All this from a little fruit??

I love a good, crisp apple, don't you? Ever since I discovered the sweet apples like Fuji, Gala, and Cameo I have completely ignored the simple Granny Smith...and today I was reminded why.

It seems as though each Halloween season the Granny Smiths go on some kind of super sale. And since we're extra poor college students right now, I thought I'd go for the apples that were 58 cents a pound instead of 97 cents a pound. I know, I'm thrifty. So today at lunch I pulled out the apple and took a bite. Hmmm, it's quite sour. I took another bite...even more sour. Well, it's not my favorite, but I paid for it. And I'm not about to go to the cafeteria and get an overpriced, overprocessed, over-fried meal when I've got a healthy apple in my hand. So I kept eating. I could have handled the sourness if not for one little problem...does your jaw ever clench when you eat something sour? Mine does, totally on its own accord. Each time I took a bite of the apple my jaw clenched , but I powered through. I wish I had just thrown the dang thing away after the first few bites because now I feel like I've been punched in the jaw!

I don't know what the moral of this story is other than now I know why people coat those Granny Smith apples in caramel. In fact, I even understand why caramel sometimes isn't enough, and people add a layer of chocolate and all sorts of toppings. From now on, that's the kind of green apple I'll be choosing.

Memory Update...

After discovering that there were some who questioned the ability of my little five year old mind to recall something accurately, I called my parents to get some clarification. To set the record straight, the wind did rip the bricks off the side of our house, and we did have to sleep in the family room during a power outage...they happen to have been two separate events, but they BOTH happened! And as for the cooking, I never claimed that my mom used our wood burning stove to make a fancy dinner like Chicken Cordon Bleu, just that she made us a few meals. She said those meals consisted of things like hot cereal, soup, and hot chocolate. There now-that's all cleared up.

I know I've already posted about how much I love riding the bus to school, but I feel like saying it again. Only now I need to add on to that sentence. I love riding the bus to school, just not home from school. Well, I actually can't include my whole trip, just the part on Trax. My commute between Tooele and Salt Lake is on a big, fancy, cushy bus-and it's great every time. However, my morning and afternoon commutes on Trax differ like night and day. (Sometimes literally!) The mornings are all filled with professionals going to work at the hospitals and kids like me on their way to school. The afternoon commute is full of Salt Lake's finest, especially when we hit the free-fare zone. Granted, it's a treasure trove of people watching! I keep wondering how much I'll really love riding the bus in the wintertime. Which side will win? Not having to drive in the snow (YAY!)...or having to stand around waiting for the next train/bus in the snow?? (YUCK!) Nothing's perfect, right?

Are you prepared?

Yesterday in Sunday School we talked about self reliance, and the teacher brought up that his wife has been begging him to redo their basement, including getting rid of the wood-burning stove. He is adamant that it remain, in case it's ever needed. As is often the case in Sunday School, my mind started wandering and I thought about all the times we lit the wood-burning stove in my parents' house. Of course, this was the 1980s. I think wood-burning stoves were more hip back then, and used for more than just emergencies. But then came the night of something something, 1983. Real specific on my dates, aren't I? Actually, judging from the dating on the picture it could have been in April cuz there's still remnants of snow in the front yard. Of course we could have had snow in May back then, you know, before all this global warming. But back to the story...I was only 5 at the time, so my memory isn't that clear, but I think there had been a storm going on for quite some time. I remember my whole family hanging out and sleeping in the family room for a few days. I think there had been major power outages and we only had the heat of the stove, and I definately remember my mom using it to cook all our meals. Then, during one of those nights, a terrible wind rose up and tore the bricks right off the side of the house.


The wall that lost the bricks was right next to the family room and it woke everyone up but me. I've always been a heavy sleeper. My dad said it sounded like a big vacuum sucking the bricks off the house. Was it the Big Bad Wolf? Maybe. Maybe it was.

Wasn't 1983 a terrible year? First came the winds, and later that spring came the floods! The very floods that caused a river to run down State Street and a dike, not just sandbags but a dike, to be built to contain the river running down 13th South. The very floods that caused a mud slide in Spanish Fork Canyon, creating a natural dam and flooding the entire town of Thistle. The very floods that caused large pumps to be placed in the Great Salt Lake, which remained in use until 1986. My best friend's back yard was terraced, and the bottom two terraces were totally filled! We tried to go swimming in her backyard (which would soon become the norm as they had a pool installed a few years later), but our parents absolutely forbade it.

So, for those of you who were in Utah in 1983, what do you remember about the floods?

Fun with coral, macro style!

So, I have taken about a million pictures of animals and tanks at work, and occasionally I actually get a relatively good shot. Lately I have been getting better with working my mom's Nikon D50 in manual mode, and took these macro shots of some of the coral in my reef tank. Most of these colonies are under 12" in diameter, and the shots are only slightly cropped and not resized, so open the images up to full size to see them in even more detail.

Encrusting Gorgonian. This has long polyps that are very calming as they wave in the current. It does grow over almost any surface, including other coral!

Sarcophyton sp. - toadstool leather. This guy has very long polyp extensions. Can you see why these are in the octocoral group? (hint: count the oral arms on each polyp! Also look for the one pulling food into it's mouth.)

Tridacna crocea - one of the "giant" clams (although this one doesn't really get that large), and another Sarcophyton sp. These clams get most of their energy from the same source as the coral, from algae that live in their tissue. In fact, the beautiful colors of all coral come from this unique group of algae that has evolved with the coral for millions of years. The coral tissue itself is just a clear white color.

Sinularia sp. - Green finger coral. Another octocoral, this colony in the big reef has really grown a lot in the past 16 months.

Acanthastrea sp - pineapple coral. This is a "true" coral, in that it builds reef. The corals above are all soft coral, but reef building coral all have a stony skeleton they build out of calcium and carbonates they get from the surrounding water.
Turbinaria peltata - pagoda cup coral. Robin thinks this looks like what you get with the playdough barbershop.

Duncanopsammia axifugia - Duncan coral. These still relatively rare in collections, and are one of the best captive stony corals out there because of how hardy and beautiful they are. I love how large the polyps can get in moderate to low light.

Pocillopora sp. - cauliflower coral. This genus is almost all we saw coral-wise when we dove in Hawaii. Some of the colonies in the bay we snorkeled in were easily 10 ft in diameter!

That's all the macro-photography for now. I am really starting to enjoy aquarium photography, and I just was introduced to a fancy gadget by a fellow reefer that makes this hobby that much easier and enjoyable. It's a DIY gadget made out of a drain coupler and a magnifying glass of some sort. It allows you to take top-down shots with any camera. It magnifies the subject and has a very long focal length. None of these pictures were taken with this device, but I'm going to have to build one now.
Anywho, hope you like the close-ups and I hope you learned something!
-Evan