Green tea is the closest I got to partaking in today’s festivities.
St. Louis
(9) Squaring Off, St. Louis Edition
I am currently en route to Memphis to do thesis research (very, very long story), and stopped in St. Louis for the night to stay with my friend Sanya, who’s in med school here.
I got to the city well before Sanya’s classes got out, so I spent most of the afternoon actually being productive. Then I went back to my New York Times crossword puzzle (this week’s; I gave up on the one I had been fighting with before), and productivity went out the window again.
Left: I filled all but three of the blank spaces, which has never happened before! And the answer to one of the clues was “ASHE,” which was, frankly, quite awesome.
Right: Sanya is a much more diligent studier than I am. This is probably why she’s in med school and I am not.
I'm with the Band: Greater STL Marching Festival, part two
I should be working on my thesis prospectus right now, but there’s nothing like a paper to make you decide to catch up on blogging.
As the previous post said, I spent yesterday at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis following my Character Profile subjects (all 120+ of them) through the paces of performing at a band festival. Theoretically the photos I took would be incorporated into my Picture Story multimedia piece, but that’s going to need some serious re-editing in order to fit in the additional element of festival competitions. We’ll see if I have time to pull that off (again, that thesis prospectus…). In the meantime, here’s a visual summary of (almost) everything that happened yesterday.
Silhouettes. I couldn’t help it.
For better or worse, I don’t usually take photos like this. Let me know if you think it worked.
Holding their certificate of recognition- but no trophy.
One of the winning bands got to the parking lot at the same I did. I have to figure out which one! Argh.
Dispatch from the Greater St. Louis Marching Band Festival
I haven’t had a chance to do more than a rough edit of my pictures from yesterday, when I went with the Hickman band to a marching festival in STL (in which the band placed a quarter-point out of trophy-level contention). Here’s one that, um, stood out a little from the others. I think there are at least three light sources competing for attention in this photo. 
Saint Louis Zoo
Much like its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is located right in the middle of the city’s major park (Hermann Park in Houston). Unlike its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is free. Considering these two factors, I was pretty surprised to realize that the zoo is actually a very good one. I’m a zoo nerd–I judge the parks I go to all the time on all kinds of random things (creativity of exhibit design, size of exhibits, handicap accessibility (since I tend to go to zoos with my grandfather, who can’t spend too much time walking around), etc etc). I still can’t figure out how St Louis does such a good job despite not charging admission, but it passed way more of my tests than Houston ever did.
A bush dog. I’d never heard of these before, but apparently they live in South America, eat rodents called “pacas,” and have webbed feet. They’re also very cute.
I’d also never seen Bactrian camels (the kind with two humps) in a zoo before. This one’s a baby….awwwww.
For all of its great exhibits, though, the zoo had a weirdly constraining way of feeding the animals. These are the reticulated giraffes, having feeding time in the Antelope House (which looked like it was something out of the 1800s, what with all the steel bars and small spaces).
On the plus side, it was pretty neat to get so close to the giraffes. I flashed this one with the on-camera flash of my little Canon Rebel. Made for an interesting effect.