Serendipity

I was extremely saddened by the news of Michael Jackson's death today. He was iconic, and as a child of the 80's, I have many memories attached to his songs. As a kid, "Rockin' Robin" was my favorite song. I watched far too much of "Will You Be There" off Free Willy. At Moorpark, the wolf was trained to howl when he heard "Man in the Mirror". "Earth Song" has the ability to push me to tears. "The Way You Make Me Feel" features in my favorite Doctor Who fic, Elusive, and always reminds me of the carefree happiness that fic incites. This summer, "Thriller" is on a CD we play during our 3:30 bird display, and I like to play it backstage between shows


Finally, one of our interns taught me how to moonwalk last month, and I practice before almost every show just before stepping on stage. I've been joking that near the end of the summer I'm going to moonwalk off stage when the turkey vulture "chases" me off.

Me moonwalking.

Pretty good moonwalk, eh? *L* It still needs some work (I mean, check this out!), but it's been fun learning. And now I'll be a bit saddened whenever I do it. As weird as he was, I deeply admired MJ's humanitarian efforts and genuinely enjoyed many of his songs. I can't quite believe he's gone.

I'm preparing for the big trip. Driving to Portland will take me all weekend so I'm going to spend hours and hours in the car. And I need amusement! I've got a DW audiobook, some podcasts (the news from lake wobegon, mugglecast, wait wait don't tell me, and this american life), and my entire music library on my iPod, but I figured I'd ask if anyone has other suggestions of some long, entertaining mp3s. Audiobook, podcast, maybe some good stand-up? Just figured I'd ask.

I did upload some pics from my phone and figured I'd do a little photo dump of random pics I've taken lately.

( Picspam! )

That's all for now. Maybe I'll update tomorrow. If not, see you in Portland!

Forgive the second entry. I have to show you the photographic evidence ;)

( Snow! )

Guess where I went today...

( The Playboy Mansion! )

To get back to real life, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I stuffed myself on lots of great food, we played cards, and then best of all, we played Rock Band for 5 hours. I'd never played before, and holy crap it's ADDICTING! I didn't want to leave. So, good holiday.

In art news, ( 2 advent calendars! )

The Good:

( SeaWorld! )

The Bad:

Every day, every hour that I don't hear back from the Minnesota Zoo breaks my heart just a little bit more. I'm far too used to having my dreams crushed. I know one week isn't enough time to start freaking out over, but I want that job so badly, and I'm frankly terrified of going back into the soul-crushing job search again. There's only 2 weeks left of work and I'm dreading going back to that jobless, bored, stressed out blankness. I'm not excited about any of the job openings out there and the idea of moving yet again to a place where I don't know anyone into a job I don't like is almost as wearying as the thought of having no job at all. I haven't even applied to anything else, and I know I should have started ages ago, and that guilt just combines with the terror already in place to form a self-sustaining spiral of avoiding the problem. I need to start applying, I desperately do, so I'll just need to try to lift myself out of my terror long enough to do so...tomorrow.

The Average:

I miss the Olympics. I loved coming home every day and watching primetime coverage until 1 in the morning. I loved the gymnastics, and the running, and the diving, and even their silly journalistic stories of China. I loved having it on in the background even if I wasn't actively watching. I loved the expressions of joy on the winners' faces, and even the pangs of sadness for those that failed. I loved feeling proud of my country, yet feeling like a global citizen, that these feelings were universal. A ridiculously cute and sappy set of Olympics commercials from a few years ago:



My favorites? Coragem (Courage), Bronze, and Prata (Silver).

BONUS Fic Update: I really, really enjoyed Cubed. A fascinating look at an alternate universe Mulder and Scully, in domestic bliss, and how that relates to reality. At first it sounded like so much idealized mush, but by the end I loved the message: that they are not broken beyond repair, that they can learn to get past their fears and live and love freely and openly.

She observed Samantha and Fox, together and smiling, the children licking ice cream from their spoons, the cozy little house, the baby wiggling around in her belly. Their lives were so blissfully normal. Scully had to force down the sudden urge to go search the closets to see where they were hiding the mutants.

Sooo, I packed up my car and brought a load down to Escondido yesterday, stayed the night, and drove back up today. On the way back, I decided to take a detour through Santa Monica and Mabilu. This served two purposes: it let me enjoy the fabulous PCH highway one last time, and hunt down David Duchovny. ;) Now, I have no clue if David is even IN Malibu at the moment, but he does live there, and has been known to frequent a certain Starbucks. I'd searched for it before without success, but this time, armed with directions from krisnreine, I was determined.

This is that journey.

( Watch what happens. )

The End! Really now, it was fun. What's the use of living in Southern California if you can't do a little harmless celebrity stalking? ;)

OK, I stopped doing my pictures from EATM thing a while ago before I could finish my favorite animals, so thus, here is my dear Salsa-bird.

( Picspam ahoy )

In unrelated news, it's snowing up in the mountains north of here and the news is like "OMG, snow! Breaking news, people, it's SNOWING! Close down the highway, the snowplows need to get through!!" *snork*

You guessed it, more zoo pictures. Finally we come to my Gobbie girl.



( More pictures )

OK, I really need to upload some pics from the zoo, for my own memories if nothing else. Sooo, I'm gonna start small, with some of the miscellaneous animals.

( Animal Pictures! )

OK, that's all for today. Coming up soon: Projects, Salsa, Goblin, and the baaaaby.

Brought Friday (the raccoon) out on leash today so she could sniff around and have some enrichment, and while we were out, I tested my training on her. I've been training her since September to target to a laser pointer, and lately it's turned into targeting her onto a wooden disk and doing behaviors (wave, worry, think). So I placed her mark several feet away and sent her to it. She went right there, stood up and looked at me, and waited for her next command. It was awesome, as I've only started training her on the mark a few feet away. She caught on so fast! I'm really proud of her.

Anyways, took out Malaika as well, and got a picture.

( Me and my birdy )