Intermission – A Hiding Place

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
Genesis 2:19

A lot has happened! I went to Florida for vacation and started taking a photography class that has been keeping me pretty busy. This will be the “Florida” update. I got to see a lot of really cool things and it was really great to get out of the constant lull of the house. I saw the Kennedy Space Center (and got bamboozled by SpaceX), an osteology (skeleton) museum, the aquarium, a chocolate factory, St. Augustine the oldest continuously-occupied city in America, met up with a guildie, and ate some good food, too! Things have gotten a lot better for me as well since the last update. More on that probably in the next post, this will be all about FLORIDA!!

Fishes

We went to visit the Orlando SEA LIFE Aquarium. I really like aquariums but they’re a huge pain to photograph because it’s so dark and fishes move a lot. But I tried really hard to take some photos of some cool sea creatures so here they are!

I think jellyfish are some of my favorite. So tranquil and floaty.

*When you’re diving at night, and your feet feel the bite, that’s a moray.*

Octopus! They are so smart. My brother likes them the most, I think because the Scripps aquarium in San Diego has two and they’ve caused troubles when they do their octopus thing and escape.

Then we saw some dive talk about the big ocean tank, and there was this shark just chillin’ at the bottom of the tank. It’s a nurse shark, which apparently doesn’t have to keep moving to keep “breathing” like most sharks do.

So she spends all her time just lying at the bottom of the tank because why would you move if you don’t have to, amirite?

There was also this seahorse tank, and the seahorses in there were so pregnant I thought they were gonna explode. I couldn’t get a good shot of them though, so here is a normal-sized not-pregnant one.

And a bonus turtle.

There was also an axolotl exhibit which are super cool! But the photos didn’t turn out super clear because I didn’t know how to use a camera properly (yet).

Bones

Then we went to the Osteology Museum, which is just a bunch of skeletons. Seems super morbid but it was actually really informative and really well done. They would pose the skeletons really well so you could see them “in action” which was really neat.

All their skeletons are donated post mortem and cleaned with their in-house beetle collection. The beetles are detritus eaters which just eat the flesh off all the bones super clean after they cut off most of the bits, which is really cool and also a bit gross at the same time. They had a little exhibit for those too were you could see the different skulls they had getting cleaned at various stages. I’ll spare you the photo though because it’s a bit graphic. So here are some tarsier skeletons instead. So small!

They also had a pathological exhibit where they show skeletons of weird things or medically treated bodies, like calves born with two heads or split heads, or what a knee replacement looks like after all is said and done. It was super fascinating since when you study anatomy and such you don’t really think about those things.

They had all sorts of animals. Here are some more photos. I think I took the most photos here because it was just so fascinating.

They also had “mythical” skeletons, or skeletons that might be the origin of certain mythological creatures like centaurs or cyclops.

I also bought an owl pellet at the museum so I could take it apart and see what bones I could find. Owls swallow their prey whole then cough up a “pellet” of undigested fur and bones. People collect them and then sterilize them and give them to little kids at science camps to take apart so you can see what kinds of things the owl ate. We didn’t really find a whole lot when we were younger, but I took it super seriously this time and managed to uncover two skeletons of a small rodent of sorts.

I had an absolute blast doing it. It took me hours to pick apart, and I honestly wanted to just buy more and do it all over again. I wanted to put the skeleton together into a tiny model but the bones are so small and I don’t know good enough rodent anatomy so I gave up on that venture.

Skeletons! The bones are on the left, and all the fur is on the right.
From top left, you can see cranial plates and skulls. The four “hooks” underneath are two halves (x2) of the jaw bones. Along the right side are neck/back/tail vertebrae. To the left underneath the jaw are limbs, then small bones underneath those are like the fingers/toes, and then at the very bottom are a bunch of curved ribs and other mystery bones.

My neck was really sore the next day.

Tapas

We went to eat at a tapas place called Cevíche for dinner. It was really good. We ordered a pitcher of sangria and munched away at tiny dishes.

The tapas place was situated in a small downtown area which was really cute.

St. Augustine

My friend rhetus (Jamie) who is a guild mate who lives in Florida. She met up with us and took us around the historical city of St. Augustine, which is the longest/oldest continually-occupied city in the United States.

We went to go see some neat old fort (el Castillo de San Marcos). It’s got a cool ninja-star shape which helps with cannon coverage (smart, hey?). It was used by the Spanish when they colonized Florida and just kept passing hands until now, where it’s a historical site.

The castle is made of conquina, which is a stone made of crushed shells. Which apparently makes it really hard to preserve/restore since it’s not… easily made?

But they kept a lot of the old stuff inside which was like etchings by the soldiers who used to occupy the fort so long ago. Including scratchings of ships! You can see the masts and ladders and sails and meetings and the hull and cannon holes and stuff. Pretty cool.

It’s a boat, I promise. I didn’t say the soldiers were good artists.

They had this tiny hut that turns out was an oven that they used to heat up cannonballs so when they fired them it would light the enemy ships on fire.

Everything in the town is named descriptively and doesn’t really have any other business name. We at lunch at “Spanish Bakery.”

We also went to an old pharmacy in the town and they had all sorts of cool stuff including medicine that would definitely not be a thing in today’s day and age. Like this “cholera remedy” which is just alcohol, opium, and chloroform (lol).

Some of the medicines, like the malaria remedy, have still-used ingredients like quinine.

Check out these other cool old-times packaging.

SpAaaAAaaCe!

We went to the Kennedy Space Center, which was a huge highlight of the trip for me. I think as I get older I have more appreciation for the science and engineering and innovation that has to go into a space mission. There was a really powerful exhibit also that featured belongings and symbols of those who lost their lives in missions to the stars.

The Space Center was about 2 hours away from where we were living, and our car got completely covered in these nasty bugs called Lovebugs. Apparently the trick to cleaning them out is dryer sheets (TIL).

Anyway, we took this cute family photo in front of the NASA globe. The guy taking the photo told us to do a thumbs up and my dad was the only one who complied, hahahaha.

We went on a bus tour and got to see the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) which is where they assemble rockets before they go to launch. The stripe on each flag is wide enough of a lane for a bus to drive down.

It looks small, but it’s actually just really far away.

While we were there we got to relive a lot of the Apollo missions and got to see the Saturn V rocket (see the relevant xkcd here).

That evening, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket initiating the Starlink mission was scheduled to launch. The launch window was 22:30-00:00, and we drove out an hour and a half to this grassy roadside to watch the launch.

But the launch got scrubbed just as they started counting down T-15 minutes because of high wind speeds at upper altitudes. They tried the next day, but then it got put off again because of triple checks and “software updates” (curse you Windows 10!). They finally launched the week after, but we were already gone. Someday, I’ll get to see it!

Also while we were there for lunch, this super cheeky squirrel got on a table and stole some little girl’s fish fillet. It was hilarious.

The mom tried to shoo it away but wasn’t aggressive enough.

DIDNY WORL

We walked around the shops at Disney Springs which is right next to Disney World (we didn’t actually go to Disney World, or Universal or any of the theme parks this time). There was some really impressive LEGO statues!

Also, food

Korean BBQ is so good.

-Jasmin