PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries google plus problems - 2019-02-04 flirtatious birbs of the home - 2019-01-27 little redheads - 2019-01-21 eclipse night - 2019-01-20 the hummingbird report jan. 13, 2019 - 2019-01-13 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

d.c. discount trip part 2: giant gems 2011-10-19 - 7:35 a.m. Friday, October 14 A rainy day, mostly good for museum hopping. We started at the Air and Space Museum. According to its website, this is the most visited museum in the world, which I doubt, but maybe. They have a very large MacDonald's there, where we had lunch. A tad overpriced, and I felt that they could have served wine and beer with their pizza and hamburger, but no one asked me. They did have diet lemonade, for those wishing to avoid the sugar and caffeine demons. Next stop was the Museum of African Art. On their web site, they announced a temporary exhibition called, "African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting." Me, I interpreted this to mean that they'd collected mosaics. What it really meant was that they'd gathered a random collection of whatever they could get their hands on, some guy's quilted witch doctor dancing cape here, some ancient golden utensils there. Since there was no real theme to this eclectic gathering, the curators decided that it was somehow a mosaic. I guess, maybe. If you're really stretching the word. There were some interesting pieces though. I noticed some rather Byzantine-looking faces on the Ethiopian portraits. Next came the Natural History Museum. Dinosaurs and gemstones. What more could you ask? I still think the Field Museum or the Natural History Museum in London is the king of the dinosaurs, but the National Gem Gallery had a gem, mineral, and crystal collection to knock you off your perch. One of the finest gems was a flawless Quartz sphere that weighed over 100 pounds -- 242,323 carats -- that would perfectly reflect people walking in the room...only upside-down. It was cut in China in the 1920s, and the source of the Quartz is unknown, but in those days it would have had to be natural. A few photos, with the quality not-so-hot since they had to be taken behind glass and among crowds, but maybe they'll give the flavor of the scene: a cabinet organized around the theme of the rainbow of colors, a design element i may copy on one of my mineral shelves one of these fine days Other striking stones include: *the hope diamond, as the world's largest blue diamond, has become the national gem -- a contest was held to create a new setting for the gem, and apparently people phoned in on their cell phones to vote for the winner seen here, a la american idol, however, if you dislike the setting, the diamond will be returned to its original, presumably well-cleaned and repaired, setting in a few months time *although only 30.62 carats, the "blue heart" diamond from south africa boasted that it had far more flash and flare than the hope diamond, impressive color AND clarity from this gem *while on the theme of blue, the logan sapphire of sri lanka weighs in at a hefty 423 carats, making it the heaviest mounted gemstone in the gallery the gem gallery is proud of its large collection of fine topaz, these two natural topaz crystal points weigh in at 111 pounds and 70 pounds respectively -- note the admirer in the background for an idea of their size The american golden topaz may be the world's largest faceted topaz, weighing in at over 10 pounds...a staggering 22,892-1/2 carats. 10,000 facets on this light golden topaz sphere -- note american golden topaz in the background there's a huge cabinet on display with many topaz crystals, including more of the giants -- the natural blue crystal caught my eye, as most of the blue topaz is created by treating pale topaz before and after, with a natural uncut diamond crystal in the typical octahedral shape (note the "greasy" appearance of the crystal) and a fine, faceted 127 diamond known as the portuguese diamond of "unknown" provenance, which i suppose means that there's some bold crime in its past aquamarine from minas gerais, brazil -- the uncut crystal is a hefty 6.7 pounds and the faceted stone at 1,000 carats is no slouch in the size department either At some point, we headed back to the room to freshen up. I got the fancy-pants bathrobe soaking wet and called down to get it exchanged for another one. He brought up two thinner robes but, hey, at least now we both had robes. Dinner was sliders at the Lucky Bar, and then we headed onward for our sunset reservations for the POV bar, where we had a view of the White House, Washington Monument, Treasury Department, and so forth, while watching the orange sunset change to black and sipping the frosty drink. I had hoped for a Pomegranate Martini but, sadly, they did not have a very extensive drinks menu. My martini was called something like "1872," yes, the number or, perhaps, a date, and it did not taste much different from the satsuma martinis I'd been mixing in the room. However, I have to admit that the view was indeed impressive, a relief after the rainy day, because I'd feared the clouds might close in. And, whatever I may have said about my adult beverage, somehow I managed to order a second one, tee hee, so it couldn't have been that bad. Stay tuned for part three of our D.C. Discount vacation. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford