California vacay recap, in which Very Special Things happen

I am back from CA! We had a lovely, restful vacation in Palm Springs and, despite my misgivings, I LOVED the desert. More importantly, my sinuses loved the desert. I've been back in CT for 3 1/2 days and I've had 2 megrims and 1 killer sinus headache already. (Those are migraines for those of you who don't speak Ye Olde Englishe.)

On Sunday, we had a lovely barbecue with our friends Peter, Bill and Jason, who happen to have a vacation home in Palm Springs. I hadn't seen them in over a year and it was great to catch up. Bill volunteers at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (he's a cheetah expert posted by the cheetah habitat to answer any questions visitors may have).

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE VERY SPECIAL THING THAT HAPPENED!

Oh em gee, people. The Wild Animal Park is a phenomenal facility and you should all visit it someday if you can. It's unbelievable. The animals are in these amazing, enormous habitats that both allow visitors to observe them and allow them to exist in an environment that's very close to their natural habitat. They're given privacy. Natural barriers are used wherever possible instead of cages and fencing. It's just freaking amazing.

One of the coolest exhibits they have is this open area that mimics the Serengeti (or whatever)--many different types of animals co-exist in the same enclosure as they would naturally. Rhinos, giraffes, cape buffalos, gazelles, zebras, etc. with a watering hole and native vegetation and OH MY GOD IT'S SO AMAZING.

And...

For some extra money...

You can do this:



That's Willow. She's eating Acacia leaves (not my hand). But that's not all, people. Oh-ho-ho no, it's not. Because I also did this:



!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS A PICTURE OF ME FEEDING A GREATER ONE HORNED RHINO. !!!!!!!!!!!!!

*dies of teh excitement*

Dudes. We freaking fed two giraffes, Willow and Kizzy, and Kaia the rhino. Like, WITH OUR HANDS. I touched a rhino. I! Touched! A! Rhino! I gave her apples! I petted her nose! I touched her funny wiggly lip! I saw her baby tusks! I watched her wet nostrils sniffing around the slats for more snackies when there were no more!

I am in love.

I have to say that the giraffes were hilarious and adorable as well. I shall now torture you with more pictures:

Ben wanted a kiss from the cute widdle giwaffe (whose head weighs almost half of my entire body weight).


Check out the tongue action! It's a little hard to see because her purple tongue is blending in with Ben's shirt but it's curled around the acacia leaf!


bebbeh!!



Honestly, I could bring Blogger to a screeching halt with all the freaking adorable pictures and video I have. I suppose this will do...for now. ;)

We had a few more adventures but it's getting late and I've got to get to bed. More updates to follow!

Louisiana, Part Deux

I posted part one of the Louisiana vacation at my LiveJournal account yesterday, but forgot to cross-post. You can check it out here.

The Louisiana vacation continues...

As I mentioned yesterday, there were bears at the zoo. See this bear?

Looks sort of sad and grumpy, right? That's because he was wishing he was as flexible as this guy:

Don't try this at home, kids. You'll just hurt yourselves. Well, unless you're that guy from the cover of that Tool album*. There's a third photo in the bear set but I applied some judgment and decided it didn't need to be posted here and that it may, in fact, be illegal in some states.

Moving right along! I discovered the origins of Skeksis. *shudders* Creepy:

And--last zoo pic--a baby rhino! *squeaks* You have no idea how cute it was. No. Idea.

Other highlights:

My first soy gingerbread latte of the season. I loved it so much, I almost married it.

Baby gator!!!! I wanted to keep him in my pocket.

Wine at CVS. WTF??????

And finally, the New Orleans I imagined--which is quite different from the actual New Orleans (which is sort of that but with fifteen layers of tourist slathered over the top of it)(oh, and smelly. very, very smelly. blech.).

Here endeth the picspam.

*Does anyone know what I'm talking about here? I thought it was Aenima, but I just Googled it because my CDs are packed away and now I can't find it. I would swear there's a Tool album cover that has a guy...um...pleasuring himself. No? Anyone? Bueller?

Wedding picspam and my husband's new crush

Before we get to Ben's new crush, a quick word about my weekend. We went to a wedding on Saturday. The coolness factor of the event (and, really, the couple themselves) can pretty much be summed up by these two pictures:


The placecards. We decided Ben was the Storm Trooper.


