I think I remember Tatiana

From the AP story about the Tiger attack at San Francisco Zoo:

Zoo officials said a “moat” separating the habitat from the public viewing area that measured 33 feet across contained no water, and has never had any. They did not address whether that affected the tiger’s ability to get out.

Nowhere in the article does it mention that having the moat filled (at the point where the slope ends) with water wouldn't have helped much because of the fact that tigers LIKE BEING IN THE WATER. (disclaimer: also, I'm looking at this drawing, which isn't scaled, but I'm guessing that the little 'lip' on the sloped side is maybe only a foot tall)

Of course, it is very possible that if the moat had been partially filled (half way up the slope) with water that the tiger couldn't have gotten out. If only because it wouldn't have had a solid surface from which to leap.

Besides, it's quite possible the moat couldn't be filled with water because if the SFZ is anything like the Denver Zoo, there are doors at either end at the bottom of the moat.

[Aside]
I like that they draw a little line at 16.4'. It's like they don't think people will understand that 16 is bigger than 12. In which case I think they perhaps need to stop writing articles about things that have happened and start making their readership watch Sesame Street instead.
[/Aside]

It's been Dead

Dead at work that is.

Yesterday there were 11 of us.

Today there were 16.

We currently have 23 people in the group.

Okay, so it's not as bad as the not 'if', 'when' pandemic.

Yet.

Christmas Card II

And This...

Is why we don't take photos of me on Christmas.
Because I invariably do something stupid like put my hand on my head, screw up my eyes, open my mouth and say "do I look good enough to have photos taken of me?" and then right at the end of the question, the camera flashes and Shawn says "yes."

And yes I actually was really excited about getting "The Sims: Seasons". In fact, the picture right before this one looked perfectly lovely - with me holding the box in the exact same fashion but without all the "weewoo, I's a dork" look on my face.

But, the Over-Sharing, I likes it.

Christmas Card I

A modified Chrismakuh

It sucks when Christmas is on a Tuesday. Okay, it doesn't ever suck when you're a kid or otherwise in school because you always have the week after Christmas off. However, when you're a grownup and you have to work, it sucks when Christmas is in the middle of the week because how are you supposed to play with all the toys you got?

This year, for example, has Christmas falling on a Tuesday. This means, obviously, that Christmas Eve is on Monday. We get both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. So, we, in essence, have a 4 day weekend.

And you can't open gifts until the last day.

Well, isn't that just a downer for the weekend?

Of course, this doesn't affect me as much because I doubt I got anything that is something I'll be horribly sad about if I don't have 4 unadulterated days to play with. Shawn, however, bought himself a new laptop. And then mandated that it was his Christmas present. And then further mandated that he would not play with it until Christmas. Then he went and looked at a calendar.

Then the bargaining started: Maybe we could open just ONE gift before Christmas...you know, maybe on Friday night. So I relented. I opened one of the many DVD shaped packages, and Shawn went straight for his laptop. He's been installing ArchLinux and Fedora on it for the last 18 hours. He even got up at 8am today so he could play some more.

Sigh. He's like a kid on (4-days-before) Christmas morning.

Trail of Lights

Colleen, her boyfriend (Justin) and I did the Trail of Lights 5k this year. That's right, I actually did some form of 'race'. Involving running. Something I swore I'd never do after my second-to-last-finish in the 500-meter sprint in 6th grade.

We went, we got hot (it was 70 and for whatever reason the three of us decided to dress like it was 50), Justin took off his shirt, then he put on a different shirt and the crowd cheered (No, really, the crowd cheered). Then we wandered around until we found a place that seemed like it was people lining up for the race.

We sang the national anthem. The singer screwed up and repeated a verse twice. Then they sounded the horn. 10 minutes later we started to move. Like the herd of cattle we were. 10 minutes after that we finally got to the starting line. We couldn't run because there were too many people, kids, strollers, dogs, and people wrapped up like presents. By the time we got 200 yards from the start line, people were already finishing the race.

We walked some more because we were in a huge crowd and we couldn't run. We saw road kill. You would have figured Parks would have picked up the dead animals before the race.

We finished the first mile. We walked the trail of lights and Colleen took pictures. We got to the end of the trail (end of 2nd mile), and then went "eh, doing a 5k is tough, let's just go back to the tree."

