Georgia State Aquarium

So while the Golden Girls are romping around with some new doggie friends at Camp Bow Wow we decided to go to the Georgia State Aquarium.  Georgia has a lovely, very active aquarium and we enjoyed our visit completely. 

I quickly discovered how hard it is to shoot photos with moving objects, in water, behind glass!  But I managed a few -

First, from the Ocean Voyager - a walk through a tunnel made of acrylic allows you to watch an endless blue sea filled with thousands of fish casually swimming  overhead as well as along the sides as you walk by.  Ocean Voyager is home to the gentle giants of the sea, including whale sharks and mantas.

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Meet the Georgia Aquarium's  Sea Otters named Gracie and Oz. 

 

 

 

And white alligators!!

 

The cartelginous skeleton
 of a white tipped reef  shark: sharkskeleton

 

The Cold Water Quest:  Penguin's, Beluga Whales, Japanese Spider Crab and a Weedy Sea Dragon!

 







 

 
 

 


The Tropics!  A Pacific coral reef has been recreated here including live coral.

 

 

 

 A favorite shot of mine below ☺

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 A Giant Grouper 
 

 



 Sea worms!  Who knew?????

Fish with false eye!

 

 Not the best picture but he's so cute!  He is a Long Horned Cow Fish.


Cuttle Fish

These pictures show the living coral along with the fish

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jelly fish can be so intriguing. They are all unique in their own way.

 I loved these blue jelly fish with the white dots!

 

Of course there were tons more beautiful, giant, big, little, tiny, strange, colorful, graceful, mesmerizing specimens of underwater life at this aquarium.  I hope you enjoyed what I was able to share with you.

More soon 🐾🐾🌞

 



This is CNN!

Not sure how many of you are CNN fans but we watch it a lot!!  Especially now during the Primaries.  So, of course, we had to visit the CNN head quarters in Atlanta.  We went on a tour and saw how the news programming is set up, how a 'green screen' works, had our photo taken as though we were the news casters, and watched the professionals at work.  It was all very interesting - especially when my partner had his picture taken with Melissa Knowles !!  He was in heaven!  Melissa is usually on Morning Express or Headline News in the morning with Robin Meade.  She was wonderful and spent quite a lot of time visiting with us.

Our first impression of CNN was the awesome lobby ... see for yourself.

The tour started in the Lobby where we met our guide who gave us some general information, then sent us up the longest escalator  ever!   



Then it was on to CNN Control, headquarters, the news room, and the HLN Studios.

 

A stop on the tour to explain how the green screen works, the teleprompter and sound.

 

 Where the news 'set' is located and how it works.  This is also where we met Melissa!

CNN World Headquarters is actually where all the "news" staff work.  Several news staff sit at their computers gathering and writing the news.  There is an entire set of staff that do nothing but follow social media all day to keep the news casters up to date. Now don't think that all the news casters you see on TV are just given all the news to report.  No way, they read everything, they check the details for accuracy, they check the history behind the story and they do all this so that they are better informed and so that they do not report anything inaccurate.



Then there was the control room.  This is where the decisions are made as to what pictures and back grounds are shown during the shows.  They are ones who tell the news reporters like Anderson Cooper that it's time to go to commercial.  If a 'breaking' bit of news comes in, these are the guys that work it into the show so that it can be reported.  They are the ones who are really in control of what you see in your living room!

 

All in all it was a unique experience that left us with a greater appreciation of all that truly goes into the making of the news,  Beginning with "This is CNN".

 

More soon

🐾🌷🌷

Centennial Olympic Park

 

Hi ya'll!! 

Does anyone remember the Olympics held in Atlanta in 1996? 

 

 

The 1996 Summer Olympics, known officially as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially as the Centennial Olympic Games, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, from July 19 to August 4, 1996. A record 197 nations  took part in the Games, comprising 10,318 athletes. The Games had several iconic moments, some specific to particular sports, others extending far beyond the scope of athletics.

 

Muhammad Ali was the 'secret unveiling' of the Olympic torch lighter. 
Ali, standing proudly with the torch in his right hand, his left arm shaking from the Parkinson’s disease that had unfairly stripped him of his otherworldly strength, speed, and agility, gave these Olympics its crowning moment before the Games even began.  And that happened in Atlanta. 

 

Michael Johnson won the gold in the 200 meters and 400 meters. He set Olympic records in both. And did it in gold shoes. That happened in Atlanta

  

Kerri Strug landed a vault on one foot (the other foot was broken) to clinch the gold medal for “The Magnificent Seven,” the first for the United States women’s gymnastics team, and then was famously carried off  the vault line by coach Bela Karolyi. That’s Olympic lore. And that happened in Atlanta.  
 

 One of John Williams’s greatest works, “Summon the Heroes,” was created for the Games, as was Gloria Estefan’s Grammy-nominated “Reach.” There was Jackie Joyner-Kersee. And Dan O’Brien. And Carl Lewis. And Karch Kiraly. And gold medals for the United States in the inaugural women’s soccer and softball competitions. The first independent Olympics for 11 ex-Soviet nations, as well as an independent Russian team for the first time since 1912. There were an overwhelming number of feats to celebrate in these games. And they all happened in Atlanta.

But so did that bomb. Three pipe bombs, to be exact. And with that bomb, a city’s relationship with its own Olympic Games forever changed.

A walk through Centennial Olympic Park in 2016 doesn’t actively remind you that this is a place where one woman, Alice Hawthorne, was killed; a Turkish cameraman, Melih Uzunyol, suffered a fatal heart attack; and another man, Richard Jewell, had his life ruined when he was wrongfully accused as the Olympic Park bomber. The real culprit, Eric Robert Rudolph, was found in the North Carolina woods seven years later. (Grantland)

There are still landmarks easily observed and enjoyed by those that live in Atlanta and visitors. There is a park, the words “Centennial” and “Olympic” and the beautiful Olympic Rings fountain which does a water dance to various songs like the William Tell Overture - on the photos below you can see the various levels of the water as it responds to the music.

The view of Atlanta from the Olympic Park is also pretty awesome.

 

Pierre de Coubertin (Pierre de Fredy, Baron de Coubertin) is the founder of the modern Olympic Movement, the inspiration and organizer of the first Olympic Summer and Winter Games.  There is a bronze statue of him in the Centennial Olympic Park.

 

 

Off we go to see some other amazing place !!

More soon 🌞