Two New Things I Learned!

The other day, I realized I take tons of photos of places I go, not because I wish to share them with everyone but for me!  I can stare at the picture and memories flow, warming me with the thoughts.  I don't like sharing every single picture with people just because of a few things that happened while I grew up.

There were always those people who invited all their friends over and spent two hours showing every single picture taken on their last trip.  Didn't matter where they went, they insisted on letting you see every single place they went, every restaurant they ate in and every thing they felt was important.  Only problem with that  is that everyone else might have other priorities.

Now, my friends take pictures and post them on flikr, or facebook or other social media site.  Honestly, I don't usually look at everyone's photos, unless they are new born pictures, because they aren't mine.  I do like the choice of whether I look at the photos or skip them.  No more getting stuck with it.

The other thing about my photos being solely for me is simply I can take pictures of new things so I can learn more.  When I was last at the aquarium, I learned some new things.

1.  I learned  that sea horses come in a variety of colors and can get rather large!  I always thought they were quite small but I saw some as large as about 5 to 6 inches long.  Much bigger than I'd seen before.  I saw some that were babies and about 3/4 inch long while the adults were much larger.  I saw them in black, kind of an orangeish tan, and they hid in the plants. 

They'd anchor themselves with their tails and they were all clinging to the plant up and down, much like Christmas ornaments clustered in one area on the plant.  8 to 12 all attached to one plant.  It was breathtaking.

2. The other thing I learned dealt with coral.  You can tell the age of coral by x-raying a slice of it and counting the rings.  Rings!  Just like finding the age of a tree except the rings go up and down rather than outwards.  It was cool.

These photos are there to remind me of these wondrous facts that I learned. They will always remind me of the day I discovered these facts and will always warm my heart.  I think we all have photos like that in our collections whether they are the hard copies, digital copies, in our personal possession or post on line.  They are there to remind us, so we can revisit places again and again.