Award Ceremony Season

 

Earlier this week, this sign appeared on the teaching assistants' door:

Now you would think if there was ever a department that didn't need this sign, it would be ours. I feel like undergrads are getting more ignorant or something, because the university literally changed the name of our Zoology department to Integrative Biology because so many students thought "zoology" was the study of zoos, so you'd major in Zoology to become a zookeeper. Of course, they both come from the same Greek root, but students nowadays don't know anything about Greek or Latin, or so it seems. What do they know about? Apps.

Yesterday there was an awards ceremony for the top German students, and they each got one of these cookies. Today the faculty member who ordered the cookies gave me one to thank me for all my help. (I arrange the scholarships for all those top German students.)

Apparently it says "heartfelt congratulations," but I know about as much German as the undergrads know Latin and Greek. I really should have saved this cookie, because I forgot that later in the afternoon there would be an awards ceremony for staff. Because I was on the committee that helped pick the winners, I was invited to the ceremony. My coworker named after a Norse god won an award, and his whole family came: his wife, his parents, his in-laws, and his baby who will be one next month. He's so cute! There were plenty of hors d'oeuvres at this reception, and we even got free wine or beer! I chose chardonnay. Another person I know pretty well got an award too, and she said she nominated me for an award. In the unlikely event that I win it, I will let all my readers know.

Famous Hat

More Photos from the Brookfield Zoo

 

This evening as I was heading down the hill towards downtown, there seemed to be an unusually large number of students heading in the same direction. I didn't know if something was going on down on State Street, but they all walked faster than I can, and I lost track of them. I did hear a lot of hooting and hollering coming from State Street Brat's patio, so I looked that direction and saw a whole bunch of Spider Men. Check it out:

As promised, here are more photos from the Brookfield Zoo. This is an echidna.

This is a kookaburra. You can tell this is the Australia section.

Here is another view of the wombat. So cute!

And, of course, a kangaroo.

This is a wild horse.

These are zebras.

When we got to the giraffe viewing area, all three giraffes went out of sight, but then we saw one licking the edge of the building.

This is some sort of antelope.

Here is a polar bear.

Now for some birds. I have no idea what kind most of these are.

This one is an Andean condor.

How about some monkeys?

These penguins were looking up at an Incan tern...

...who was looking down at them.

This is a leopard shark.

I think this is a moray eel.

Here are some moon jellyfish.

This is a sloth bear.

One lion was alert.

The other one was not.

Neither was the tiger.

This is a pretty orange snake with a blue stripe.

This snake has these weird tentacles, like a catfish.

The spotted pattern on the snow leopard is so beautiful.

A woman was dancing in the water with the dolphins.

Here are some photos from the swamp exhibit. This is an alligator.

This is a waxy tree frog.

I think this bird was called a boat-billed heron.

There was a desert section too. Travalon took a photo of this lizard because it's called a chuckwalla.

This little wild cat is very cute.

This is some kind of tapir, but not as cute as the black and white ones.

And this is a black rhino.

This is a capybara, the world's largest rodent.

And when we got back toward the entrance, we were on the back end of the Australia exhibit, and we saw these kangaroos hiding from the rain. The one looks like she has a joey in her pouch.

How does the Brookfield Zoo compare to the Omaha Zoo? They were both very cool, and they had very similar jungle setups, with African, Asian, and South American sections. The Desert Dome in Omaha is hard to beat, but I really liked the bird exhibits at Brookfield. So I'd say they were both great!

Famous Hat

Uncle's Funeral and Brookfield Zoo

 

As most of my readers know, I went to Chicago this weekend for my uncle's funeral. Friday was the visitation, so Travalon and I took the day off of work and headed down there. We got there much earlier than we had expected, so we had lunch with my other two uncles, and it was really rainy so instead of doing anything outside, we sat in my one uncle's hotel room and drank craft beer until we could check into the hotel ourselves. After the visitation, there was a short remembrance of my uncle, when people could get up to speak. (I didn't.) Our hotel's swimming pool closed criminally early, so Travalon and I didn't get to use it.

Saturday we buried my uncle, to my pleasant surprise in a Catholic cemetery, since I thought he was Baptist and his wife was Lutheran. Apparently her brother is already buried in this cemetery, so they just decided to have family plots there. Then we all went to a pizza place, and there were tons of kids there so it was very cute. The cousins on the other side have lots of kids of various sizes. Then we went to my cousin's house and hung out on her deck, just our side of the family. I was so happy to see my cousin from Ypsilanti and meet his wife and toddler daughter for the first time. My other cousin has a toddler daughter too, and they are so cute when they are playing together, talking in those little doll voices. I played with them a little, then one girl told me to go back to the adults, so I did. How can you take a toddler's demands personally? She had just had enough of an adult intruding into their world.

Yesterday everyone was heading home, so Travalon and I went to Mass, and then we went to the Brookfield Zoo. We got rained on and walked over seven miles, and then we had what we thought was a late lunch but turned out to be an early dinner at an amazing tapas restaurant. They had kalimotxos, which are red wine with Coke, a thing we used to drink in the Basque Country when I was twenty. They also had the Spanish tortilla, which is nothing like a Mexican tortilla but something like an omelet with chunks of potato in it, served cold. We used to eat that every day for dinner in the Basque Country. It was like these people got inside my head, because not only did they serve the food and drink I remembered from the summer I was twenty, but they played all the salsa songs I remember from my salsa kick in the late 00's. (My uncle introduced Travalon to Rodrigo y Gabriela, a guitar duo I know well from my Pandora flamenco station.) We also had some other tapas and then split a pan of paella, and for dessert, we split the most delicious flan ever. We definitely have to go back to that restaurant!

Travalon took over two hundred photos at the zoo, so I may be posting them for the next few days. Here are some of my favorites. First is the wombat - it's so cute!

I love these pretty birds.

This bird was following us around. When I asked a zookeeper its name, he said it was a female Andean cock of the rock. (So a hen of the rock?) I said, "But what is her name?" and he said she didn't have one, and that she didn't like people. But she seemed to like us.

Here is the male cock of the rock. He didn't come over to us.

And we saw they had a picture of him on the floor!

This is a Mexican wolf.

This is an Incan tern. They were in the section with the penguins, and Travalon loved how they kept dive bombing us.

These are two white ibises and a scarlet ibis in the Swamp exhibit.

I love this polka-dot fish, it's either a ray or a skate. I can't remember.

There were blooming magnolias all over, and they smelled wonderful.

We didn't pay to go into the dolphin show, but you can go underneath and watch them do the tricks in the water.

Travalon loves snow leopards, even if they eat red pandas. We did see a photo of a red panda prominently displayed at the zoo entrance, but we never found the animals because apparently they are in some kids' exhibit you have to pay extra to go into.

This is what we got at the gift shop: Octavia the Octopus!

Today my coworker who is named after a Norse god (very appropriate for the German, Nordic, and Slavic department) told me there was a crane guarding the door on the fourth floor, so I went to check it out.

You know the labor shortage is getting bad when they have to hire large birds to do security. We also got free breakfast today because apparently there is a campus-wide party going on, so I told my coworker that was down on the main floor, since he had come in on the fourth floor. I had a bagel. 

Tomorrow: more pictures from the zoo!

Famous Hat