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By Amber, on September 13, 2011, at 10:35 pm My sister and I were sitting on chaise lounges by our parents’ pool this weekend, a small iron table between us. “There’s a spider under the table,” she observed. It was hanging beneath the corner closest to me, inches away but minding its own business. Spiders kind of freak me out for some reason, but this one was so uninterested in me that after I made a mental note to come back with a camera, I proceeded to read and doze for several more hours.
When I finally grabbed my camera at the end of the afternoon, this was the only shot I got before the spider tucked up tight beneath the table and hid from view:
The next day, the spider was back in its spot and I seized the opportunity to snap away. Hey, wait — does something about this spider seem funny to you?
Oh. Okay, then.
I have to say, I liked her company better than that of the scorpion I found in the guest room. Is my parents’ house dangerous, or what?
By Amber, on September 11, 2011, at 11:24 pm 
Forgive me for the lack of content tonight, but I’m finally home for the first time in almost a week! Last Monday I flew to Illinois, and on Thursday night I flew from Illinois into Austin. Mark picked me up at the Austin airport and we headed to my parents’ house. I have the usual flora, fauna, and general silliness to share with you, but it will have to wait while I unpack and give Sweet Pea some attention.
I hope you had a great weekend, too!
By Amber, on August 25, 2011, at 10:39 pm 
Just kidding — this is Houston! Our seasons are ‘summer’ and ‘the pause between summers, wherein I think I am going to die because occasionally it gets as cold as 50F.’ The only difference between November and summer is that, in November, the days are shorter and I’m trying very hard to make my beloved waffle-weave shirts work. And so, since this is merely August, we are still so very far away from fall.
Someone should tell that to the retailers who are sending me catalogs full of delicious-looking cozy fall clothes. At least Express had the courtesy to pair their giant faux-fur trapper hat (is it wrong that I want one?) with a very short skirt, like ‘we know you want some warm clothes, but here’s something you might actually be able to wear.’
Anyway, my lizard brain is clearly still confused by the first 28 years of my life, as I am simultaneously trying to soak up the ‘end’ of summer, and yet continually reminding myself that September does not equal autumn. Just the end of my fast commute to work. Thanks, school buses!
By Amber, on August 23, 2011, at 10:39 pm I was going to post something tonight about my new work Blackberry, and how trying to learn to use it is giving me a terrifying look at what it will be like to be old. Or about how I won Best Speaker tonight at Toastmasters! Or even about the delicious, greasy bacon cheeseburger that I celebrated with afterward.
But the thing is, I got distracted by chocolate. We usually pick out a couple thousand bars when we do our grocery shopping at HEB, but Mark raided the Spec’s chocolate section and came home with some brand-new (to us) treats:
A tip from me to you: the red velvet, though somewhat of an ironic flavor for a chocolate bar, is amazing.
By Amber, on August 11, 2011, at 10:43 pm Just a few random green favorites from various Hill Country places tonight. I have nothing of note to post because I’m relaxing and soaking up the last of my little pretend retirement. Although part of me is ready to be productive again (by which I mean finance my retail habits) and get out of the house more than once or twice a week, I am really going to miss pajama pants, adequate rest, and the way the cat will cry desperately outside the bedroom door when I go upstairs to do something, then sit across the room with her back to me when I come back downstairs to read. You know, I used to scoff, but now I find the staycation highly recommendable!
Enjoy your weekend!
By Amber, on August 7, 2011, at 10:30 pm I don’t read as voraciously as I used to. Oh, I read plenty, but I only seem to find time for books when I’m on vacation or a long plane ride — I’ve usually got my nose buried in the internet. One reason I have thusfar avoided Twitter (other than the fact that I am just not that interesting) is that I don’t want my attention span to shrink any more than the blogosphere has already caused it to.
I would like to change that, because there are so many books out there that I’d really like to read. I’m thinking maybe I can change my ways if I commit to an e-reader, but I feel a duty to plow through some of the backlog that’s sitting on our bookshelves first. So having more time off between jobs than I expected, I decided it dive into some detective novels. They’re my favorite genre, and an easy way to get back into the habit — I can easily tear all the way through one of these in a quiet day. My father-in-law sent me a box containing more than a dozen of one of his favorite author’s novels a couple years ago and I’m going to see how many I can get through in the coming week. I’m one and a half deep so far, and relieved to see that I can still pay attention to the written word for more than ten minutes*.
Read anything good lately? Enjoy formulaic detective novels as much as I do? Have a strong opinion on e-readers?
*As long as I can’t see my inbox from wherever I’m sitting!
By Amber, on July 7, 2011, at 10:00 pm My Thursday night spinning class was cancelled after months of very low attendance — recently there have been anywhere from three to six of us, when there used to be at least ten. It was actually going to get the axe a couple weeks ago, and then a dozen people showed up in what turned out to be a freak occurrence, so it got a temporary stay of execution. I used to go to spinning on Tuesday and Thursday nights, but then Toastmasters took over Tuesday nights, so now I have none!
I’ve been thinking about what I can do with those extra couple hours on Thursdays. One obvious possibility is to get started early on my Thursday night posts! Did I do that tonight? Of course not — I took a nap. So here are some more pictures from around my parents’ yard.
I grew up in Virginia, where the cardinal is the state bird (as in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia). I never would have guessed there were so many cardinals in Texas, but that is probably what I see most when I watch my parents’ birdbath. They also have a roadrunner that visits, but he’s sneaky. My dad and I tried meep-meeping from the pool, but no luck. Next step, I think, is to set up some giant wooden boxes stamped ‘ACME.’
