O and P are for:

So I've been crazy busy lately. I have pics for most of my missed letters, but I haven't posted them yet. Well, I am going to remedy that starting today! On this post, I have my O and P contributions.

O is for opossum. To be exact, this is a short tailed opossum. We have two right now, a boy and a girl. This is the girl in a little piece of PVC tubing.

These little kids are my favorite new addition to our department. They have the coolest prehensile tails. The male likes to take the shredded paper we put in there and push pieces of it down into his tail and carry it all around curled up into his tail till he gets to his hut to make a nest. Cutest freaking thing ever!

P is for pigs! Warty pigs, but still pigs!

Don't really have a story for them, they're just cute!

And as always, check out what mom posted in a much more timely fashion than I did!

Days 45 and 46

Day 45:

Thursdays and PetCo kick my ass.

Day 46:
I shadowed mammal string today at work (the zoo) and we gave a few of the animals roses. This is our wallaby eating one. So cute!

Day 38

Aaaaaaaaaannd we're back! And by we, I mean me and the voices in my head that I keep telling to shut the fuck up! Aaaaanyway, my favorite part of the morning at PetCo is prepping diets. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I am a complete anal retentive control freak. Observe!

Day 26

This is Sal, the rooster. He's my department's newest acquisition. The Farm area at the zoo had him first, but he and the resident rooster started fighting shortly after Sal arrived, so we got him instead! he really likes to talk. When there's no one outside paying attention to him, and especially when he hears stuff outside his run, he'll crow like any good rooster. When you're in his enclosure, especially when putting food down, he makes these adorable little inquisitive chicken noises. I think he might be my new favorite animal! He'll peck worms out of your hand. If you've ever wondered if it hurts for a chicken to take food from your hand, the answer is no, at least not in my experience. He aims for the worms, not your skin.

Day 23

I worked at PetCo today. This little hamster was just too cute not to take a picture of!

Day 21

Owls are adorable. This is all.

Day 14

I work four days a week at the zoo, and three of those four days I work with my manager, She is the one who collects Charlie the owl for me, and then hands him off to me to man him. Manning is where you just hold a bird on the glove, essentially getting them used to it (in Charlie's case) or just socializing with them so they don't always associate being on the glove with being in front of a bunch of annoying people! On days where my manager isn't there, or we don't get enough time to actually have Charlie out of his mew, I go in and sit with him to socialize him. Generally I sit on the log in his mew and putz around on my phone. I don't actually want to draw a lot of his attention to me, just get him used to sitting calmly with a person in his space.

It's really cute; he'll get all annoyed and fluff up and hiss or beak clack when I first walk in and he doesn't know what I'm going to do, but then when I sit down he calms down pretty quick and his little ear tufts go up. Sometimes he looks at me, but mostly he just does his owl thing and looks out one of the windows. He's the handsomest owl in town!

Day 13

You ever notice how a hedgehog with it's face in a food bowl is even cuter that a hedgehog just plain being cute!

Bernie

Boost

Day 12

When you're a bunny, a pine cone with peanut butter is the best thing ever!

Days 10 and 11

Yes, yes, I know, I did it again. Two days in one. I'm busy, so sue me!

Day 10:
At PetCo, associates are allowed to bring their pets in once in a while, if necessary. Well, the dog trainer brings hers in every time she's here. Granted, they are good for demonstrating in class, but still. She takes over the tiny break room with her stuff and their stuff. But they are pretty cute.

Shark and Zoe

Day 11:
We have 5 hedgehogs and 4 tenrecs at the zoo, and today was bath day!  This is too big of an undertaking for one person to complete in addition to all normal duties, so Ryan and Edie came down to APC and did baths while I continued my regular cleaning and stuff.

Greater Hedgehog Tenrecs getting baths!

Day 5

So I currently have two jobs, at the Phoenix Zoo, and at PetCo. The zoo is my intended career, PetCo is a means to making ends meet. I greatly dislike that job. I really like my job at the zoo, I get to do all kinds of awesome things. One of those things is the subject of today's photo. I work with the education, show, and outreach animals at the zoo, which means that we have to be able to handle our animals, and they have to be fine with it. Animals rarely come to us willing to be handled, so we have to work with them at it. Currently I am training a Great Horned Owl, getting him to chill the fuck out on the glove, being collected from his enclosure, being returned to it, etc. Eventually we'll work on crating, but for now, I'm just happy when he's sitting nicely!

Since you can't see his face in this one, today's post is a twofer!

time for...umm... cleaning!

