H is for

Homemade. As in homemade jam! I was going to take a pi of my hermit crabs, but then I got home yesterday and made jam and I wanted to show it off. It's delicious strawberry/raspberry/mango. Yummy!

Go check out what my mom found that starts with H!

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!

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!!!

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.

oh TV

True Blood has eaten my brain. That is all.

Wanderlust

So, I was going to write about how I got a freaking job, but I'll leave that till later. Right now I'm going to write about the crazy that is my head. (and seriously, could I start more posts with "so"?)

If you know me, you know that I'm crazy. Not certifiable, but bad enough. One of those crazy aspects is how...not contrary, but I can't think of the right word right now, I can be. But I like things that are opposite of each other. I like black, but I also like very colorful things, for example. I'm a homebody, but I love to travel. I want to stay in one place for more than a year, but I'm always looking for a job somewhere else.

The thing that got me posting this was looking at this picture on Dooce's website. When I was in Oregon last summer, I couldn't wait to get home to flat land. And the instant I got home, I wanted the mountains back more than anything. I wanted to go back to Arizona and see the red rocks, the high desert, the beautiful mountains of Colorado, the dry heat and wonderful scrub of Santa Fe. God I miss it! And the whole time I was in Oregon, I was yearning for green. I wanted green grass and rain and leafy trees and green grass! Everything was dead and tan/brown. But when we got through California and into Arizona a little way, I started to fall in love. It was beautiful! I loved driving down a mountain pass into a valley and seeing it all stretched out before me. What I wouldn't have given to have been able to pull over and wander off to take rolls and roll of photos. Black and white that I could develop in the darkroom I don't have. I wanted to set up the perfect shot, swim in that pool we found (but was too cold to go in).

I wanted to stay in Sedona and Santa Fe for days, weeks. I want to move there and drink in the dry heat, bake in the sauna of the desert. Explore and live and run away from giant bugs and complain about the heat and work and play. I want to go back so bad! I want to see the rest of the desert, take pictures of rocky outcroppings miles past where Jesus lost his sandals.

But at the same time I want to go here and here and see trees covered in moss, and streams running through forests. I want to go back to England and explore the grassy hillsides, commune with the sheep. I want to go to huge cities in the hustle and bustle, or in calmer neighborhoods of those same busy cities. I want to go to Europe and find tiny bookstores tucked in side alleys in the Italian countryside. And in any of these places, I could probably live happily...at least for a while. At lease until my feet start calling again, wanting to wader away into that good night.

But God do I miss the high desert and the mountains. I want to spend time in Colorado some day. I want to move to Phoenix with my friend, see what a sprawling city is like, instead of one that goes straight up. But the contrary part of me is, I look at pictures of the red rock mountains of Utah and Arizona and I gasp and the beauty and the longing, but I have the same result when I look at pictures of all the green in the English countryside. I don't know id I'll ever be completely content to settle in one place, if my wanderlust will ever be sated. I guess only time will tell. If would probably help if I actually wandered a little too!

i will never be without bookmarks again!

I love this whole Delicious thing! I am a bookmarking, tagging fiend over here man! It's so nice, I will never be without my bookmarks again! That's gonna be one of the worst things abut changing computers or ever just internet operating services. When I switched computers, I obviously lost all my bookmarks/favorites, and now I will always have these. It's so nice! I've been bookmarking up a storm, a STORM I tells you!

Tonight mom dad and I went to see Zed Leppelin, the Led Zeppelin Tribute Band at the Lake Harriet Band shell. Then we rode the trolley. It was a very enjoyable evening. Good music, beautiful evening, brought food along, it was great!

I still don't have a second job. I had my working interview at the doggy daycare, and expressed my interest in the job, but nothing back yet. That was Tuesday. If I don't hear anything by the time I leave for work tomorrow, I'm gonna give them a call. The girl told me to think about it and email her, which I did. And then I sent a follow up email to make sure that my first one actually got there, but that one didn't get a response either, so looks like I'm gonna have to call. I hate calling people.

I wrote up a rental agreement last night because this whole situation is getting annoying, and no one else was going to get around to doing it, so I had to take the reins on that one. Big surprise there. Oh wait, no it's not. Mandy took it to her mom to see if that would work out, but she's not back yet. Hopefully it does, in which case we will all be paying $125/month in rent, which is a massively good deal. Not as good as free, but pretty much as close as you can get, considering we're living in a house, not a puny little apartment.

I think that's pretty much all that's new in my life. Well, and my birthday is in 9 days, on September 2nd. I will be 24. One more year before I can rent a car without incurring age penalties and fees. I'm gonna go read some HP fic I found again while I was updating my Delicious. Laters!

