Photo credit: http://www.animalpictures123.org/

Seahorses are very fascinating and magical marine creatures. They have head like a horse, a tail like a monkey, a head that moves independently, and skin color that can change like a chameleon. They are classified as fish and are cousins to pipefish and sea dragons, from the family Syngnathidae. All seahorses belong to the genus Hippocampus. They lack teeth, a stomach, and a caudal fin. In a seahorse’s life cycle, male is the one to give birth. Seahorses can reach a size of 20 cm (8 inches). The smallest seahorse is Hippocampus satomiae with a length of 13.8 mms (0.54 inches) and a height of 11.5 mms (0.45 inches). This pygmy species is found near Derawan Island off Kalimantan, Indonesia. We still do not know how long seahorses live and most of their natural history remains mysterious.

Seahorses inhabit mainly tropical and temperate coastal waters. Their preferred habitats are coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass beds and estuaries. The majority of seahorse species are socially monogamous. The courtship behaviors are complex with partners displaying changes in color. They use long snout to absorb tiny shrimp, fish, and plankton. Seahorses protect themselves against predators by blending perfectly in their environment. Male can give birth to up several hundred young from one pregnancy. Overall, seahorses are characterized by a rapid growth rate, early age at maturity, high natural mortality, short generation time, and multiple spawnings per year (
http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org
) .

Do you hear that? It’s 2012, winding down. I woke up this morning and realized there are only a couple of days left in the year!

I confess: I’ll be a little sad to see 2012 go! We had some amazingly good times together, 2012 and me. But the train keeps on a-rollin’, and I have high hopes that 2013 will impress me- starting with a last-minute trip to the Rose Bowl on the first day of the year (eeeeee!).

One of my unexpected joys this year has been writing this blog. When I started The Usual Bliss back in April, I didn’t have any clue. I just started pecking away at my computer, sharing photos, and spilling my guts. I’ve made friends, been inspired, and rekindled a love for writing that I’d all but forgotten. Thank you, dear readers, for helping make a little hobby into something so meaningful to me!

Today, there was a notification in my inbox that I’d been nominated for a blog award, one of a handful that have come my way lately. I’m so grateful to these bloggers for their nominations!

Dolacotidiana AND Life is Funny for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

Adventures of a Dog Mom for the Kreativ Blogger Award.

Painted by the Sun for the Blog of the Year Award.

How awesome! As always, it means so much to be recognized and appreciated by fellow bloggers. It encourages me to continue to write and improve my efforts with The Usual Bliss. Thank you!

Each award is accompanied by the request to display it, and share it with other deserving bloggers (below). I’m also asked to give up tidbits of info about myself.  So, as requested, some random facts about me…

I like honey in my tea and a shake of cinnamon in my coffee. But I’ll choose coffee over tea every time.

I totally suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. It usually hits in late January or early February. Mexico trip, anyone?

I got my first perm (Annie-style) in preschool (it was cute) and my last one as a freshman in college (it was a mistake).

In four short days, I’ll be 40 minus 2. And I still have zero babies. Both are unfathomable.

I’m scared to try a hot yoga class. I’ll be the one that passes out onto someone else.

I went to five proms. The majority of my dresses were teal.

I love facial serums. I have no idea if they work or not, but I keep buying them. Ooooh! I also love a lip serum that my good friend Nancy sells- that one definitely works!

Some people have a shoe fetish. Mine is a new dress. I have 116 dresses hanging in my closet at this moment. I think it’s time for a closet purge- if only to make room for some new ones.

I wear earrings every single day, without fail, but very rarely wear necklaces. I can’t figure out how to do them both together, and without earrings, I feel unfinished.

I love false eyelashes but cannot for the LIFE of me apply mascara. After 24 years of wearing it, I end up with my top eyelid coated with smudges and mistakes every single time. HOT.

I have a thing for seahorses. And have you ever seen a BABY seahorse? I die!

It took me, like, 3 days to read Neil Young’s autobiography and nearly three months to read Julia Child’s bio. Phew!

Thanks to this, I have added baby boar piglets to my must-have list for my fantasy future farm life. (Also included: baby goats and a chicken coop.)

While I truly love nesting into a home with my hubby, I have always enjoyed living alone. Everyone should do it at some point in life- one learns a lot.

I love to cook- and hate eating leftovers. But I think I’m onto something with the Shepherd’s Pie trend- more on that soon!

And now, a few WordPress blogs I enjoy. Please let me know what I should be reading- remember, I’m on a quest for inspiration!

The Way to his Heart- Delish food that is also approachable and not intimidating!

Passport to Bliss- Travel doesn’t mean happy- fill your passport with HAPPINESS. Brilliant.

Vagabond Baker- She lives in a camper van (dreamy) and bakes INSANELY yummy-looking things!

