Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Sappy Post Sunday

    Forgive us, but today we (by which I mean “I,” that is, TP) will indulge in some sappy reminiscing. The other night I had dinner at the home of Andrew MacIntyre, who’s probably been the most important advocate that I have. It turns out that almost exactly five years ago, we were at his house for another dinner during our honeymoon. It reminded us that during our honeymoon we were both more than a little nervous about what would happen to us after graduate school. You know, actually going out to get a job. At one point (we believe it was on Magnetic Island) JMP asked me what the best possible outcome would be for us in terms of careers and lifestyles and stuff. I said–this is absolutely true–that without a doubt, the best outcome would be for us to end up at Cornell. Now, it turns out that we had to apply twice to make it work, but looking back now, it’s actually worked out much better than we could have ever hoped. Now we’re back at ANU, seeing the same colleagues, but no longer nervous grad students, and with a kid. Heavy.

    So, to celebrate, today we drove up to Tidbinbilla, which is a kind of nature preserve in the foothills of the Australian Alps. On the way, we saw almost every relevant Australian animal, and in the wild–kangaroos, wallabies, emus, koalas, platypuses, a dingo, and a wombat (this one, though, only in roadkill format). I think the only good ones we missed were the echidna and Tasmanian devil.

    If You Look Closely, You Can See Emus
    Baby 008

  • The National Zoo

    Today we took a family trip to the National Zoo here in Canberra.  It was a nice trip, it’s a pretty small zoo but the enclosures are really nicely done. Instead of the usual ugly, stagnant pools many zoo exhibits have there was a really pretty stream running throughout the entire zoo and gave the whole place a more natural feel.  We saw lots of species of monkeys which excited EP (his little security blanket has a monkey head on it and he had fun showing his monkey the real monkeys) and we saw tons of lions which excited us (JMP here in case you hadn’t figured that out already).  There were three adjoining enclosures with three lions in each, including some rare white lions which we had never seen before.  Along with the sheer number of animals, they were actually all up and walking around which was exciting to see.  Of course there were the obligatory kangaroos, wallabies and wombats (much bigger than we thought they were going to be) as well as a small aquarium with some great examples of Great Barrier Reef critters.  EP loved watching the fish swim around although, like his father, for some reason he pointed to them one by one and said “eat”.  We saw a Queensland Groper which is one of the largest bony fishes in the world (they can weigh up to 400 kg) and some giant Australian pythons which were pretty freaky looking.  It struck us again that we think the landscape around here is actually really pretty.  It’s got wide open spaces (like Colorado), a lake in the middle (like Ithaca) and some neat buildings that you can use as landmarks from around the city.  Overall a really nice place to spend some time and escape the US heat wave.