The tile is always softer...

On the other side of the screen.

Yes, my dogs have no idea what they truly want. When they're in, they want to be out

And of course when they're out, they want to be in

Truly, they are not so different from us, are they?

Dallas Zoo

I heard this wonderful story about the Dallas zoo on our local show, Think, on NPR. It's a great show. I feel really lucky to be living in an area that can support a large NPR station that will bring us really great national and local shows. Ok, that was my crazy NPR addict plug. hehehe.

Anyway, the guests went on and on about this new Savannah exhibit at the Dallas Zoo. I had never been to the Dallas Zoo because I had heard that the animals were kept in little cages and that just makes me sad. I grew up going to places like Busch Gardens where the animals roam on these large open habitats. So if I want to go to a zoo and view animals I can only see in videos, I go to the Ft Worth Zoo. It's not a good as Busch Gardens but at least the animals have some space to get away from the gawking humans. But the new Savannah exhibit they were talking about sounded wonderful! I had to see it for myself. So off my mom and I go to the Dallas Zoo. That's her in the pic above and here's a close up of that same shot:

hehehe, she's gonna love that shot!

Right in the front entrance are two beautiful macaws just sitting there.

I had talked it up so much that we went straight to the Savannah exhibit.

And close up:

You only have to scroll up to see where I get it from.

To the Savannah! Or so we thought. What we went to was the the tram ride around what we thought was the Savannah exhibit. Because that's the way it is at Busch Gardens. In order to see the animals up close, you have to get on the tram. We were early for the next ride so we went to look at some of the animals close by. We saw this wonderfully odd and beautiful creature.

It looks like it could be cousin to a zebra, huh? But apparently it's most closely related to a giraffe! It's hard to believe but when I saw it flick it's tongue, I believed it. It looked very much like a giraffe in the face when it did that.

And just opposite the Okapi were these beautiful birds.

The vulture is difficult to see because she blends with the gray mesh between me and her but I just had to have a picture of her. I have a thing for vultures. Well, all birds really. If I have a spirit animal, I'm sure it's a type of bird. And it's possibly a vulture. I have a strange attraction to them.

We also got to see the meerkats while waiting. Cute little creatures! (that pic is for Andrea)

And then we went on the tram! YAYYYY! ummmm, wait. This is not what I was expecting. We saw some wonderfully beautiful animals but they were in little bitty habitats. Not in cages, thank goodness, but still. There was so little space, I couldn't believe this is what I came to see! The only really cool part was when I got this giant bird (don't remember what kind, though it looks related to the pelican) sitting on it's nest.

So we traveled the tram and saw the beautiful animals in their little spaces and felt a little disappointed. Then as we're getting off the tram we hear the driver making announcements and she says, "And don't forget to visit our new Savannah exhibit." hehehe, well, ok. Where is it then? We make our way there with great anticipation and....let down. Yeah, it's bigger than anything else they have there but it's not this great expanse where the animals can be viewed in "their natural surroundings and studied as if in the wild" like they said. I'm not sure why there are scientists out there studying. You can see the stands they sit in to study the animals in this picture.

I've seen better habitats. I'm very confused by this and wonder exactly WHAT they're getting out of this. However, I did get to watch an elephant spraying herself with water. That was very cool! I missed the big show but was able to a little video of her doing it again the second time. (video for Sage though I found better on youtube).



We were also able to feed the giraffes! I have to say this far and away was the best part of the visit. Seriously, who gets to feed giraffes? Of course, they made us pay $5 for 3 leafs of lettuce but I think $5 is definitely worth the experience of feeding a giraffe. I was able to get pics of mom with the giraffe she fed, but not knowing my camera, she couldn't get me.

We went to eat lunch right after because it POURED rain. But then the sun came out again and we saw the rest of the zoo.

At one point we're just walking along and this bird crosses my path.  I give my camera to my mom and walk slowly up to him. Not sure if he's supposed to be free or not but it was still fairly cool. We just stared at each other for a minute. There was a sign posted about feeding birds at certain times but I think it was canceled due to the rain.  He might be one of those and is just not afraid of people at all.

He followed us for a few minutes after this but I guess we were boring.

We soon were passing these wonderful turtle sculptures.

And then one moved to reach the grass on the other side of the fence. You know, the grass is always greener...Seriously, I never would have known they were real if it didn't move! They were so still!

I will now end my story and leave you with a beautiful harpy vulture.

Memorial Weekend

This past weekend I spent a couple days at my mother's house. The plan was only to spend Sunday night with her and then go to work from there and then stay Monday night too. However, I found out ELVIS COSTELLO was going to be in Dallas playing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Now I understand that not everyone in the world is as much of a FREAK for ELVIS COSTELLO as I am but you would think if I offer to pay for the tickets, people would want to go. No one. Seriously people? Free concert (to you anyway!). I finally convinced my mother to go by promising to come Saturday afternoon and staying the weekend. It turned out to be a wonderful plan!

