8 is Great!

I've another song for all the people not reading my blog! At this point, it's just a way to keep track of the songs I really like right when I really like them.

This one was on a TV show today!

Song number 7 come from my past a little. I first heard this song on one of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series playlists. I was reintroduced to it today while watching season 3 of Criminal Minds on DVD. It was at the begining of one of the episodes, and I love this song!

Song number 6

I'm going to get around to posting about my new apartment and moving and all that jazz one of these days, I've just been working 52 hrs/week for a few weeks here and sometimes I just want to sit around and veg and not think! Now that I have a run on sentence, here's the 6th song in this little playlist that I've got going!

 Yes, it's two videos, but they're both to the same song, and they're both amazing in their own way. I couldn't choose!

And the 5th song right after the 4th

Now, this is one hella fucked up video, but this is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I couldn't put off posting it any longer. Every time I feel homesick, every time I need to blast some music, if I need to pop up my mood, I listen to this song. It instantly makes me think of home, and going out with Mandy to transmission Wednesdays. Hell, forget combating homesickness, this song makes me homesick! Enjoy Kids by MGMT.

Playlist song #4

So here's Get Over It by Ok Go. My favorite part of this music video are all the random little things that match the lyrics they're singing. Just watch it a few times, you'll figure it out!

The internet is a scary place

It's frightening how much of your web surfing habits are recorded.  Today I followed a link for FLOR carpet tiles from Pioneer Woman's page because I wanted to know what they were. Next ting I know, every webpage that does advertising has FLOR advertisements in their boxes! Yeesh!

Another song in the playlist (#3)

I started hearing this on the radio, and didn't know what it was called. So like I always do, I wrote down the lyrics so I would remember once I got to my apartment (and consequently my computer) and googled away! This video might make you cry, but the song is great! So here's #3:

I should start a running playlist, consider this song #2, #1 being Young Folks

Apparently I'm going to make a habit of posting music videos from YouTube on here. Well...just consider it your musical education, and enjoy!

I heard the last bit of this song on the radio yesterday, this morning I Googled the lyrics to figure out what it was, then downloaded it to my iPod before work at 8 am, and spent the entire first hour listening to it on repeat. Then I listened to it on and off through the rest of the day when I had a chance. I hope you do the same, or at least enjoy this!

Sometimes I have friends

I have one friend outside of either of my jobs. Her name is Nikki and you met her a few posts back.

A few weeks ago, we went for a drive and ended up at Fossil Creek Creamery. My love of goat cheese started that day. Obviously all the cheese I got from there is now long gone, eaten with delicious crackers. Well she went there a few days ago and got more cheese, so we are going to have a wine and cheese and movie night. I'm excited! I'm going to go have an adult evening with a friend I made as an adult!

ADD

Sometimes I have trouble concentrating. I've learned to deal with it, but it gets annoying at times. Sometimes it's just my braining flitting from thing to thing, and other times I want to do too many things at once so my concentration can't stay on any one thing until I get really absorbed in it. Like right now I'm trying to look for Dark Angel fic that I read in the past (aka 11 years ago, how does this even happen!!) and either didn't put into my favorites in ff.net, or has since been deleted. I hope I just didn't favorite the stuff, because I'm really looking forward to a memory lane trip. But I digress (see what I'm dealing with here!); I'm trying to find stuff, but I'm trying to listen to this song at the same time! SO I listened, and now I will listen to something that I can fade to the background of my concentration, and I will give you the video so you can hear what's distracting me!

Trip into my past

I'm revisiting my high school days, watching Dark Angel. Good times! Think I'm gonna have to read some DA fic later! Woohoo!

 

Aaannd Theeeeenn

After mom and I spent, what, 2 days? in Chicago; she LEFT ME!! ("He left us, he left us!"  "But that's not what I'm gonna do!" name that movie!) All ALONE!!! In the big city of CHICAGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To wait for Lindsey to come pick me up! :)

We had already checked out of the hotel (because those crazy places make you leave my like 11am, in what universe are people awake by 11am on their vacations? ...Oh yeah, this one.) The hotel people were nice enough to let me leave my baggage in the storage area so I didn't have to lug it around while exploring on my own and waiting for my ride. With just my purse and my jump on/jump off bus card, I took mom to the train station, cried a little, and rode the bus all by myself (look mom, I'm a Big Girl Now!) around the city till I decided what I would do. Unsurprisingly, I decided to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say that Chicago has one of the nicest bus systems I've ever had the pleasure to navigate. I didn't use the L-train while I was there, but the buses are fantastic.

