Category: Miscellaneous

We’re in NYC for a brief mid-semester getaway.

It’s cool but not uncomfortably so, and we’ve been spending the time shopping and sightseeing.

I’ve been to the city many times but not this late in the year and this was the first time I’d seen the Rockefeller center ice rink!

Here’s a local, not too bothered by the tourists gawking at him:

And here’s Times Square at night in temperatures of ~5 C:

No matter the time of year, it always seems to be busy here 🙂

We’ve got a brand new wild bird shop near us and today they had some rescued birds to see. Of course we went for a peep!

That’s a bard owl, a big bird that is apparently becoming increasingly common.

That’s a common crow. He could talk! He didn’t do it on command but we clearly heard him say “Hello who’s there?” It was a little creepy to be honest.

This was the highlight for us, a big beautiful raven. We don’t see these around our place (crows though are very common) but apparently they’re common in the woods just south of here. His feathers were glossy and handsome and his beak wickedly curved. These are amongst the most intelligent of birds, and we still don’t understand how they are able to communicate sophisticated information to each other.

This is a screech owl. He was only about 15 cm talk and motionless. If it wasn’t for his blinking he could have been a statue. As you can see, he was extremely cute!

And lastly a barn owl, which are our most common owl. He was a bit alarmed and kept making a raspy warning sound.

They were all cute and the owls reminded me of the owl cafe we visited in Tokyo. Maybe I should go back there one day…

I’ve seen my fair share of real bad Star Wars merchandise over the years and thought I was immune to excessive awfulness but this product tested my limits:

‘Star Wars Science’ they say, where you excavate alien skulls of beloved Star Wars creatures. Science…

That’s the list of possible skulls to be found, educationally compared to mundane Earthbound examples. I wonder which one I’ll get…?

The contents of the box. I reckon that’s alien dirt waiting to be dug, although since this could be some sort of space shipping container I guess it could be space vermiculite? I was impatient though and upended the whole thing:

Golly gee is that a Zabrak skull I see? Ancient remains of Darth Maul’s noble race that sometimes has the horns growing out of the head and sometimes stuck on as decoration?

Well yes it is a Zabrak! It’s in three pieces no less, so this sucker must have died a wretched death. Cleaning the space dirt off was a chore, and the inch-high skull didn’t go together as cleanly as it should, but I suppose it’s a curiosity if nothing else…?

Nah it’s awful, has zero play value and isn’t close to worth the $6 I paid for it. Even for a SW maniac like me this is terrible, so avoid at all costs…

(Except Bernard, who can expect one for Christmas!)