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general

geckoes

I got some photos of my geckoes from my flatmates. Including the new baby gecko, which as you can see, looks like a bit of a freakish large headed thing. It’s still pretty little though.

baby gecko

One of the other geckos (Copernicus I think) playing on the exciting climbing equipment.

hex gecko

The phases of cricket-hunting

We’ll skip the bit where the geckoes run around in circles, unable to notice the crickets, and sometimes lie there while the crickets run over them.

Here we have: gecko aware that there are crickets in the cage. Attempting to stalk them. But cannot actually see the cricket, so is stalking thin air. With fierce determination.

gecko

And moving onto gecko saying “Aha, Mr. Cricket, my evil nemesis, soooo, we meet again!”

gecko

This can be following by 1) the gecko biting the sand near the cricket, and running around with a mouth full of grains of sand for a while. Or 2) managing to bite the cricket, and running around with bits of cricket sticking out either side of it’s mouth, as desperate attempts are made to swallow the meal instead of letting it get away. It’s a fine line.

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general

30-30-30

Today I was introduced to the concept of the 30-30-30 rule. If the temperature drops to -30°F or under, and the wind is blowing at 30 mph, then any exposed skin will begin to freeze in 30 seconds. It was bloody cold today.

Well, it wasn’t quite cold enough for the rule to come into effect, but it was raining, and then snowing, all with a very strong wind, which managed to freeze lots of car doors shut, and create swathes of black ice on the roads and pavements, and nearly blow people over who were silly enough to be standing around outside.

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general

skåda

 

swedish fridge words

 
The people who lived here before me – they left behind their Swedish fridge words.

Categories
general snow

it’s a hard life

snowshoe

Went to Snowshoe in West Virginia on the weekend. On top of all the snow they’d already been getting, there was 6 inches of new fresh powder on Friday night. It kept snowing all day Saturday, and was a bit foggy too, which led to fun as I checked out new runs, with the visibility suddenly plummeting down to 10 metres. The skiing was still great though. Sunday was beautiful and clear and warm (though a bit windy round the top of the mountain). I checked out the feared Western Territory and discovered the black runs there, although 1.5 miles long, and a hell of a lot of fun, probably aren’t as black as they claim to be. Well, at least by the standards I know (Mt Buller in other words).

Oh, and there were hardly any other telemarkers there – I saw one on Saturday, and one or two on Sunday. A lot of people were asking me about my strange bindings (and then about my strange accent). However, there were quite a few of those really short skis (that people use with no poles) around.

snow tree
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general

more on my house

So, this is my house – well, an incredibly accurate, well-drawn, to-scale hand drawing of the floor plan (when I say hand drawn, I mean drawn on the trackpad of my laptop).

house plan

And some house snippets… the one in the middle is the bathroom mat thing, and it’s the best bathroom mat ever.

house textures