Yeah, we're still working on finishing that last 1500 meters.

Dear CBS,

Thank you for your pro-life stance. I do not know what I would do without you to tell me what to think and feel.

I uttered the above phrase no less than 3 times while watching your latest installment of CSI: Miami (starring the red-headed step child that is David Caruso). It was the episode in which you brought up, no less than 3 times, that the murder victim was pregnant and how could they have killed her off. Those Bastards! Never mind the fact that her baby was the love child between the lady and her brother. Hey, only in Florida, right? Oh you tried to cover it up by saying he was her step brother and their parents got married when the kids were 18, but I see your true biblical stance.

And, so, I felt the need to let you know just how refreshing it is to see such a view expressed on your show. I figure it must have something to do with the governor of the state in which this show takes place being related to the current president. But, what do I know?

Once again, thanks for your refreshing and progressive stance on women's rights.

Love much,
Katina

[/sarcasm]

Elf-sized

Christmas card from Calison:

Overheard at work

A conversation at work today (blue is me, orange is the ex-marine, and purple is the innocent, church-going, non-drug-doing girl):

Why are you dressed so preppy?

I'm not dressed preppy.

Yes you are.

Yeah, the top half is preppy, the bottom half is cowboy.

You should have gone for black boots instead of the brown

But the important thing is whether or not your belt matches your boots.

Yes, all my accessories match. And I can't wear black boots. I don't like them.

They're boots, what's not to like?

Drug dealers wear black boots.

They do?

Well, I feel like a drug dealer when I wear black boots.

Psh, mine wears sneakers.

Oh, well then, never mind.

Let me clarify...

I'm horrible about clarifying things. And reading my blog posts before 'going live', but that's a whole other issue...no, actually, that's part of the issue because if I had read my blog before posting it, I would have noticed that I contradicted myself in the blog about gift cards.

So, let me try to clarify:

I like gift cards. I like to give them, I like to receive them.

I however, do not care for when I get gift cards that are to places I'll never go (Cabella's Hunting Store for example), or to places that don't even exist in the area I live (like Mervyns, or King Soopers). It is this type of stuff that makes one lazy.

I don't remember the last time I was in a JCPenny, and the last time I was at Macy's was to raise money for the Central Texas Dachshund Rescue. However, I go all the time to Old Navy, Kohls, Target, BedBath&Beyond, Lowe's, HomeDepot, etc.

Also, I love (absolutely L-O-V-E) gift cards to restaurants (and honestly the only way you could screw up would be to get me a gift card to Red Lobster--though it's all good, Red Lobster gift cards are good at Olive Garden). :)

Hope this clears things up.

Now THAT'S a story...

My cousin, Janel, gave birth to her 2nd child on Tuesday. Dorotea (doro-tay-a) was born 14 weeks premature. During an Ice Storm. At a hospital (possibly an urgent care center) that wasn't equipped to handle a such a small preemie. Ambulances/helicopters wouldn't come get her because of the ice. So two neonatal doctors drove themselves down in a personal vehicle to save her life. She made it past the critical 3 hour stage. So that's saying something. You can read about the story here.

And Another Thing

Man, people like this piss me off sometimes...


I mean his sign barely makes any sense grammatically.

Gift Cards: Gift, or something else?

So as it is wont every year, Christmastime is approaching and it is approaching fast. This of course means that we must go about getting gifts for all family members (okay, or at least the ones you have an agreement with to exchange gifts). Anyhow, I found the following two articles (written by the same person, none the less):

Gift Cards are Not Gifts

20 easy gifts that aren't gift cards

Now then, generally, I agree.

HOWEVER, I do like gift cards. I like to give them and I like to receive them. And it has nothing to do with items.

It has to do with consumables (which, you'll notice is an item on the "20 easy gifts" article)--How am I supposed to gift the gift of delicious melted cheese to my loved ones if I'm not allowed to give them a gift card to the Melting Pot? Oh I know, I could buy them a fondue pot and one of those fondue kits and mail it all to the person. But what if they're lazy and don't want to take the time to go and get (or make) bread or other dipping things? Or another thing, one of the articles asks if it would mean the same thing to give a person with a newborn baby a gift card instead of an actual item--I think it does, as long as the gift card you're giving has a good reason behind it such as "I got you this gift card because there will be a time when you turn to your spouse and say 'you know what? I don't want to cook tonight', and so now, you can still keep yourself fed without having to resort to the condiments in your fridge. Even better, this restaurant delivers!"