For those of you not in the know, the Lincoln Park Zoo is in Lincoln Park in Chicago just north of the Miracle Mile. It is huge and free to get in and parts of it are coaxingly nice, and I think that other parts will catch up eventually. I had my camera (when do I not) and took pics. I even recorded a bit of video of my talking to/for the animals like mom and I do so I could show her later when I go home. Yes, mom and I are those people.

They have a fantastic ape house with chimps and gorillas. I tried not to use my flash, so most of my pics from in there ended up blurry.

The big cat house needs some serious work, but they have lots of different cats, which I LOVE!

He's in a box! Like a house cat!

This tiger was so cute, it was like he was posing!

After I shot these, I took the bus back to Miracle Mile and found a place to sit and have a coffee while Lindsey was fighting traffic into the city. After she made it, we drove back out to the zoo and looked around for a bit since she had never been there before. While we were in the cat house, the male lion started roaring. He walked into his outside exhibit and continued while we watched (and while I filmed it). It was awesome! I love lion roars!

He tired himself out with all that effort and had to take a nice nap!

 After the zoo closed, Linds and I took the bus back into the city (it's a few blocks) while leaving her car since we found a free parking spot next to the zoo. We were going to go eat at this one place, possibly pizza, but we were starving! and the wait was like an hour, while standing outside in the COLD! So we went to the Hard Rock and ate.

After dinner was the long drive to Peoria, where Linds lives. The next day, we went to another zoo!!!

Chicago and the Field Museum

On out second day in Chicago, mom and I were going to get ourselves out to the Brookfield Zoo, but it was cold and Brookfield is kinda out there so we decided to go to the Field Museum, a natural history museum. It was a great idea! That place is HUGE! There is no way you could get around it in one day. We saw all kinds of stuff. My favorite part were all the life sized dioramas. That trip is now going to be illustrated in photographs.

Michael Jackson was apparently around in the old Egyptian days!

 I had more I wanted to put on here, but the vertical shot ones uploaded horizontal. :(

Chicago

A while ago, before I moved this godforsaken place, Mom and I took another trip to Chicago. This was partially and mom/daughter trip, and partially getting me to Chicago so my friend in Peoria IL could come pick me up and we could hang for a few days. I have known this girl since I was 16. She worked at my first job, but you'll hear more about her later when I write about when she came to visit me here. This post is about mom and me.

We went to the Hard Rock for dinner the first night we were there. It was a busy evening, and there were a lot of people that out waitress was taking care of, but the service didn't seem bad to us. When we were near finishing our dinner, the manager on duty came up to us with a dessert tray and asked us to pick dessert as an apology for poor service. Well, as stated above, we thought the service was fine, but since there were a lot of needy/roudy teenaged people in our section that were taking a lot of our waitress' time, I guess she felt we were jipped. So we decided on two of the dessert shooters. They were delicious!

Goldfield

I had the day off Tuesday, and so did my friend Nikki, so we decided to take a little trip. I had found this ghost town online that was only like 35min from here called Goldfield Ghost Town. It's this little tourist trap kind of place. The guy who built it did so in an area near the Superstition Mountains where a lot of people had discovered gold in the rush. He built very near the original town site, but most of the town an disappeared years before. All the buildings are built to look like they're from the early-mid 1800's.

There's a narrow gauge train that takes you on a circuit around the town and the conductor tells you all about the area and why this was built, etc etc. Since it was summer, the reptile house that I really wanted to see was closed for the season. I'll  have to come back in the winter. There's also a mine tour and a mystery house. We didn't do either of those things. We wandered around and looked at the shops.

Nikki and I in front of the train.

Hurry Up Ernie giving the tour.

Goldfield from the train.

This was just cool.

Superstition Mountains

After we left we went to see this housing complex that Nikki is thinking of getting a house in. Looking at that house made me want a house. I am tired of renting, but I also don't want to buy a house and have that keeping me here. I want to leave Arizona in a few years and don't want to have to sell a house.