Champagne? We don't need no stinking champagne! These were the choices to toast with. We chose the Guinness (OBviously. Guinness is nectar of the gods. Besides, Baileys provokes Biological Events of Which We Shall Not Speak (tm). Fricking dairy.)

Our "placecard" only lasted long enough for me to photograph it.



Me: OMG! Are you eating my ass??
Ben: *big innocent eyes* No! I'm lifting you.
Me: Pffft. Whatever. Hey! Cool. I have both guns. Ha!

But Mr. Storm Trooper's work wasn't done for the evening, oh no:



Last, a pic of the Wishing Wall we got the couple, which they cleverly brought to the wedding:



This environmentally friendly cardboard frame has a corrugated honeycomb inside and comes with lots of colorful slips of paper. The idea is, your friends and family (or you or whomever) write wishes for you on the paper, roll them up and slide them into the honeycomb slots in the frame. I'm madly in love with this idea and want to buy them for everyone for every occasion -- weddings, babies, new houses, etc. You like? Check it out at Uncommon Goods (super great company, btw!).

Onto the new crush...

You need to understand that we're working our way through the seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which is really great and you should all go rent it right now, amen. I suppose what I'm about to say contains minor spoilers though, really, you can see them coming from a mile away so feel free to read on even if you haven't watched the show yet. ;)

So here we are in bed last night, lights out, snuggled up*, expressing our love in the typical Sweet style:
Me: I promise I'll never divorce you for Lee Adama.
Ben: I love you! I promise I'll never divorce you for Captain Thrace.
Me: I lov--
Ben: Because you're pretty and black.
Me: O.o

Yup. Ben's got the hots for Dualla.



Me? I like Starbuck. Dee's too...nice.



Have you watched the show? If so, who's your crush?


*Well, as snuggled up as two people can be with a 30 pound terrier between them.

*dink dink dink* Is this thing on?

Oh hai. I am back from my whirlwind* period of social activity! I give you a quick recap of the past several days in photo-form, because I have become addicted to posting pics on my blog:

Friday:
Our friends Justin and Larissa got married! Yay! I love marriage!

There *might* have been some dancing. Just sayin'.

Saturday:
Friends of ours renewed their vows in honor of their tenth wedding anniversary. It was lovely and makes my head spin to think that Ben and I will celebrate our tenth in the fall. Where did the time go?

Sunday:

Spent Sunday evening with these guys.
Have I mentioned how much I effing <3 The Fray? I believe I have.

The show was really good. The only thing that kept it from being great was that poor Isaac was recovering from bronchitis and sounded a bit squeaky. Well, squeakier than normal. :)

Jack's Mannequin opened. This dude = insane:



As you can see, this pic is not from the show Sunday night. However, I wanted to try to show you how crazy he is. See how he has two mics and is half standing up? The dude is a freaking powerhouse of energy and passion when he's performing. He's up and down from his piano stool, bouncing all around, switching from mic to mic, sometimes even jumping on top of the piano or keys. In. Sane. They put on a great show and I'd highly recommend seeing them if you get the chance. I'll be picking up their album.

Sunday night through Tuesday were spent in Boston, doing this:



Playing with electricity at the Museum of Science, and creating fake identities:

Can you guess who belonged to each ticket?

We also toured the Sam Adams brewery.

We had dinner at a yummy Thai place with a beautiful fish tank. Unfortunately, one of the fish distracted us through the whole meal:



There he is on the left, showing off his fearsome teeth (gnashers!). But on the right, you can see him sort of listing to the side and his tail is arching in a weird way--that's how he looked for most of the meal. We thought he was going to go belly up right in front of us! So much so, that Ben went and alerted one of the waitstaff in the middle of the meal. She assured us that he was fine and we didn't believe her--until he suddenly started swimming around again fifteen minutes later like nothing ever happened. It was quite distressing, I assure you.

Well, I'm sure I've tortured you enough with the pictures. What's that? Not *quite* enough? Okay. Here's one more:

Tragically, this weekend did not include a visit with the bundle of ridiculous cuteness that is Baby Nephew.

I should be back on a regular blogging schedule now (yay) with *actual* content (gasp!). Topics to be addressed shortly: 1st person POV and hooks (the literary kind, you pervs!).

*Am I the only one who wants to put an extra h in there: whirlwhind? (Besides JR Ward, obviously.)

Sunday Fun

I know, it's Wednesday and I'm posting about Sunday. I'm just crazeh like that.

