Gripes and birdsong

The little finger of my right hand has been a study in scarlet, so to speak, this weekend. I'm learning about anatomy. Which is good because Thursday's judo class wasn't all that rewarding otherwise.

Apparently a finger can dislocate and relocate all at once, or at least so quickly that by the time you turn you head to see what the popping sound was, it's where it ought to be again, looking all innocent. (And by "relocated" I mean to its original position; my finger didn't migrate.)

Anyway, ow. My finger is close to the size and color of its opposite again, but I wouldn't mind if it could hurry up again. It makes it hard to grab things or type. Also, the "p" on my keyboard is being troublesome, so that when I write "paper" it tends to come out "aer" and so on.

Oh, what a world, what a world.

Entirely unrelatedly, I have half a mind to try JulNoWriMo--that is, NaNoWriMo in July. It would be exciting and/or foolish because I have absolutely no idea what I would write. One advantage/disadvantage is that it would require me to finish off the story I'm writing now by the end of the month. That would be a good thing to do if I could anyway. So, as you can see, I really am ambivalent.

Yesterday morning I was in Philadelphia, awoken by an intriguing bird. It was cycling from song to song not unlike a car alarm, and it just kept going. I understand that some birds advertise for mates by showing off their extensive musical repertoire. If birds really go for that than this one must have been neck-deep in ladies. He went through what seemed like easily 100 songs.

I got to thinking about whether there were trends or memes in the world of birds. It reminded me of the internet, with people gathering and disgorging vast numbers of words and phrases stripped of context. I'm not sure it increases the odds of mating in humans, but we do it anyway.

This particular bird stuck to bird songs, but I do remember the mockingbird that picked up my mother's alarm clock and things of that nature. I was reminded of the impressive Superb Lyrebird, who adopts his songs indiscriminately. This one, for example, that picked up the sounds of construction at the zoo.

Birds don't understand us or what we do, as a general rule, but apparently they think some of our noises are cool enough to repeat. Is it all one to them, or do they know that human sounds are different from the other songs they pick up? Are these bird memes? Do birds repeat people noises because they're nonsensical to them? Do they think we're hilarious?

Adventures in Baltimore

Presidents' Day weekend was a nice one. Girlfriend and I went to Baltimore, about as spontaneously as we do anything. That is, we wanted to do it. On Friday I did some research on what you can actually do in Baltimore. (The case for the city up to that point had rested mainly on proximity.) On Saturday we started actually planning it, looking at train tickets for Sunday morning and Monday evening, and reasonable hotels for in between. So as it had turned out, there are several good museums in Baltimore as well as an aquarium, but their hours, combined with the hours Girlfriend needed to be back in DC to get work done, were generating headaches. We'd be rushing to get there when there wouldn't be much to do, then rushing back to get back to work. I was beginning to wonder if we actually had time for a vacation, and was getting ready to call the whole thing off, when Girlfriend asked me, "What if we go tonight?"

It was 3 p.m. at this point and I had already made a hotel reservation for Sunday night. The deadline for cancelling that reservation was 4 p.m. the day before, or one hour from then. But over the next hour she convinced me she had the right idea. We canceled the reservation with five minutes to spare. We booked a different room at a different hotel and bought train tickets for 7 o'clock. Then we ran around the house throwing things into bags, swung by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription I had to have refilled that day, ate dinner at the mall food court, and were off.

I forgot to account for the track work on the Metro. We had a long wait for the red line to get us to Union Station. But, there we got, timed so perfectly that you would have thought I knew what I was doing.

So, there's a Quality Inn in Baltimore that's surprisingly nice. Actually, possibly the nicest hotel I have any memory of staying in. (I think the place in Westport was, on the whole, a better experience, but that was a family operation. Also, we got trapped in the parking lot by an elk.) Booking the room at the last minute apparently brought it back into our price range, so hooray for that!

Girlfriend particularly liked the window hangings.

She made a nest there and hibernated until Monday.

As you can see, Girlfriend remembered to bring her camera, which means I get to put pictures in this post.

We walked out that night to get drinks and some food. We had a frustrating time at the bar we finally settled on. It's partially, but not entirely, their fault. For example, it was unfortunate that they were out of Blue Moon. It was my fault that, when browsing their remaining beer selection more or less at random, I forgot what's special about O'Doul's. Similarly, it was not their fault that my girlfriend is passionately averse to the substance known as "nacho cheese," but it is their fault that their menu specified mozzarella. (It was special. Or supposed to be.) And ultimately it is on me that I didn't send either of these things back.

Downtown Baltimore looks pretty nice. On the walk back we saw the back of the Baltimore Basilica.

We intended to circle around to the front at some point, but didn't get around to it. We also saw the Washington Monument (not that one) and got a shot of that in daylight.

Commemorating George Washington's imprisonment atop the tower of Orthanc.

We found The Walter's Art Museum, and that's a pretty cool (free) place. We got to the bulk of it in our two hours or so there, but could have spent two, or six, more. I'll share one bronze thingy that caught my eye:

It was maybe one or two feet tall. That's the Fall of Adam and Eve, there, but what got my attention was the monkey munching away in the background. Conjures up some fun thoughts. Of course Darwin wouldn't come along for another two centuries or so, and inasmuch as this prefigures him it's a coincidence. The monkey, according to the museum card, symbolizes lust and foolishness or some such. But I like to imagine him a step behind Adam and Eve, waiting for his turn.

The chunk of the museum I found most interesting was an eclectic collection organized as the sort of things an Enlightenment-era nobleman might accumulate. An 11-inch Egyptian "mummy" filled with corn sat on a shelf under a Mesoamerican stone "idol," with cards explaining not only what they were, but what the people collecting them in the 1600s thought they were. A narwhal horn hung, contextless, on the wall. At least, I couldn't find an explanation. It looked about 10 feet long--much too big to have been passed off as something that grew out of a horse's forehead, as I understand they had been.

We went down from there to the Inner Harbor to check out the National Aquarium with some of Girlfriend's relatives. The aquarium's exhibits were interesting, but the layout made for a tightly-controlled experience. I felt like I was on an assembly line. It was dark, and hard to get good pictures.

Guess.*

But there were some successes.

There's a rainforest exhibit too. I found out what a Screaming Piha sounds like. That's something that stops being fun right away.

All in all, a good trip, a good break. I discover, over and over, how nice it is to just up and go somewhere with Girlfriend. We might go back to Baltimore some time. Then again, we might pick a completely different destination at random.

* It's the whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.