Lazy Hippie Mama- I’m lazy. I’ve got hippie tendencies. And I’m a (doggie) mama. BFFs.

The Best Life- She gave birth in four minutes and participates in Champagne Thursdays. Love.

Take a peek at these blogs and be inspired. They’ll make you laugh, get moving, be more aware, try something new, and create something in the kitchen. (To the nominees, do what you will with the award- I just wanted to recognize you as inspirational to me.)

I’ve got a good-lookin’ hubby in the kitchen tonight, making something tasty for supper. I’ve got an un-puppy at my feet, giving my slippers some time off. I’ve got a long list of things to be thankful for as I prepare to bid adieu to 2012. That thought warms my soul… even though it’s 17 degrees outside.

How about you? What are you most thankful for this year? 

Here’s one from Sylvia W. – a magazine ad whose art director is clearly fond of using psychedelic drugs while he works:

It’s from a Travel and Leisure Magazine ad celebrating the 20th anniversary of Crystal Cruises. Because nothing says ‘Crystal Cruises’ like heart-shaped seahorses exploding out of a faux champagne bottle!

Heart-shaped seahorsey strangeness in honor of Crystal Cruises’
20 years of ocean-going, LSD-assisted trips
(submitted by Sylvia W)

Okay…maybe we’re being a bit hard on the well-meaning (though clearly inebriated) art director, as those sea horses represent the Crystal Cruises logo. Twentieth anniversary, champagne, sea horses…I get it. It’s just such a shame the traditional gift for 20 years is china, not crystal.

The Crystal Cruises logo features two seahorses forming a heart shape (well, kind of)

Check out some of the pictures from our field trip!

Tropical fish swimming in and out of the reef

The beautiful reef at the aquarium

A diver feeds the fish in the Caribbean tank

Fish swimming around the tank

A sea turtle swimming up for air

A little fish darting around the tank

A school of minnows

A starfish creeps toward the surface.

Graceful jellyfish

A family of jellies

More jellies

We loved the jellyfish exhibit.

These seahorses were no more than an inch and a half long.

Mama and baby swimming around

They waved to us!

The iridescent jellyfish were a big inspiration to us.

A lone jellyfish floats around.

Liffey view from Grattan Bridge

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had lost my photo-mojo recently. Well, happily I think I have located it! I brought my camera to work today. I took the first two photos in this post on the short stroll home from work a few hours ago. I took the last two during lunch-time on my way for a bite to eat. Even when you’re not putting any great effort into it, there’s still great joy to be taken out of it. I love photography!

Oh and I am planning some shots tomorrow that I’m really looking forward to!

Four Courts view from Arran Street East

Meanwhile, at lunch-time today:

A bird perches on top of Daniel O’Connell

Swans by the Liffey boardwalk

Seahorses are the only animals in the entire animal kingdom in which the male, not the female gives birth and cares for their young! The female seahorse deposits the eggs into the male’s small pouch like a kangaroo where the eggs are fertilized and where the baby seahorses grow until it is time for them to be born.

Barnett Freedman’s design for a proposed photogravure 7d or 8d value, November 1935. (GV-13-24)

For those with a special interest in stamps from the George V era there are links from these webpages to further material on our online catalogue.

Visit www.postalheritage.org.uk/kgv-definitives to see the new webpages.

Chris West

Like many of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, I had a stamp collection. A rather mediocre one… But one Sunday, I went to tea with my great uncle.

I happened to mention that I collected stamps, and Uncle Frank said he’d done that too. He disappeared and came back with a dark blue ‘Lincoln’ album. Inside was a treasurehouse of stamps featuring Edward VII and Queen Victoria – including a Penny Black (it had a corner missing, but still…) Frank then said that he didn’t really bother with them any longer – did I want them? The album became my pride and joy. I even took it to school to show everybody. Sadly, one viewer was so impressed that he stole half the stamps. The collection never felt the same afterwards, and vanished into an attic. Forty years later, I was cleaning out the attic when I came across the album. For a moment an old fury came back, but then I decided that a much healthier reaction was to reassemble the collection.

The ‘Seahorse’ stamp.

British Empire Exhibition 1924 stamp, 1d value.

As I did this, I found myself ever more intrigued with the stamps, as items of beauty but also as tiny pieces of history. Who stuck this Penny Black on an envelope, and what was in the letter? More generally, what was Britain like at the time? I found envelopes that had been sent in Ireland around the time of the appalling famine, a Seahorse sent just before World War One, a stamp celebrating the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 (an event I had never heard of, but which was as big as the Olympics in its day), an envelope that had enclosed a censored letter from World War Two, the classic 4d stamp celebrating the 1966 World Cup win… Stamps, I realised, tell stories.

Finally, I assembled these stories into a book, that would tell the nation’s tale through its stamps – or 36 of them, anyway. It’s been a joy to research and write. And all thanks to my great uncle and a cup of tea one Sunday afternoon.