I wish, wish, wish I had at least one picture of the concert but, alas, I do not. My mom was freak out about someone seeing me and us getting kicked out. Then, at the end she said, "You should have taken a picture at the very end like those other people did."
"But, mom, when I said I was going to, you about tackled me in order to make sure I didn't."

I paid $200 for the tickets. That is the price I didn't pay last time he came, because he came with the Police and I swore I was not going to pay those outrageous prices just because some 80s band got back together. Yes, I like their music too, but COME ON people. I guess things are different when I'm thinking about where I'm going to sit and the fact that my entire two hours will be staring at ELVIS COSTELLO! I love him.

I could have paid for a seat in the chorus loft. If you've never been to the Symphony, then you should know that is the place behind the orchestra. If I was going to the listen to a symphony that'd be great. Cheap seats right behind the orchestra are pretty good, even if you can hear too much of the percussion. Besides, I've always liked the drummers (hehehe). But for the guy I love more than all other singers in the world EVER...it's not good enough. I want to be looking in his face. I couldn't get seats on the floor at all but I could get box seats practically over top his head. So I did, and stared at ELVIS COSTELLO all night! It was grand. My mom was a little unnerved by the fact that we could drop to our deaths if we moved wrong, but I figure it's all in the price of seeing ELVIS COSTELLO.

Now before my grand adventure seeing my music idol, I had to bring all the animals to my mom's house. Poor Lucina. I knew she wouldn't be getting much out time there since my mom also has two dogs and they're not used to being around a bird, so I made sure she got to spend the whole morning having momma time without the dogs. They got to be locked up for awhile.

She loves to cuddle up to my chin while I scratch her neck. One of these days I'm going to get video of her bumping my chin with her beak. This is how she asks for me to scratch her neck. BTW, she doesn't have "red eye" from the flash, she really does have red eyes. The flash freaked her out and she flew away before the next shot:

A few years ago I bought her a wonderful cage, which you can partly see in these pictures. All the bird experts say you have to get your bird acclimated to the new cage, that they'll freak out if you just stick them in before the used to it. So I brought it home and placed it beside the old and let her out to explore on her own just as they say. She went right to it and sat on top and never went back to the old one. So much for experts. To be fair, the old one was TINY. When I saw them side by side, I felt so bad for making her stay in there for so long!

Poor Lucina! Her old cage is at my mom's house so I don't have to lug that huge thing around when we go to visit. This is right after we got there on Saturday afternoon.

She looks so sad!

"Won't you let me out?"

Later the dogs got to go out. If you missed the story I told about Loki and the mouse in the house (my old house, thank goodness), then you just won't get how crazy he is for other other creatures. I'm not sure if the breed or simply because he practically lived on his own for the first two years of his life. Aurora's not like that. In any case, my mom's neighbor is the cat lady. Not only does she have an absurd number of cats, but none of them are fixed so of course she gets a new one every day. Loki HATES cats. He spends the entire day staring at the breaks in the fence waiting for a cat to bark at.

At some point on Sunday afternoon, everyone was outside and a squirrel was in the yard. All the other dogs went nuts barking at the squirrel, trying to get it. Loki was doing this:

And he stayed there.

Picture My Day

Before I get into this one, does anyone know how to post MP3 to blogger? Is it possible? 
This is the first post in my story telling through pictures. I'm calling it picture my day. I've been trying to take at least one picture everyday to document even the mundane in my life. I decided to do this when I took my wonderful nephew, Sage, to the Ft Worth Science and History Museum a couple weeks ago. We both had a blast and there were so many things I would have loved to have a picture of, if only I had brought my camera. So, now my camera is in my purse in order to capture even the mundane, so when the extraordinary happens I will have that too! I have seen several other people who do projects like this, so I can't claim it as my own but it will be in my own style. Each picture will have a story.

I started this last Thursday and already I haven't lived up to my promise of at least one picture everyday but I've been pretty good most days.

