Sunday bird blogging

Like chocolate, penguin pictures are always a good idea.

These king penguins were going for a swim in Fortuna Bay, in South Georgia.

Saturday reflections

Taken on the way to school this morning.

My knee replacement surgery is two months from today. Mostly I am able to get around, but I desperately miss walking. Just walking.

I hobble, I limp, I lurch, but it's walking only in a technical sense of the word, in that I manage to transport myself from one location to another. Slowly and gracelessly, but I get there eventually. Doing it for more than a couple of blocks is exhausting though, despite the industrial-strength prescription NSAIDS I am taking.

Which I forgot to take on Thursday, and then again this morning. I took a pill as soon as I got home, and by tomorrow I assume that all of the screaming joints will have quieted down again, but I am so ready for this to be over.

Not that I can blame my unmedicated state for my bonehead move of the day. I have braces for my knee and ankles, so getting dressed is more complicated than it used to be. This morning I put on a shirt from the closet and grabbed a clean pair of socks, then moved to the chair where I strap myself into all my medical accoutrements. When I was ready to put on the ankle braces, socks, and shoes, I couldn't find the socks. I knew I had just had them, and they were nowhere to be found. So I hobbled back to the dresser, got another pair of socks, put on my shoes, and left for school.

Later, I was standing in my classroom chatting with the early arrivals when I happened to glance down and saw the missing pair of socks poking out of my cleavage. Clearly I had needed another free hand while I was gathering clothes and shoes and just stuffed the socks down my shirt temporarily.

The students thought it was hilarious, and once I got over the embarrassment, so did I.

Astronomy Tuesday

I love this image of NGC 4753, a lenticular galaxy 60 million light years from Earth in Virgo (lenticular meaning it's not quite an elliptical galaxy and not quite a spiral, but something in between). Those twisting lanes of dust, probably the result of a galactic collision long ago, are strange enough, but that golden glow makes it thoroughly spooky.

Image Credit: NASA , ESA , Hubble ; Processing: Alexander Reinartz

Urban poetry

Juxtapositions in Hell's Kitchen.

The building in the foreground is the Interborough Rapid Transit Powerhouse. It was originally the power station for the IRT, New York's first subway line (and I had lived here for decades before I knew what the letters IRT stood for). Now it's part of the city's steam system. It was designed by Stanford White and completed in 1905, and that's an era of New York history that will never come again—when a commission for a distinctly unglamorous building is given to a star architect and built in Renaissance Revival style.

Saturday reflections

The GM Building in Midtown.

I had met a friend for breakfast, and I realized how seldom I leave the apartment for anything purely social these days. The heavy-duty NSAIDS I am taking definitely improve my mobility, but there are still many days when I only go out if I have to, and those reasons are almost always work, chores and the apparently endless stream of doctor's visits. But for food and conversation? I'd almost forgotten what that was like.

Urban poetry

I always love these juxtapositions of different building styles in Manhattan. This was on the Upper East Side a couple of weeks ago. (One consolation of being forced to get a new phone is that the photo quality is noticeably better, especially since I also lost my Olympus in the same incident.)

We're having an unseasonably early nor'easter; fortunately, where I am, it's just steady rain.

Saturday reflections

Here's a picture of reflections in a Manhattan bus, taken towards the end of last year. It got buried in the flurry of end of semester class pictures, and I apparently never even looked at it.

Urban poetry

This image of Paris at midnight, taken from the International Space Station, was taken in 2015, and has probably been sitting in my blog folder ever since then. But better late than never.

Image credit: ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center

Astronomy Tuesday

I haven't done one of these in a long time, but I saw this image on Instagram and wanted to share it: Jupiter peeking from behind a crescent moon.

If you really zoom in you can see two of its moons, Io (on the left) and Ganymede (on the right.) It's startling, to me anyway, how distant the moons are from the planet. (Of course, our moon is also surprisingly far from Earth when the two of them are photographed from space, and I'm still astonished every time I see it.)

Image credit: AJ Smadi (www.instagram.com/aj.smadi/)

Saturday morning meeting

A little urban poetry (those big windows hanging over Broadway putting all of the people inside on display), a few reflections.

Taken on the Upper West Side yesterday on my way to teach the first class of the semester. I was very glad that I no longer have a job where I might be required to attend a meeting on a Saturday morning; although I was on my way to work, I hadn't already spent Monday through Friday in similar conference rooms, unlike I suspect most of the people in that room.

Urban poetry

It's the sad anniversary of 9/11, and classes start tomorrow and I'm nervous about how I'm going to manage with limited mobility, so here's some serenity: a tree and a tree house in 6BC, a community garden in the East Village.

Urban poetry

A laundromat in the East Village a few months ago.