First Class: A history of Britain in 36 postage stamps is available from the BPMA online shop.

Chris West will give a talk based on First Class: A history of Britain in 36 postage stamps at the BPMA on Thursday 21 February 2013.

This was made from a single sheet of black paper about 50″ x 40″ and it was one of the most fun projects I did freshman year. It is a hybrid animal parade with a bat-fox, sandpiper-seahorses, a bull-squirrel and hermit-mice.

Hortus botanical garden.

At least 6 people were lighting up next to these signs.

Lined Seahorse at National Aquarium, Baltimore
Photo courtesy of Michael Bentley

The lined seahorse varies drastically in both coloration and ornamentation.  Individuals can range from a yellowish color all the way down the spectrum to a nearly black color.  Some may have intricate ornamentation on their backs and their heads.  Additionally, they can change color slightly to match their surroundings.  As with all seahorses, males carry a pouch which they use to hold their young after breeding.  Breeding itself is complicated, it includes a drawn-out ritual of dancing and clicking between the male and female.  At the end of the courtship, females deposit their eggs into the male’s pouch where they are fertilized and held until ready to be released (about 2 weeks).

Lined seahorses vary in color, pattern and ornamentation

Seahorses as a whole are ineffective swimmers.  They only use three of their fins (two pectoral fins and one dorsal fin) to swim.  They beat these fins rapidly to provide propulsion, but it is not enough to keep them stationary in even the most gentle of currents.  It is because of this that they require something to hold on to.  For our local lined seahorses in the Chesapeake, that something is often eel grass, as well as other submerged aquatic vegetation.  These grasses are vital to the seahorses’ ability to hunt, breed and just plain survive.  Seahorses are ambush predators and so they need something to anchor themselves to while hunting.  As they hide, prehensile tails attached to the eel grass, they wait for prey to float by their snouts.

Lined seahorses have very small fins, making it hard for them to swim.

Unfortunately, eel grass is in trouble in the Chesapeake Bay.  Nutrient pollution from farms, sewage and other human activities often leads to large algal blooms, which grow near the surface of the water and block light that the grasses need to grow. Additionally, destructive fishing techniques like bottom trawling can rip up huge swaths of submerged aquatic vegetation, causing wide-spread loss of habitat.  Because they are so specialized in their habitat needs, lined seahorses have little hope of successfully hunting and breeding without the grasses.  These pressures are threatening seahorses worldwide. As a result of these and other conservation pressures, it is estimated that the world’s lined seahorse population has declined by at least 30 percent in the past 10 years. We must begin to take steps to preserve the local habitat, or we risk losing this very interesting and important Chesapeake Bay species.

What you can do to help:  Reduce waste runoff, which pollutes waters like the Chesapeake Bay.  

• Control insects using natural controls instead of pesticides. Americans directly apply 70 million pounds of pesticides to home lawns and gardens each year and, in so doing, kill birds and other wildlife and pollute our precious water resources.
• Dispose of motor oil and anti-freeze through a local service station or recycling center. A one-quart container of oil disposed of at the local landfill can contaminate up to 2 million gallons of drinking water and the water home of our seahorse friends.
• Don’t pour anything down storm drains because they lead to the bay, which connects to the ocean. Most sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants do not remove poisonous cleaners, and yard and car-wash chemicals make their way into local waterways, and, eventually, into our ocean, harming animals along the way. You wouldn’t want to swim in those chemicals, and neither do animals!
• Learn more!
  To find out more about the lined seahorse and the troubles threatening them in our area, listen to this special seahorse edition of WYPR’s Environment in Focus with Tom Pelton

Steve Kukla collection is the result of merging two of his interests together; one being his love of nature, the other his fascination of texture and corrugation. He uses the media of sketching to simplify his designs into something beautiful and eye catching. As his designs develop Steve uses making and forming techniques on the metal to enhance the design and give the metal a life of its own!

Throughout his design process and his career metal has been his main focus, however other materials are beginning to find their way into his work inspiring new textures and leading Steve to explore new techniques. Stylistically Steve looks for shapes that are minimal yet engaging for the viewer. Above all, he likes there to be a sense of the original, which is open to interpretation and can be enjoyed for that.

http://stevegkukla.com

“What’s up with you and the Chinese nation?”
Patty is somehow suddenly friends with a lot of Chinese people on Facebook.

Mulling over a seahorse purchase inevitably leads to…

Advice

Hydros are no longer cutting it

A stoner’s contribution to “Tomorrow’s Woman”

Stay classy, Pedophile Outpost

What I believe to mean “marijuana,” due to my training and expertise

This might be an improvement

This is the thanks I get for good-natured Facehacking

Yes, you do. Actually, even older and senile-r.

I’m apparently the help desk for elderly people with iPhones

[In David Morse code] Breaking news from the courtroom…