Runners reflected after a rain

I took this near 14th Street on the River Walk.

Bike ride in the sunset, work on the web

It hasn't rained for the past two days, and I took my bike out just before sundown and rode the River Walk past Safeway to the East Mooring Basin and onto the paved jetty, a great place to get some extra distance. The River Walk is beautiful, but seems so short on a bike. In the next couple of years, so I've heard, the city will extend it to Tongue Point. I hope so. There were six or seven ships just lolling about on the river today. They don't usually move much on Sundays. Here is one silhouhetted against the Astoria-Megler bridge, our 4-mile connection to Washington state.

I spent most of the day working on my web site - on the parts I don't have time for during the week, when web work is really about work. I added the rest of my blog links to the Tapirback main page, and I tried to address the sea lion issue in my photo section. I've had the page up since last October, but I could never find the pix on Google's image search. I thought, "Well, there are just that many sea lion pictures online (and there are), but exact quotes didn't bring up the page, so I checked and it wasn't indexed, I don't know why. I took out some code that may have been a problem on two of my non-indexed pages, but that same code didn't appear on a third non-indexed page. I don't know what the deal is, since the site has about 1,400 indexed pages, or if taking out that code will make a difference. Other pages in the same section are in Google's index. Besides the sea lions, the other two that weren't were pictures of the Arc de Triomphe and a page called Paris, Here and There. I redesigned the tops of the pages and made better navigation. Now time and the Googlebot will tell if it helped. I have so many pictures I want to put up that every bit I do on the basic structure will make it easier to be productive in the future. I started the section in about 1996, and several incarnations of the format and structure are still apparent. I guess that's the nature of an organic web site. Building one (and rebuilding and rebuilding it) is interesting (and fun), not the least of the reasons being the organizational challenge. I took a few minutes to dramatize the lead-in page from the Journey of Wandering Paths, which was pale and boring. Originally this section was supposed to be huge, but it fizzled out at 48 pages and now many of them look outdated to me. I still love the idea of combining art (mainly collage) and words into a bigger digital collage all linked together like a snarl of wires. Each page became a design project back in the 1990s, and it was fun. Maybe someday I'll get back to it. One of the next rehabs has got to be The Tapir Gallery (online since March 15, 1996, partly revised and partly original). And, I'll continue working on the photo section of the site. It's one of my dreams to expand the photo segment to HUGE. On a daily basis, Tapir and Friends Wildlife World Gift Shop gets a lot of attention, but it, too, can use some design and clean-up. Lee has been a tremendous help on the gift shop site the past six months.

Eclipse of the Moon from Astoria, Oregon

In the beginning . . . tree branches in the night. When the room is dark and I haven't cropped the picture you can see more branches and some heavy equipment in corrosion-proof green. It's nice and atmospheric. I was over by Pier 39 near the gym in the dead end of the street. The last lunar eclipse seen from here was at 3 or 4 in the morning. This one behaved better and occurred in the evening while I was still awake (from about 5:45 until fully in shadow around 7:00 pm or so).

Photos by Sheryl Todd, February 20, 2008

For a really nice photo of the eclipse, see this one.

We found a stuffed pig, and . . .

Stuffed warty pig

Lee and I were at the Oregon Zoo yesterday and saw some very cool animals, including Vasayan warty pigs from the Philippines and two young babirusas from Indonesia. We always check out the gift shop, and I fell in love with this beautiful stuffed pig. Lee bought it for me, and we talked about getting some for my online gift shop. It's interesting to look at the stuffed animals in comparison to the real Vasayan warty pigs we saw yesterday.

Vasayan warty pigs at the Oregon Zoo

I'm starting with two portraits. The one above is my favorite, because of the wonderfully expressive eye and the telltale dirt on its nose. (Please click on the picture for a better view, then use your Back button to return.) But the next pig portrait is more resplendent, showing the gorgeous mane. Too bad I didn't get the top picture framed as nicely as the bottom one.

Below is the pig family. Again you can see the expressive eyes, especially of the one in front (you really will have to click the photo to see this).

Finally, I included the picture below because it's the only one I got of the male showing his tusk. The hair is not bad, either.

Follow this link to the stuffed version of these pigs. It's a beautiful animal. Althought the coloring is inexplicably different from live warty pigs, it is totally charming and artistic. The red coloring is luscious, and the ivory-colored tusk is the icing on the cake.

If you like these pigs (and who wouldn't), please come see the babirusas on this blog.