My room is an unholy disaster (or at least it was about 40 min ago). I need to get up at 5am. Instead of sleeping, like I should be, and am tired enough for, I am cleaning. Does anyone else see the backwards in this? I could very well clean tomorrow, but I don't know if I could sleep in this mess of a room one more night, so cleaning. It's much better now, though the eradication of the Giant Dust Bunnies of DOOM!! will have to wait until tomorrow, when I can run the vacuum without waking my room mate.

hello square one, nice to see you again

I'm back to applying for zoo jobs again. I took some time off from it for a while because I craved some consistency and stability in my life after 4 and a half years of a seasonally nomadic existence. I wanted to sit still and stay on one place for a bit. But while I really like my current job, it's not something that I can do for long, and I don't want to put down any really firm roots here (like a year long lease or something), so I'm back to trying to get a job I want for a while. So far I have applied to three zoos:

Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago, IL) for a seal keeper position
Dallas Zoo (Dallas, TX) for a mammal keeper position
Jackson Zoo (Jackson, MS) for a general keeper position

I really hope I get one of these jobs. I just need to get a foot in at a zoo, go there, work for 2 or so years, then if I don't like it I will have the experience to try to get a position I might like better. Ideally I would like a job around the Midwest so I'm not moving really far from my family, but Texas and Mississippi are both better than Oregon, and I've been there. Wish me luck!

In other news, I have not had any chocolate yet. This is actually quite impressive for me since I have dark chocolate squares and chocolate covered espresso beans in my room.

Sometimes I even look like a girl

Today I didn't have to work.
Plan for day:
get up at respectable time (8:30am)
feed cat
take shower
get dressed
don't sit on the computer for hours
make bed
gather laundry
go to parent's house to do laundry
buy groceries
go to Home Goods
get recipes from Grandma
go home
sew

How day went:
Cat woke me up around 8am, so I fed him, shut my door, and set my alarm for 10am since I got less that 5 hours of sleep the night before and I was tired. After Viktor ate, he came to my door and started meowing annoyingly, but in true tired parent fashion, I ignored him and went back to sleep. Got out of bed around 10:20am, discovered fanfic, took shower, more fanfic, got dressed, made bed, left for parent's house around 2:30pm. On the way I got coffee and stopped at work to get my schedule for this week. Since all my jeans were dirty, I had put on dark purple tights, light khaki capris, and a cute pair of boots. I also did my make up, put on earrings, and wore my cute coat. usually I go to work with my hair in a pony tail, jeans, black t-shirt, no make up and tired looking. The cute look went over well. Now, if only there were any available guys at my work. But alas, there are two males, the rest are girls.

Finally got to my parent's house, put laundry in, went to Grandma's around 3:30, left there around 5:30, changed laundry, went grocery shopping, had dad change laundry while out, got back to parent's house, got laundry, finally got back to my house after 9pm, put all my stuff away, had a salad, and now we're here. Ah well, at least I got the laundry and grocery shopping done. I bought fruit so I won't die of scurvy.

Now my cat in climbing in my closet and it's bugging me. I would close the door, but then he just plays with the door which is also annoying since they swing and make noise.

I finished Torchwood yesterday. That is one dark show, but I love it to pieces and must buy it at my first opportunity. Ianto is the best ever, and I love him and Jack together. I believe that's all the rambling I have in me tonight. I love my new computer.

Reasons I Like Going to Work

-my job doesn't suck
-they put me in FL more often, and I like it there
-when I'm having a bad day, it's not hard to find a dog to snuggle to make it all much better
-the people don't suck
-there's a cute boy that's really really nice to look at
-especially when he wears his skinny jeans
-Shady
-Yarkko
-Cow & Moo
-All the Lucys'
-Beaglepalooza
-I get paid
-I get paid to do something that I actually like
-cute boy
-cute dogs
-I think I'm losing weight

Cons:
-sometimes I start at 6:30am
-sometimes I start at 6:30am and they put me in NY with the crazies and I have a headache and am tired and cranky and just want to go home
-can't think of a third con

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!

I got a nibble

So I applied to some more zoos. One of the places I applied was the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kansas. I sent in the app probably about a week and a half ago. They called me yesterday to set up an interview, but I was at work and didn't get the message till everyone there was gone for the day, so I called back today and have a phone interview set up for tomorrow at 1pm. I hope it goes well, I could really use this job. They pay well, and they have benefits, both of which I need. I would have to move to Kansas, of all places, but at least it wouldn't be Texas. I applied for a job is Texas and Tennessee both. Kansas is probably the best choice of the three. Wish me luck!!!

Adventures in dog sitting

I'm dog sitting for the next few days. He likes to steal things, and let you know about it.  I walked in and put my shoes for work down, and he immediately picked on up and walked out on to the sunporch with it. He doesn't keep the stuff, or fight giving it back, he just grabs stuff and walks away with it. A minute ago he walked into the room with a blue teddy bear. Pretty sure it's not his.  Silly dog.

Random work stuff

JoAnn's is sending me to Fargo next week. I'll be there Monday through Friday.

I should never answer my phone when I think it's work calling. At least I'll be getting paid more than I thought I would this week.

Crazyness!

Today at work

So, I work at a large chain retail store. Needless to say, working registers are essential to the proper and smooth functioning of said store. Well, today those registers stopped working. We couldn't sign in, could ring anyone through, couldn't even look up prices. We had to hand write everything out, hoping that either the price was on the item (which it isn't 9 times out of 10), or wait for someone to get done with the hand-held device that we can use to look things up on. Those were still working, thank God, or we might have had to close down the store!

I stayed an extra half hour to help out at the registers, and when I left the registers still weren't working. Here's hoping they start soon, or it's going to be a very long night for the people still there.