My brain, it's all eated up

Fanfic has eaten my brain...again. I really need to stop bringing my comp over to my bed at night, it's making for more reading and less sleeping, and I really should be sleeping. Just got done reading ad AU Doom/ST Reboot crossover, and it was absolutely fanfuckingtastic! If you haven't seen either movie, then you would love or appreciate it as much as I do, but really, great writing, fantastic story, awesome ending. It was so much love. And if you haven't seen either Doom or Star Trek XI, well, what the HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR! Go! NOW! :D

Etsy FTW!!!

I just made my first sale ever on Etsy! OMG YAY!!! So much WIN!!!!

Fishing

Dad and I went fishing today! It was really fun. We were gonna leave early this morning, but it started raining late last night and when I wok up at 6:30am was still going. We gave it till 8am, and then decided to just go later in the day/evening. We left for the lake (we ended up on Eagle Lake I think) around 2-ish, got fishing liscences, and went a fishing! We don't have a boat, we have a canoe, and it took me all of 30 seconds to remember that canoes scare me. Especially when it's windy and the water is more choppy, like it was today. But we didn't tip over. Mainly stuck to the shoreline around lily pads and reeds that broke the waves nicely. I caught like 7 or 8 fish total. A sunny or two, two bass, a blue gill, and a few of something else I can't remember right now.

I got over my irrational fear of the canoe, and had a great time. Dad caught a lot more fish than I did, but it's all good. He's got that whole jig lure thing down a lot better than I do.

Just maybe...

I'll get one of these to replace it.  I really want one!!!

And I would totally get it engraved.  It would say:

Finally!  Kira's ipod!

Thanks Mom!

Or maybe it would say something different.  Maybe it will be a long time before I get one, or maybe I will never get around to getting one.  But one thing is for sure, I need NEED NEED!! an MP3 player.

*le sigh*

It's a process

I'm pretty much moved in. I have all my big stuff, like bed, dresser, desk etc in the room and set up how I want them. I even bought a lamp yesterday, since my lamp finally died while trying to move it. It was one of those octopus lamps with the 5 heads and different colored plastic shades, and I've had it for like 5 years, it finally went kaput. After that many years of light bulbs that were apparently too strong for the lamp, the sades were brittle and crumbling apart, so I trashed it and got a new lamp. I just have little things to move it now. Artsy stuff that's laying all around my pathetic looking room at my parents house. I'm gonna move that stuff today, then dog sit till Sunday. And after work, mom is taking my grocery shopping! Gotta make the most of it since this is probably the last time she will.

Now I need to check out other internet related stuff, since we still don't have the internet at my new house (I'm at the parents house right now), and then I need to gather up the rest of the stuff I want, shove it in the car, and check on the dog. Laters!

Purple

I painted yesterday, finished up today after church. My new room is painted, some of my stuff is already there, and the rest of it is going tomorrow. Now I am tired and going to sleep I will take pics and blog all about it when we get internet there. Laters

Kira out

the color of our lives

Color of the wall in my current room

I have paint chips picked out. I can't decide if one of the colors is going to be too dark, so I think I'm gonna see if I can get a few of those little samples tomorrow after work. Then I'm gonna go to the house, slap some (neatly) on the walls, and see what I like. I know the color I'm going to have on three of the walls, it's the accent wall I don't know about. I have the accent wall narrowed down to two colors of purple. I would go with a red wall again, but I have a red wall in my bedroom now, and though I love it completely to death, I think, new house, new color.

Things I realized today

I could have a cat!

Or rats! And my rats can have ittle teddys!

I can make my own curtains!

I can make silk flower arrangements!

And since I work at a craft store, I would get discounts of half of this list!

:D

Fresh paint

The change is near, I can see the light and I don't think it's a train! There is an open window, and it's not to throw myself out of but to let the fresh wonderful air of change in. Now I just need to get that job and I'm home free for a while. Hope along with me people! Because either way, I'm gone! (And I really need the money)

And after that:

Guess what I ate last night

I had a piece of Sushi last night. A friend and I went out to Azia in Minneapolis. It was really nice. Great atmosphere, cool building, and really good food. I wasn't that hungry, so I got the cranberry puffs of the starters menu and a glass of red Zinfandel. He got the sushi, and I tried a piece of his. It was a crunchy roll, and I'm not sure what was in it, but I don't think it had any fish. The thing I could taste the most was the sea weed. It was weird, and next time I eat sushi (because now I need to try one with fish), I'll be prepared for it.