Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil
Major Tom by Peter Schilling
(I Just) Died in Your Arms by Cutting Crew

This year for my birthday, we postponed the celebration for a week until the summer crowds thinned and everyone went back to school. The it was off to San Diego to visit the Zoo and Sea World. We were finally able to do the new Wild Arctic Interaction! It was amazing. We met Obie, their giant male walrus. We had harbor seals romping around our feet. (That's normal for me, but it was still a lot of fun!) We were able to observe Charlie (a polar bear) up close while he ate his peanut butter. Finally, we got into wetsuits and braved the 55 degree water with two beautiful beluga whales. The water was actually pretty nice!

This was the *only* piece of mail I recieved today:



I laughed a lot.

First time I did station keeping for two animals at once. Apparently, I moved funny. OWWWWW. My back!!!! WTF do I do now??!?!?!

Just watched a History Channel thing on predators. Lions. Yep. They eat people sometimes. What's the problem? Habitat encroachment, bitches! No one wants to care for the planet, anyway. They're entitled to eat some people.

Which reminds me, FFS, stop it already on the gas prices. Did you think we'd have it easy forever? We have everything so damn EASY in this country that when things get a tad expensive there is whining. Give me a break. You should have seen this coming for years. And those of you who don't care? All those kids you keep having? You'll care when they can no longer breathe or have clean water to drink.

Where will you be then?

"This is not something that's going to give consumers short-term relief and it is not a long-term solution to our problems with fossil fuels generally and oil in particular," Obama said.

THANK YOU, Obama! Finally, someone making some damn sense.

Oceans provide us with food, they regulate climate and generate oxygen, so it doesn't matter if you reside on the coast or farther inland; the ocean in some way impacts your everyday life.

Tell the UN to officially declare June 8 as "World Ocean Day" and help raise awareness of the importance of our oceans!

The best thing about Sunday for me is that it's actually my Saturday. I decided to do a lot of nothing today, and it's been very relaxing. I made omelets this morning, and I added cream cheese (in addition the mushrooms and a little bit of sharp cheddar) to mine. Even though I used light cream cheese, I think I may have discovered a new bad habit! It was tasty!

I actually do feel like getting out of the house today, but that would most likely involve having to be around other people. I find myself requiring a bit more peace and quiet today so I'll probably just stay in and decompress. Yesterday at work was very busy, which is definitely typical for this time of year. It's only going to get more crazy as summer approaches. There were a lot more people lacking courtesy/patience/common sense than usual, however, and that managed to suck the life out of me. Granted, I was exhausted in the first place so maybe my tolerance for people being "ass-ish" was non-existent. Robert met me after work and we decided to go have a nice, semi-quiet dinner at Gladstone's. Or so we hoped. Halfway through our dessert a fight breaks out on the other side of the room, involving lots of shouting and some glass-throwing. These two women were having a full-on screaming match while these two guys were lunging and swinging at one another. Fortunately, their party was pretty large so they couldn't actually reach each other, but HONESTLY, who the hell gets in a near fist-fight over dinner!?!? What grown-up even gets in a fist-fight? What an excellent way to demonstrate your lack of class! How pathetic. What I find even more upsetting is that these people, of course, had little kids (a baby and little girl, maybe 4 years old) with them. Nice example, jerks. Way to parent!! Anyway, one of the chefs and a security guard went to try to diffuse the situation (which lasted way too long, by the way) and about 10 policeman arrived a couple minutes later to deal with these morons. Yeah, I was glad to finally get home!

So I guess that's enough complaining for one post. :D

In Aquarium news, in addition to being a paid staff member (Education Dept) and a marine mammal volunteer (Husbandry Dept), this week I signed on as an aquarist volunteer (Husbandry Dept) again! Last time I did this I worked in the SoCal/Baja Gallery, and this time I'm working in the Tropical Pacific Gallery. Of course, that is a huge gallery! The Aquarist I work with is responsible for the Baby Bamboo Shark Nursery exhibit, Nemo exhibit, the two olive ridley sea turtles, a few quarantine areas, and the anthias exhibit. The first day was spent following Jen around as she taught me her food prep routine, how the exhibits work, how to do partial water changes, cleaning the exhibits, animal observations, and feeding the animals (like the sea turtles).

I'm also pretty excited about learning to care for baby sharks, as well as learning all the quarantine procedures for new, ill, or injured fish. I'm stoked about learning all about the anthias exhibit, as well! Now I have a HUGE motivation to get my SCUBA certification current again - she needs help diving in there. The water is about 78 degrees so the artificial coral needs to be cleaned a lot. It's also full of a myriad of very brightly colored, unbelievably beautiful fish.

This week in mammals, I got to work with Odin for the first time! It was very different from working with Miller (who is about 600 pounds) since Odin is comparatively pretty tiny.