                               
This picture is through the windshield of my car and I could not fix the colors afterward because of that. It will forever be blue or more blue. This was taken at 5:30 on a Thursday afternoon. On Mondays and Thursday I work at the James L. West Alzheimer's Center in Ft Worth. For those of you that don't know (since I haven't written much on here lately that's probably everyone!) I am a music therapist. My preferred population is children with developmental disabilities (autism, CP, Down's, etc) but I also have experience in other fields. When I first got the call a few months ago from the Program Director at JLW asking if I would be interested in filling the spot that was being vacated by their current MT, I turned it down. The pay was less per hour than I was making seeing private clients and I didn't think it would be worth giving up those private clients to work with old people. I've done that before, no thank you. But then I thought about it a little more. I would be going to one place and staying there all day. Yes, I would have to drive 45 minutes to get there but I was already doing that and then driving around town to see each kid. When I stopped to figure it up, I would actually be saving money in the long run! So I gave up most of my private clients, some of them I was sad to leave and some....not so much. I started working at JLW on my birthday (happy Bday to me...go to work) and had a wonderful time. In fact, I have really enjoyed working there the last couple of months. I will never enjoy it as much as I do working with children but it's been fun! Later that I night I went out for a birthday dinner with my boyfriend, at which we had a huge fight and he asked me to pay for my half (supposedly not related instances). Well, JLW worked out and the boyfriend didn't. That sounds terrible but there were just a lot of little things that didn't feel right. The birthday dinner actually had no effect on my decision. I completely forgot it until telling this story! Amazing what comes back to you.

So are you wondering just yet WTF this story has to do with this picture? Getting there, I promise. When I tell a story, I tell it right!

Every Monday and Thursday I have a TWO HOUR lunch break. I know lots of people would jump for joy over something like this but it's really not that wonderful, especially when you only get paid for the actual hours you work. No breaks, no holidays, no sick leave. Oh, and no insurance. That's another story. It breaks up the day and you just spend two hours in the middle of the day doing nothing. THEN you have to go back to work! It kind of sucks. I'd rather do it all in one large chunk.
This particular day I decided to go have my car cleaned. I will not show you those pictures. Let's just say the car needed it and any one who's been in it will attest to that. I did vacuum the previous Saturday before picking up Sage. It was getting pretty gross and I didn't want anyone else to be subjected to that. So really all they had to do was clean the outside. The guy took one look at my car and said, "This is going to take a little extra work. I might be able to get that stuff off but it's going need a special solvent which will cost extra." Ok, whatever. I came it get it clean so I'll pay the little bit extra. Apparently I had a chip in the windshield too and with one quick call to my insurance (to make sure I really wouldn't be charged for it) they fixed that! About 1:45 I start to get nervous. The outside's been done awhile but the guy cleaning the inside is taking his sweet time. Walking ever so slowly around the car wiping here, scrubbing there, "Oh I guess I vacuum a little now too." COME ON! Just because you're here all day doesn't mean I want to be and I have another group in 15 minutes! Finally at 1:58, he's finished. Yeah, thanks. No way can I be there in 2 minutes grab my guitar and other instruments and be in Bluebonnet (one of the suites) in time to start. So I was late, which means I gave them their full time, making my next group late and I got no break for the next 3 hours. Maybe that doesn't sound so bad after having a two hour lunch break but I can't just sing for 3 hours straight and not be affected by it. I was not a happy camper at the end of the day.

As I'm leaving that day I notice the chip in the windshield is still there! I'm pissed. They made me late and didn't even do everything they were supposed to do??!! So I drive back over there before heading home (this is getting closer to the picture, btw) but the windshield people have already left. So glad they got to have a normal day! The guy that cleaned my car says he thinks the clue just needs to be scrapped a little more, that's what I'm feeling. He swears it's been fixed even though I can see and it will not make a huge crack down the front of my windshield. He better be right or they're paying for it. Promise.

Now, on a normal day I cut through downtown and hit the I-35E about a mile north of I-30. This is a big deal. The I-30 to I-35E interchange is a major cluster fuck. That mile will add at least 20 minutes to your drive, if your lucky. I was not lucky this day. I considered going through downtown from where I was anyway, but when I got to the entrance ramp to I-30 and saw in front of me downtown University was just as packed, I decided to take my chances. They were not good. Just as I'm coming over the bridge to get onto I-35 the truck in front of my slows. See picture above.

I look to my left and I see this:

 

That little arrow is pointing out the clear space just before where I would normally be getting on the interstate. Yeah, not going to be a good evening. Just so you can understand, here's a close up on where I should be.

Do you see the clear space? Should give hope that maybe the traffic's not so bad right? You would be wrong to hope. Because of the wonderful people at the car wash, I will now sit in traffic for over an hour. It will take me 1 hour and 30 minutes to get home: exactly twice as long as normal.

To make up for it, I treated myself by completely ruining my voice! I decided to go out and sing at the open mic at Banter, one of our local coffee shops. I had a wonderful time in spite of the ex showing up. Not so bad actually, I stuck around and sang with him too. It was one of the songs I had added harmony to awhile ago. It's a beautiful song. I also got a chance to try out my new Ukulele song. I'm so excited about this new song! As soon as I have a half-way decent recording of it, I'll post for everyone to hear.