After that adventure we went to Sweet Tomatoes for a late lunch, vegged out at my place for a while, and then parted ways. I then took a short nap, and watched 8 episodes of Criminal Minds. It was a good day off!

Outside the Bordello in a Go-Go dancer cage

Took this pick just for mom!

                                                                      We're in elevators!

The Zoo Saga, part 1

Me and Annie, the GHO. I'll get to this stuff later, we're starting from the very beginning here!

This all started about a year and a month ago, in May of 2010. As you may know, I had been applying for zoo jobs all over the country for months and months. I had just about given up on finding one any time soon, and had actually decided to stop for the time being and just work, get my own place, etc etc. At the end of April I moved out of the Desnoyer House (and away from Kate The Horrible Roommate!) and was currently living with my grandma and aunt. A few days before I moved, I got a call from Phoenix asking if I would like to set up an interview. Well, obviously I took it, because to not would have been crazy. I had my interview over the phone at my parent's house.

It seemed to go well, but they needed a video of my presentation skills, since a large part of this job was presenting animals to the public. I can't tell you what an ordeal this was! I decided to do a little giraffe talk, and since I like props, I got a little stuffed giraffe puppet and held it on my hand while recording myself giving this talk. Apparently the talk didn't actually have to be factual or even very informational; they just wanted to see my style. I must have recorded and re-recorded myself 10 or more times. I had propped the camera up in my mom's office and was doing it myself since this was embarrassing. Well finally I just had my dad hold the camera outside, did it twice more and decided that it was as good as it was gonna get, uploaded it to YouTube, and let fate take the rest. A few days later I got the call offering me the job.

I SCREAMED! I may have frightened my future boss a little. I think I got offered the job sometime around the second week of May. My start date was the beginning of the second week of June. My parent's were gonna be gone most of the first week of June helping Andy and his girlfriend move to Cincinnati . I don't know that this could have come at a worse time.

Sometimes I get competitive

My room mate has started a blogger. By the competitive nature of myself, I now have to keep mine updated. That's where the problem comes in; I have nothing to write about. Nothing really interesting has been going on in my life recently. Expect, in the context of my blog's life, a lot has happened!  I think I should write the story of the last year of my life. A year ago, I think just about to the day, I moved to Arizona to work at the Phoenix Zoo. I guess I can write about that adventure so I don't forget every little last bit. I've already forgotten a lot, so I better write down what I remember!

Deep thoughts before bed

Sometimes, I wonder if things don't happen for a reason; if there's something or someone out there helping stuff along. Like, at some point, there is going to be a change in your life that will lead you down some path, and if that's the wrong path, something happens that you can respond to in some way to either continue down that wrong path, or alter it correct again. It's when stuff like this happens that I think there might be some higher power, or at least some other power. If you're wondering what has brought about this bout of existentialism, I'll tell you.

This evening, after working at PetCo, I ran to the grocery store to pick up some essentials for the next day. Mind you, it's about 10pm when I'm shopping. I was listening to my iPod in the car, and I liked the song that was playing, so I put my headphones in and listened to it while shopping as well. I was in the self checkout lane, checking myself out...like ya do, and after I was done, the lady in line came up to my register. I still had my headphones on, but I acknowledged her, and she started talking. I took my headphone off and she was asking for help using the self checkout, she didn't know how. Now, there are obviously people around for this very purpose, but I know how to work them, and I was standing right there, so I helped her. We got her all checked out and we went on our separate ways.

Now, I'm a thinky think sort of person, as anyone who knows me could tell you, so I started wondering. Did she want me to help her because I had my headphones on, off in my owl little world, cut off from the rest of humanity going on in the store? she could have gone to an empty register and asked an employee for help, or one of the other patrons checking out, but she asked me. I saw her let a guy go ahead of her, presumably so I could help her. Did she decide this on her own, to pull me back into the world, or did something put the seed of this idea in her head. If she hadn't asked for my help, and I had walked out of the store, still listening to my music, would something else had happened? Something bad right then, or further on down the road. Maybe this one act of keeping myself apart from others would have started me on a path of recluseivness that I wouldn't be able to stop. Maybe this woman saved me from myself in some little way. Or, maybe she just liked the look of me, I was the only woman at the checkout, the rest were guys. I guess we'll never know.