Roaming Randomness

First of all, I must state a disclaimer for this post. A few weeks ago, I had a request – "Tom, take some pictures of the man hole covers." I don't know why someone would want to see that, but I guess it's like flying south of the equator to see if whirl pools actually swirl in the opposite direction. (I have no idea how true that is.) I could interpret the request as, notice all the funny details and put them somewhere so we can gawk at them, but here are some man hole covers. :-)

The sad thing about these photos is, I took them without the aid of a tour guide so I can't tell you how they vary from one utility type to another.
I looked for different man hole covers for about a week
(It was somehow depressing always looking down :-)) when I found this cover while walking to a book store with a friend. Thankfully he waited as I took a snap of this one. You know just as much about it as I do, it exists. :-o


In my roaming, though, I found some things in the UK that I've never seen before. For example, I found wedding insurance. I guess it's just in case it rains on the big day. It does rain more here than the arid deserts of Utah, but I'm sure you would expect that.
I was also surprised to find that people have to kill their apricots before they eat them. I took a picture because I figured you wouldn't believe me. I'm sorry, it's blurry, but you can still make out that the apricots are "stoned and ready to eat." :-)
I happened to find a nice pub in Harefield almost about two weeks ago. It was among the nicest pubs I've been to while I've been here. I ordered gnocchi, which was really good. Something funny happened as everyone in the lab got their meals, though. A leashed, droopy eyed blood hound lead his master to our table about the same time the food arrived. They had been sitting at another part of the pub when we entered, and from what we gathered they were on their way out. But the dog walked over next to me and just sat looking at the table. No fooling his sniffer.

Since I am technically working for Oxford University, I will typically take one day in the week to go to Oxford to work in my other office. As I walk to my office from the bus stop I pass the Radcliffe Camera, which is part of the Bodleian (pronounced like Bodily-an, no emphasis on the 'i') Library. I guess the picture is more of the foot bridge over the street, which is obscuring the Radcliffe Camera, but I will see about taking more pictures of the Bodleian Library and posting it another time.

Two more random pictures I took, you're almost done. :-) When I first saw these spikes on the top of cameras and speakers the first thought that entered my mind was: "Is this a fashion statement in favor of mohawks for the thinning?" To keep you from wondering the same thing, I'll let you know what I realized. They have so many pigeons here they use these spikes to keep the birds off whatever the spikes are on. This keeps the cleaning costs down, cause even though it rains a lot here it doesn't rain enough to clean up after the pigeons. Next time I'm in Salt Lake I'll try to take a picture, so you can see what I'm talking about.
I liked this sign because, as I see, it it doesn't say, "No dogs allowed", it says, "No Scottish Terriers allowed". So, if you have another breed, I'm sure you'd be welcome to bring it along. ;-)

To give a short update of my mad life as a scientist, the last two weeks have been crazy writing to meet deadlines. Writing is an art. Not as bad as I originally supposed, but don't expect me to write much about writing. To me that sounds like watching a show about people watching TV.