So I guess all in all it was a good week. Except for yesterday!

This sneezing panda video just cracks me up, and laughing with a sinus infection is not pleasant! I can't help myself! It's only 16 seconds long. :D

So after being sick AGAIN for 5 days and only feeling worse, I dragged myself in for an urgent doctor's appointment yesterday morning. The diagnosis? Acute sinusitis, apparently a bacterial sinus infection that can develop after you've had an upper respiratory infection (or three or four in my case). Now I'm on a 10 day course of antibiotics, Nasonex, and the Elixir of the Gods: Phenergan and Codeine. I was actually able to sleep last night! While doing some research on the above named drugs, I was a little surprised that people make cocktails out of cough syrup. I mean, I've heard that before, but I didn't realize they had reached recreational cocktail level! Sounds like that is the LAST thing these people need! To quote one "sizurp" sipper: "mix up some sprite and liquid morphine, codine, tuss, or any cough syrup that has a kick. then sit around and listen to chopped and screwed music from houston. sip sip sippin on the sizurp BIATCH."

WTF?

Grrrrr. I've been up since 3:00 AM with this horrendous cough. When will it end? I did go into work yesterday, though now my voice is gone again and the sore throat is back. What gives, FFS?

At least my favorite episode of Doctor Who is on right now: Blink

Guess I'll go watch it.

Friday is usually my favorite day since I usually get to spend it working with seals/sea lions, but today, sadly, I am home. By the time I got home Wednesday evening I had NO voice whatsoever, and it has developed into a very painful sore throat accompanied by all the usual viral symptoms. I don't understand why I keep getting this stuff. *shakes fist* Enough whining.

Aside from being sick off and on for the past few months, all is well. Last week at the Aquarium, Milo and Harpo (our two youngest sea lions) finally joined the rest of the family in the main exhibit. Pretty exciting stuff!! I posted it about it here on the Aquarium Blogs page if you'd like to read more. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be there the morning they were added to the exhibit because that was my first day volunteering at the LA Zoo. Fortunately, many of my co-workers were able to be there and got pictures!

My first day at the Zoo was fun, scary, and exhausting! You never know in what area you'll be working until you get there and are picked up by a keeper. I ended up working what's called the "Bongo String", which consists of:

African Lions
Black Duikers
Red Flanked Duikers
Bongos
Okapi
White-Crested Turacos
Masai Giraffes
Gerenuks
Plus a few other species I can't recall at the moment - it was my first day!

Basically, we clean up the yards before bringing the animals out, then bring the animals out, clean their holding areas, prep diets, and then bring the animals back in at the end of the day. It's very different from working with the marine mammals at the Aquarium because you don't have quite as much interaction with the animals. I have to say though, it was unbelievably awesome (and absolutely terrifying) to be so close to a cranky, roaring lion! That's a sound you can feel coursing through the ground throughout the entire zoo, not to mention making all the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up! I can't even describe the look in his eyes. All I know is it left me feeling extremely mortal and humble. What an amazing creature! I did get to pet an okapi, which was also awesome. They're so beautiful, and so very soft. And giraffes! I've seen them before, but I've never been so close as to be able to look up at them from ground level. They're enormous! Though it was a lot of hard work (raking, shoveling, lifting, etc) I am looking forward to going back!

Not much else has been going on. Just work and school and an outing here and there. Went to Star Trek the Tour at the Queen Mary Dome last month with my other half, our friend Jeff, and my awesome co-worker/friend Agi. Of course, we had to get our picture taken on the Bridge. Engage!

We also finally went to The Reef, which is a restaurant next to the Queen Mary. I really like it. It's on the water with a great view of the Long Beach waterfront, and it has waterfalls, gas lamps, comfy couches, and fireplaces. I want to go back on a rainy day in the winter!

/rant
I guess it's officially Spring. To me, that only means two things: Summer is coming, and the Canadian seal hunt is coming even sooner (actually, it just started today), both of which I detest. If you haven't already, learn what you can do to help protect seals! If you've participated in the campaign in a previous year, please do so again. This is an annual hunt. Inhumane. Barbaric. Unnecessary. Here's the link to IFAW's Flickr set of the hunt which I'm sure will be updated frequently.

/end rant

Egads, March is depressing. We just got tickets to see the Kids in the Hall at The Grove of Anaheim in May. That's something to look forward to.

I think it's time for more Theraflu and Advil.

Part 1

It's been a little over a month since we returned from our Irish Music Cruise aboard the Norwegian Star. I'm slowly getting back in the swing of things, but I wanted to post a little bit about the trip before I completely forget about everything.

