Packers still Number 1

In a rather unsurprising twist of events, we have proven that traveling halfway across the country to visit a faraway place while viewing objects lightyears away still takes a backseat to watching people try to run a ball 100 yards. I don't mean to diminish the rest of the day at all - the day began with errands as Ian, Cody and I went to speedway to pick up lunch materials while DA & Co. ventured forth to Best Buy to pick up an external hard drive. After collecting all the data and then passing it out again, we paid a visit to an art gallery at the University of Arizona and visited an astronomy store by the name of Starizona.

The art gallery was wonderful for the art people in our group. The portraits, while very well done, utterly failed to hold my attention for long as I'm not very fond of people in general. The landscapes, on the other hand, were much more to my taste. In particular, I really enjoyed looking at a photo by the name of Moonrise (Ansel Adams). The picture was beautiful in and of itself, but it also made me wonder whether someone at NASA was a fan of Ansel Adams. Think of the picture Earthrise and compare it to Moonrise. Both contain a brightly lit foreground at the bottom that covers approximately 1/3 of the picture. Up from there is a solid black sky that is broken only by the planet/moon. There is an obvious size difference in the moon vs the earth, but the moon in Moonrise is 3/4 full whereas the earth in Earthrise is approximately 1/2 full. I'm probably reading too much into it, but it seems to me like there is a strong similarity in the layout of the photos.

After the art gallery, we visited Starizona. While the store was rather cool, there wasn't much I was interested in buying. They had a number of telescopes in varying specs and mounts, numerous magazines, books, videos, lenses, and other astronomy equipment. While I didn't buy anything, I did listen in on the conversation with the worker on duty and picked up a few techniques that could help with image processing.

As important as astronomy was, however, it clearly took the backseat as we hurried back to the hotel in order to be able to watch the Packer game. A good chunk of the group went over to the Touchdown Bar & Restraunt to watch the game, but I wasn't among them. Having looked for reliable reviews of the place (which painted the place as ok at best), I instead opted to pick up food elsewhere and then watch the game at the hotel. The plan was perfect - good viewing, reasonable company, not having to deal with the crowds at the bar, and I wouldn't have to put up with alcohol-induced shinanigans. The perfect plan was perfectly destroyed when I discovered that La Quinta has a limited TV service and it didn't include a station that carried the packer game. After many non-alcohol induced curses, I was forced to settle for keeping tabs on the game via an online feed.