Second Week of July

This week was more restful than exciting. I decided against some activities I was considering for Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday evening to instead enjoy time at home. I fed Cody, read some books, and worked on my shawl-in-progress.

On the Spice Road progress. Section 3 stripes are complete.

There is a runoff election for utilities commissioner tomorrow, but early voting was this week at a limited number of polling places. I went over to the Dunwoody Library on Thursday evening to vote. There was a choice of three stickers: the usual one and two designed by local high school students. I got one of the students', of course.

With my sticker after voting.

Otherwise the week was full of meetings at school and working with my summer research student. We did not end up with enough product from the reaction we ran last week, even though it looks like the correct stuff, so we repeated it and hope to have enough next week to move on to the third of four steps in the synthesis.

Product #2 is a nice white crystalline solid.

Repeating reaction #2.

On Saturday, my cousin James, his wife Kate, and their two children came to Atlanta to do some things and they stayed overnight with me. Today we all visited the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell. It was a very nice place, but it was extremely hot. Since we arrived before it opened, we parked nearby at Azalea park which is on the riverside, and we walked about a mile on the riverside recreation trail to get to the nature center. 

Temporary butterfly exhibit.

One of the exhibits is a butterfly house. Each person got a paint brush dipped in sugar water and you could get the butterflies to cling to it for a little while.

Tree sculpture in the Georgia wildlife room.

Indoors there was a nice Georgia wildlife area with live fish, turtles, owls, snakes, and an opossum. Outdoors there are several raptor cages containing owls, hawks, and eagles, and lots of trails. There is a boardwalk that goes out over the river that we did not have time for (and: hot!).

Great horned owls.