*Price Check

Gas is down to $1.97 here. Can you beat that?

*Withdrawal and Depression

Oh, how I miss you, library. I wish I could be with you now, curled up on an overstuffed chair in a quiet corner, ingesting your knowledge.

Sigh.

Must find way to be student forever. Real world sux.

Toy Box Inspiration: Dinosaurs, Part Two

(cross-posted to DDBBG)

To recap, I am identifying dinosaurs found in my nephew's toybox. Because I am desperate for material.

Second dino:

(click for dino-size)

What we have here is a mighty herbivore that I grew up thinking was the Brontosaurus, but which is actually a Brachiosaurus. There is no such thing as a Brontosaurus! The guy who found the "Brontosaurus" skull mistakenly identified it as belonging to a new species, but it was really the skull of the already-discovered Apatosaurus, which looks a lot like a Brachiosaurus, but has a much longer tail. Confused yet?

Anywho, the Brachiosaurus was featured as the "veggiesaur" in Jurassic Park that sneezed on Lex. The dino in the movie was more anatomically correct than the dino in the toy box. Brachiosaurus has longer forelimbs than hindlimbs, much like a giraffe. Possibly the toybox version above is some other sauropod, but based on the skull shape and tail length, I'm sticking with Brachiosaurus as my identification here.

Brachiosaurus was one of the biggest dinosaurs and weighed in at around 35 tons. (Completely unrelated link to something else weighing 35 tons.)

Family Matters

My grandmother, who has been battling multiple myeloma for several years now, is not doing well.

Something has misfired neurologically, and she keeps calling for "Mama" and "Daddy".

She started a new chemo drug a few weeks ago, and the hope is that taking her off it will correct the problem...she's been getting progressively confused recently, and is apparently having brain seizures.

She is my only remaining grandparent, and there is something very frightening to me about a 78-year-old woman calling out for her dead parents.

*History

As in my 401K is History. Has anyone else watched their retirement funds evaporate these last couple of weeks?

*Toy Box Inspiration: Dinosaurs, Part One

(cross-posted to DDBBG)

So, I needed a little inspiration to post, and I found it in my nephew's box of dinosaurs. He's always liked dinosaurs, and I have encouraged that interest. I try to teach him the names of the different dinosaurs, and what they eat, etc.

Here is the first dinosaur...

(click to enlarge)

Notice the trees I positioned to make it more life-like? Awesome.

Now. What I believe we have here is the mighty stegosaurus. Notice the spikes on the tail, and the alternating armour plates on either side of the spine? Its head seems a little big, but toy dinosaurs aren't always entirely anatomically correct...or maybe they got crazy and made a less-well-known stegosaur. Anywho, this guy was about the size of a bus, and was an herbivore.

See how his front legs bow out like a lizard? That stance, combined with relatively short limbs compared to his bulk, probably mean the stegosaurus was not exactly winning any land races. The tail spikes and possibly the spinal plates were used in defense against predators. Imagine the predator that would look at a spikey, bus-sized stegosaurus and think, "Mmm, tasty."

*Overdue Linkage

Did I ever mention Rocket Jones moved?

Well, now I have. Check it out.

Also, remember that pesky little flood thing we had in Iowa over the summer? Maybe you saw it on the news? Well, the Cedar Rapids Library lost a good portion of its book collection. You can help them replace it by buying books off their Amazon Wish List.