evaporate or seep out, and a certain amount of pressure is exerted, making what was once a pile of separate rocks, clays, and grains of sand is able to become one solid mass or rock.

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica: Till. http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-595804/till

2. Wikipedia: Till. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_till