Various Irish musicians were featured in day and evening sessions throughout the cruise, though I only attended these for the first 5 days/nights. It's always wonderful to see Liam Clancy, the Makem and Spain Brothers, and all the usual performers. There were even some new acts this year, including Ciaran Sheehan. Though I enjoyed the concerts immensely, I was far more focused on our ports of call and shore excursions.

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to go along with this post because I "lost" my camera the first night! Fortunately, we found it packed away in one of Robert's bags as we were unpacking. I'm glad we found it but I'm still seriously bummed I didn't have it throughout the trip.

Acapulco
I started getting really excited when, as we were getting within an hour or two from land, I started seeing whales off in the distance and dolphins and sea turtles quite close to the ship. There were also a lot of huge Magnificent Frigatebirds all over the place, as well as some very high-flying pink birds and some really cool all black birds with very unusual vocalizations. Next time I will bring a bird identification book!

Upon disembarking, we met up with our group for the Captain's Choice Snorkel. We cruised out of Acapulco Bay and headed east until we reached our snorkeling spot. The water was clear and warm, and we saw SO MANY cool animals. To save time, I'll be listing all of the animals we spotted throughout the trip later. Anyway, after snorkeling, the bar was open and the atmosphere was festive! On our way back to the dock, we stopped for a few minutes while a member of the crew jumped off the boat and proceeded to climb the rocks and show us a little cliff diving action. They also told us a little bit about the area while sightseeing on the way back. It was a great time.

We headed back to the ship and got all cleaned up before heading out again. We had absolutely no idea where we were going so we let this cab driver fellow take us to a restaurant he recommended. It was a bit terrifying at first, because he kept driving up all these tiny, dark, winding roads and I was convinced he was going to kill all three of us and throw our bodies off a cliff! Fortunately, he took us to Coyuca 22 instead! (Click link for photos!) This place had one of the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life!!! You could see the Acapulco Bay area in its entirety and it was absolutely stunning. The food was really good, and the margaritas were strong and delicious. We had an early morning the next day so we just headed back to the ship for some drinks and some relaxing.

Part 2 coming soon!

Click HERE to find out more about the seal hunt, sign the petition to boycott Canadian seafood, and find out what you can do to help!

Behind the Scenes Sea Lion Update & Sustainable Seafood Day

If you’ve had the opportunity to visit the Aquarium lately and be a part of one of our Behind-the-Scenes Tours, you’ve probably caught a glimpse of our two youngest California sea lions. If you recall, Harpo and Milo were two of the four animals welcomed to the Aquarium a few months ago. While Troy and Odin have already joined the family in the main Seal and Sea Lion Exhibit, Milo and Harpo are still working hard with their trainers on new behaviors and living it up in their home behind-the-scenes. (Read more...)

Sustainable Seafood Day
In a blog post a few months back, I touched on the subject of sustainable seafood. If you eat seafood, you can make environmentally informed decisions on what you purchase! Please join us this Saturday, March 1, for the Aquarium’s annual Sustainable Seafood Day. There will be sustainable cooking demonstrations, tons of useful information, recipes, and of course, samples to try! This is a fun, interesting, and delicious way to learn how to help our oceans. I hope to see you there!

Read this post in its entirety here, and visit the other Aquarium bloggers!

UK's Prince Harry fighting in Afghanistan

Like we would ever see THAT from our current administration! I know Bush's term is coming to an end (FINALLY) but I still can't believe people in this country actually re-elected that boob! In the upcoming election, I'm definitely not going to vote republican, but if McCain does happen to become president I won't have that sick, repulsed, doomed, angry, pre-apocalyptic feeling I had in 2004. Though I don't agree with him on some issues, McCain at least seems to have a decent head on his shoulders. Don't even get me started on that Huckabee fellow, though! *shudders* Ew.

Well, after obsessing for the last four days post-interview, I finally got a letter from the LA Zoo. I've been accepted to their volunteer Keeper/Animal Care Program. Hooray and leaping lemurs!!!

Irregardless

IS NOT A WORD. Get it?

Hope so. Thanks.

Just got back from Mexico yesterday. I still feel like I'm rocking back and forth on a cruise ship. My lips are sore and sunburned, but it was worth it. More on that later!

If you haven't gotten out to vote yet, do it!

\m/

Attention Los Angeles County shoppers!! A Day Without A Bag - December 20, 2007


"Los Angeles County residents use 6 billion plastic bags each year and recycle only 5% of that total. Instead, they become part of the plastic-dominated litter stream, putting added pressure on scarce landfill, fouling our public spaces, degrading already weakened watersheds and threatening marine life." - healthebay.org

Kudos to San Francisco and Paris (to name just a couple) for enacting bans on retail use of plastic bags, and props to Heal the Bay for getting the ball rolling in LA county!

This is just one small step, but we can no longer compromise the environment (and the creatures residing within) for our own convenience.