So! Two fun things to post about from Sunday. First, this:

Right??

Okay, but that's not a very fun-looking picture. Cute? Yes. Fun? Nah. Let's try again:

Yay!

Now, contrary to first appearances, Baby Nephew and Bro-in-Law are not wearing matching onesies. For example, Baby Nephew's doesn't have a big drool patch on the shoulder. But, I digress.

Baby Nephew is a little older now and less lumpish, though equally cute. I'm actually a fan of the lump stage--those early weeks when they're little more than snuggly heaters (at least to Aunties who don't have to get up with them in the middle of the night, change diapers and worry about gums gnashing our breasts). I love the teddy bear factor brand new babies have. But he's starting to smile now and interact more, which is very fun and rewarding. Moods are a cool addition. :)

One of the other cool things we did on Sunday was play the game Apples to Apples. I LOVE this game. Everyone gets dealt a hand of random cards that say things like PAMELA ANDERSON or MAGPIES or POCKET LINT. Then one person flips over a word card that says something like DOMINANT. Everyone else selects a card from their hand that best represents the word card chosen. For example, the clear choice from our hand above would be pocket lint. Duh. Then the person who flipped over the word card gets to select the best match, without knowing who provided it. That person wins the hand. The person who wins the most hands wins the game (essentially).

Oh, it's good fun.

Because we rarely ever take things seriously. Let me show you:



It's a little blurry, but here's what we have. The word card is APPETIZING. Here are the cards we played: BRUCE WILLIS, MEG RYAN, TRUCK STOPS, MAD COW DISEASE, CIGARETTE BURNS, POODLES, and VIETNAM 1968. I know! Tough choices, right?

In this case, the person who picked happened to be one of our more literal players and they went with Bruce Willis (though you can see another player arguing his case for Meg Ryan above). I think I played the Cigarette Burns card, though I'm jealous of the Truck Stops and Vietnam, 1968 choices. I probably would have gone with 'Nam if it was my turn to pick. I tend to go for whatever amuses me most.

In any case, we had lots of fun and I highly recommend the game for everyone. It's a good family game, too--pretty kid appropriate (assuming they understand what all the words mean).

Spring is here! (now with more Picspam!)

It must be, because there's a dead dog on my driveway:



Okay, he's not actually dead but he sure looks it, doesn't he? This is Logan's favorite thing to do. He goes out in the warm weather, bakes on the driveway like a little gingerbread cookie, then comes back into the house about 30 seconds prior to heat stroke to lay in the air conditioning for a few minutes. Rinse and repeat. Today was the first time he really did it for any extended period of time this year, so it must be spring.

If that didn't convince me, this did:

That's mulch. Found inside the house.

Said gingerbread cookie also likes to bake on the island in the middle of our drive way, which means that he transfers mulch from the island to the house in a very distinct path all spring and summer long. Last year, we could have planted a garden indoors with all the mulch he tracked in. Srsly(tm).

Friday night we celebrated my friend Julie's 40th birthday. She has twin 3 year old daughters (and an older son and daughter), one of whom is a total diva. Check out her party shoes, which she was all too happy to model for me:

Destined for Manolo Blahniks, no?

We also played Cranium! Can you guess what this is?

That's right. It's a banana split. O.o

A great time was had by all. Happy birthday, Juls!

Game Night: Carcassonne vs. Zombies!

Every once in a while we host a Game Night, where we have a bunch of friends over and play board games. Today we split into two groups, mine played Carcassonne and Ben's played this:



Both games had super-cute playing pieces:



My Carcassonne pieces are on top. In the bottom picture, L to R, are an armed living person, a boy zombie and a girl zombie.

Both games required some strategy, though Zombies sounded a bit more complicated, based on all the rule debates we could hear going on. At one point, I was even called in to be a third party judge! Both games also allow you to completely fuck your opponents. For example, my sister-in-law was thisclose to winning the Zombies game...for, like, an HOUR. But everyone else teamed up on her and Ben ended up winning. Evidence of Carcassonne treachery can be seen below:



See what's happening there? That was *my* castle, until Justin first "shared" it with me and then claimed it. Dirty, dirty trick.

After pizza, we decided to see how many blue bunny Peeps would fit in my brother-in-law's mouth at one time:


(The answer is six, in case you're wondering.)

Good times, good times.