Also, I am fine with giving gift cards in the event that the item that is requested is out of the price range. For example, Shawn and I partake of the family gift swap with his cousins--each person is matched up with someone that isn't in their immediate family and then you get that person a $50 gift. One year, his cousin asked for a $50 gift card to Banana Republic because the blouse she wanted was $98. And if you've ever happened to walk into a Banana Republic, you know that $50 doesn't get you very far.

However, gift cards are a cop out if you're just giving it because you have no idea of what else to get--or you're too lazy to actually go out and get something.

I figure I should post

But I don't know what to post about. sigh. So sad. Let's see...

My mom gave me a box when we left from Colorado with the instructions "open when you decorate the tree." and I thought, "What tree. Oh....Riiiiiight." So, as soon as we got home and we got unpacked I turned to Shawn and I said "so, can we open this box now?" and he, being the good kid that he is, said "no, we aren't decorating the tree, now are we?" And alas, I had to admit that nay, we were not currently decorating the tree. So I had to wait until the following weekend when I finally convinced him to get the damn tree out of the attic.

So we (meaning I) decorated the tree. This usually consists of me pulling some ornaments out of the storage box and saying "see, this one? this one we got in Vegas. And this one we got in New Orleans. I really like the New Orleans one. I think it's cute." and he invariably grunts and continues to play on the internet. I think next year I'll be able to hold up an ornament and he's going to say "you got that from your aunt Pat when you were 6 years old, and that's the one that you thought was Dani's until your mom showed you the list o' ornaments that proved it wasn't."

After the tree decorating was complete I went and opened the aforementioned box to find a new ornament, and a towel angel.

Behold, the towel angel (made of a hand towel, a washcloth, and a pot holder):
And I'm waiting to take a photo of the ornament for when I get all artsy and feel like getting out the SLR because I can have fun with that camera.

But the ornament does come with a story:
Every year when my mom was knee-high to a grasshopper, her dad always insisted on putting this wooden Santa ornament on the Christmas tree. This was one of those ornaments where you would pull a string and the Santa would kick his legs and lift his arms (like he was doing jumping jacks). And so, when Mom saw this type of ornament she just had to get one for me, Dani, and herself. Of course she also clarified that ours are way cuter than her dad's version.

Of course, the funny part about this story is the fact that she meant to give us these ornaments LAST Christmas.

She went to the Christmas Shoppe last year and found these nutcracker ornaments and liked them because of the aforementioned story, so she bought three. She got home and sent one of the ornaments to me and left the other one wrapped for Dani and decided to put hers away until they put up their own tree. Because Shawn and I got into one of those moods where we put up the tree unseasonably early, I got to open the shipped package as soon as it came. And there was this cute little cardinal ornament. I called mom to thank her for it and she of course asked if I liked how it did jumping jacks. It was at this point that I thought to myself "oh God, this is it, she's finally gone off the deep end." and explained that "no, I'm pretty sure this one doesn't do jumping jacks. Its a cardinal on some leaves." That's when she went and opened her tissue wrapped ornament and realized that when she was at the store the sales guy wrapped the 3 ornaments the lady in front of her was getting (3 cardinals) and then wrapped the 3 ornaments that my mom was getting (nutcrackers). The guy then gave each lady the opposite ornaments from what she had actually thought she was buying. Of course, this is the story associated with the cardinal now--but hey, at least I have stories about most of my ornaments.

My Avocado Tree

As I mentioned earlier, I finally re-potted my avocado tree (from an 8" pot to a 14" pot--actually, it may be bigger than a 14"...). The leaves look funny because they were pressed up against the window so the tree wouldn't fall over, and thus they got sunburned. Thankfully Ross is way more ingenious than I and found stakes to put in the pot to keep the tree upright without relying on the window. The tree was originally in a pot the same size as the small pot next to the tree.

And this is what the tree looked like almost 2 years ago:
The tree was brought to work because Quazi managed to somehow land on top of it when I had it at home thus causing it to break at a 90 degree angle. Not to mention he liked to chew on the leaves (you can't see the 90 bend in the picture at the top because the bend is pointing toward the window), thus it was decided my office was a much safer place for the tree.