Taking a Break from Christmas to Reflect on Dragons

I found this passage on Japanese dragons while preparing my myth class for next semester:

"The dragon is the Great Mystery itself. Hidden in the caverns of inaccessible mountains, or coiled in the unfathomable depths of the sea, it awaits the hours when it shall slowly put itself in motion. It spreads out its coils in the clouds of the tempest, and washes its mane in the darkness of foam-crested whirlpools. Its claws are the prongs of the lightning; its scales gleam in the bark of rain-swept pine trees. Its voice is heard in the hurricane which sweeps away the dead leaves of the forest and quickens a new spring."

-- Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913)

Sea dragon by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)

Pinterest

Do any of you use Pinterest? It's a site that allows you to save any images you like from the web, and to see everyone else's favorite images. I've found a lot of great stuff there.

Nature photography and ideas for Christmas decorating.

(Orange peel fungus; felt pom-pom flowers)

Color combinations that I might want to recreate.

(Cladonia lichen; microscopic photo of a jewel beetle's eye)

Things to eat and things never to eat.

(Currants (source unknown); pokeberries)

Places I'd like to go and things I'd like to see.

(Paris (source unknown); snowflake jellyfish (source unknown)

If you want an invitation to Pinterest, let me know!

(Etruscan mask of the river god Acheloos; nudibranch)

My Tea Time

I love this photography project What Does Your Tea Time Look Like, which shows you cups of tea from around the world. This is what my tea time looks like, in case you're curious.

Green tea poured from a sunny yellow teapot into my favorite octopus cup. The handle is a tentacle!

Card Catalog

If you -- or your blog -- had an entry in a library card catalog, what would it look like? Make your own here.

My Facebook Year

Facebook has this really cool app that makes a little collage out of your status updates from the past year. It's interesting to see what sorts of things I choose to post about -- all the things that create the Facebook version of myself. According to Facebook, my year has mainly consisted of grading, drinking tea, looking at bugs, and being confused. Hmm ... that sounds about right.

Reflecting on NaBloPoMo

November is over, if you can believe it, and I managed to post something on this blog every day. In fact, I went over my goal and did 34 posts! NaBloPoMo was fun, which was its main purpose, but also, it turns out that when you try to think of something funny or interesting or beautiful to post about every day, you become more aware of how funny, interesting, and beautiful your life is. So thanks, NaBloPoMo. I think I'll probably post more often from now on, but maybe not every day. Finals week is coming up, after all.

The Veprecose Ichthyarchy

The Oxford English Dictionary has this wonderful word-adoption website called Save the Words. You scroll over the words and adopt one that calls to you. I wanted to adopt them all! But I don't think I have the room in my vocabulary. After some agonizing deliberation, I decided to take two of them home: veprecose and ichthyarchy. Now I have to try to use them as much as possible to rescue them from obscurity.

Veprecose means "full of prickly shrubs or bushes."

Ichthyarchy means "the domain of fishes."

Maybe a sea floor bristling with prickly sea cucumbers could be a veprecose ichthyarchy?

NaBloPoMo

This November I was going to do NaNoWriMo, which stands for "National Novel Writing Month," and involves writing an entire novel in one month. But then I realized that I'm writing an article, and that November should actually be NaFiFinArMo ("National Finally Finish Article Month"). So instead I decided to do NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month! All of the fun of the weird abbreviation without all of the long hours away from my article! All I have to do is post something every day for a month.

What about the days when I'm in my office for twelve hours and nothing happens except article-writing and paper-grading and long, long meetings with students? On those days you get something like this. It's one of my favorite images ever.

It's Finally Autumn

Autumn doesn't really look like this here -- although we do have spooky trees -- but this is what October always feels like to me. (Image: Autumn, by Jacek Yerka)

Wave

This photo taken from inside a wave by Clark Little is just gorgeous.

Something Else to Look at

Until finals week is over and I go back to documenting my life, here is some beautiful rainbow chard from the Royal Horticultural Society. Their website is amazing!

Perseus and Andromeda

I love this sea monster engraved by Valentin Sezenius (1624, via BibliOdyssey). I doubt that "Clash of the Titans" will be as cool as this print. I still want to see it, though.

Another Sign of Spring

Roadside mullet stands are popping up all over town. By the end of the summer, these places will be selling scuppernongs and tupelo honey. Now some of them are just guys in their boats with coolers full of the mullet they caught last weekend.

My Dream Curtains

OK, I normally don't post about things like this, but these are the most amazing curtains. In the world. In my dream house they would be on every single window.

Christmas in Florida

Coming soon, pictures of our actual Floridian Christmas. Until then -- this is what Christmas in Florida looks like.


And this.
And this is basically a typical December day at the Bloomingtonauts' household.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving

I love the day after Thanksgiving. Decorations are still up, classes are still cancelled, and there is a refrigerator full of leftovers. I'm celebrating by relaxing at home. Today I'm reading murder mysteries, drinking tea, puttering around, and looking at random things on the internet, like this.

Magic Lanterns

This is the view from the table at Redeye Coffee where I like to sit with my laptop and drink peach soda.

I love the way the coffeeshop lights reflect in the window and look like lanterns hanging from the trees and telephone wires.

As it gets dark, the strings of lights seem to stretch out across Tallahassee.

Accidental Portrait of Our Future Apartment

I think Spanish artist Alicia Martin might be psychic.

Dreaming of Seascapes

You seriously have to check out the website of photographer David Doubilet. His images of underwater life are amazing.

He won me over the second I saw that his portfolio had a Jellyfish section.

Ocean Obsessing

I'm going to the beach tomorrow, and I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else today. I've been looking at all kinds of ocean-related things, and I found something truly amazing: these glass models of sea life made in the 19th century.

These are incredible! I want to go to the National Museum of Wales to see them!

I hope we don't run into too many of the real ones this weekend, though.