Hotspur.us

Right before we headed home from our Christmas visit to Palmyra, Chad discovered that the National Aviary in Pittsburgh was showing off it’s two newly hatched baby penguins! There was no way in the world I was missing to opportunity to see A) Penguins and B) Baby Penguins! So off we went the next day.

The baby penguins were brown balls of fluffy adorableness.

It was difficult to get a photo without reflection and, in case you couldn’t tell, baby penguins are like other babies…messy. Still, they were so cute. The one was just tuckered out and we never did see it stand up. The other one would look around, take a big breath and then it’s little eyes would close and it’s head would drop.  Judging by the crowd around the window every time we passed by, the baby penguins were a huge success.

There were tons of other birds as well – it being an aviary it kind of made sense. The grasslands room was our first experience with a room full of birds flying wherever they pleased. And believe me, they were whipping around us like mad!

In the wetlands room I had the opportunity to feed two pelicans. They were greedy buggers.

Chad checked out an adorable little  Burrow Owl while waiting to watch the penguins have lunch.

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Ping got to meet some cousins,

While I chatted with this little fellow in the water.

It was a great day!

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The subfloor pulling was going pretty much as expected, not awful and not delightful. Thanks to the tar paper we couldn’t see where the seams were, so Chad decided that scoring the subfloor was the best way to get started. That and a crowbar. He handled the circular saw, I provided the brute strength. Hey, I don’t go to the gym for fun.

I was beyond pleased when the first large swath of floor that was revealed turned out to be beautifully unmarred in any way. Well, unmarred except for the nail holes. It was still smooth and had not been stained or varnished. SCORE!

The labor is brutal, particularly when I decided to take on this stage of the project after going to the gym for leg day. I am not smart. Nope. Needless to say I didn’t get much done. Just one strip because by that point I was verging on the point of not being able to both squat down and then stand back up. I could do one, but not the other.

Before I make much more progress, and while my legs recover, we’ll need to remove all the baseboards because whoever installed the subfloor, did a nice,  proper job and removed the baseboards before putting the particle board down. This should make me happy – the properly executed job – but mostly it’s just irritating me.

And just because it was pretty, here’s the view from the enormous window in this room.

(This project is going to take FOREVER.)

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