Music to Make You Jig

The Fruits of Victory

Today I received my prize for the mushroom photo. I am so happy! 

A Fungus Among Us

I entered the BIOSOC photo contest so I could get some of my photos displayed in the biology atrium at my university.

There were several contest categories including "Animals," "Plants" and "Other."

I entered some obligatory kea photos and one of a blue mushroom known as Entoloma hochstetteri.

I was thrilled to find this specimen near Fox Glacier.

To set the stage for the trouble I went through to get the picture,Nick's sons were running around the trail screaming, Nick was getting irritated at my taking so long to photograph a lowly mushroom and my pants got soaked while I tried to get on eye level with it.

Because there was low light, getting a clear shot without a tripod was a painful process.

On a side note, this is why I didn't join my university's hiking club-I didn't want to hold everyone up while I hovered over some small plant trying to get the prefect shot.

Anyway, here's my picture:

Today I found out my picture won a prize in the "other" category.

I stood no chance of beating the excellent work in the other categories but thankfully, a fungus is neither a plant or animal so I won in the weird, not likely to be entered class.

Hurrah!

A Little Closer to Antarctica

In celebration of 60 years of a New Zealand presence in Antarctica, the International Antarctic Centre hosted an Ice Fest and gave the public a chance to go on board the U.S. Air Force C-17 that carried researchers and supplies down south.

It was awesome for me and mostly awesome for Alex although there were some tears for the latter.

First he wailed when we took him on the aircraft and then he wailed when it was time to leave.

I got to speak with some cool Air Force peeps and talk to some academics getting ready to head south to do a science.

There was a group of children dressed as penguins. Even the smallest of these sent Alex into tears.