There are quite a few pretty wildflowers that sprout up in unlandscaped areas outside the fence, such as this vervain:
..and this silverleaf nightshade:
I found this live shotgun shell in the woodsy area (the neighborhood is located on the builder’s old hunting grounds; my father found a gym bag full of these):
..and this ironclad beetle:
If you walk far enough, the trees open up to this meadow where nobody has built yet:
Pretty, isn’t it?
By Amber, on June 28, 2011, at 9:56 pm Blog note: because I am tired and lazy, here is the text of the speech I gave tonight at Toastmasters, and a photo you have already seen. I won Best Speaker!
Humans are predators. Our eyes are in the front of our heads. Our stomachs contain specific enzymes that break down meat. Our ancestors made tools and became skilled hunters, capable of killing much larger and stronger animals. Our brains, say scientists, would not have become as large and as capable as they are had we not been eating all that meat.
But we are too good as predators. Throughout our history we’ve nearly wiped out many traditional food sources that used to fill the plains and the seas, like bison and sea turtles. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Cayman Islands, he called them ‘Las Tortugas’ because sea turtles were so numerous in the surrounding waters that it seemed one might be able to walk across their backs.
Sometimes the predatory ways of our species are not food-based, but fear-based, or even superstition-based. All three reasons are cause for a dramatic decline in the world’s shark population — some Atlantic species are down as much as 80%. Up to 73 million sharks are killed every year, and a large contributor is the practice of finning, where a shark’s dorsal fin is sliced off to be sold at up to $300/lb for shark fin soup and the shark is released back to the ocean, where it dies if it is not already dead. Removing these top predators from an ecosystem can cause terrible imbalance as sick fish and lower predators are not removed. These lower predators like to eat the same things we do, like tuna and scallops. Sharks keep the ocean population healthy, strong, and diverse all the way down to the bottom of the food chain.
I went Playa del Carmen recently, where I learned something interesting. From November to February, bull sharks gather in the waters off Playa to give birth. Scuba divers from around the world come to see the sharks and each diver pays around $100-$150 per dive. This past November, a fisherman from a nearby town killed nine of those sharks, including seven females that were gestating a total of 50 pups. Dying sharks release a chemical into the water that other sharks can detect, and the remaining sharks stayed away for the rest of the season.
That fisherman probably made up to $1800 total by selling the sharks to a middleman who could resell them to an exporter, who would in turn make much more for the individual parts on the international market. And the whole Playa tourism industry, from the dive shops to the hotels and restaurants, lost tens of millions for the season. They will almost certainly lose more in the coming years, now that an entire future generation of bull sharks has been wiped out.
The amazing thing is that the fisherman was completely within his legal rights in Mexico. A lot of people around the world are working very hard to conserve shark populations and to create marine sanctuaries, including in Playa. In January, the Shark Conservation Act was signed into law in the US, disincentivizing fisherman from the practice of finning by requiring them to keep entire body, which is worth very little to most people. It also allows the US to refuse seafood imports from countries that allow finning.
There is still so much to be done. Maybe you’re like me, and you’ve encountered a shark on a dive, in which case you already know what a magical experience that is, and I don’t have to sell you on shark conservation. Or maybe you’re thinking, “Well, I’d be more interested in diving if it weren’t for sharks.” But without sharks, you can say goodbye to healthy reefs. There won’t be much to dive for.
If you care about sharks, or ecology, or even if you just like to eat seafood – especially if you just like to eat seafood — I encourage you to seek out any of the many marine conservation agencies around the world, like Oceana or Shark Allies, and do some reading about what’s happening and how we can stop it. I have three things you can do right now: don’t buy shark products other than fossils, don’t eat shark fin soup, and consider not patronizing restaurants that serve shark fin soup (and telling the manager why). Finning is a brutal and disastrous practice, and it’s up to us to stop it.
By Amber, on June 23, 2011, at 11:00 pm Just a few snaps from macro-stalking in my parents’ yard last weekend!
By the way, if you read me at my actual site instead of a reader, you may have noticed that I am a little behind on 365 uploads. It seems that flickr’s psychic upload service is on the fritz, but I hear it’ll be fixed in a jiffy!
Oh, also? I am definitely my Toastmasters club’s new VPPR. Hooray! Looking at the list of the other new officers, I am confident that it is going to be a very good year.
By Amber, on June 21, 2011, at 10:58 pm Don’t you just hate waiting all night for the returns?
Tonight we held officer elections at my Toastmasters club. I came back from the district conference and the leadership seminar with a bunch of ideas for my club, some specifically geared toward the VP Public Relations role. I wrote my stump speech for VPPR weeks ago and have been just waiting to deliver it!
And then nobody ran against me. I did get nominated for VP Education and VP Membership, but I didn’t care to take on either of those roles this year, so I declined to stay in the running for them. The folks who had someone to compete against gave their speeches, and we all submitted our ballots.
Rather than wait for the ballots to be counted, we agreed that the outgoing Sergeant at Arms would send the results by email, and we haven’t heard yet. I don’t feel right celebrating my ‘victory’ before it’s official, but…did I mention nobody else was running? Ha!
I can’t wait to see who I’ll be working with and get started. However it shakes out in the other seats, I think this is going to be a great year for the club!
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