Went and saw Enchanted again last night. I am still dying of the squee. And crying at the extreme lack of fanfic (I've only seen ONE! :(). Oh, lordy, there's so many fic possibilities for that movie, it's mindblowing. I can't write, but I can draw... ;) I also need to go raid Netflix for Amy Adams movies, 'cause she freakin' rocked. And I found a pattern today to make a "That's How You Know" dress. Now finding the right fabric, that part will be a real bitch! :P

Oh, and for those fans in need of teh squee... a bootleg of The Scene has been posted on YouTube! XD OMG SO AWESOME IT KILLS ME. HUGE HUGE HUGE SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN IT. (not sure how long it'll be before YT kills that one! XD much thanks to boston_princess for passing the link along!)

So I serenaded my otters while I worked on Sunday. I sang "You Can't Stop the Beat" and Denali cam running over and started squeaking at me. Then I sang "Happy Working Song" while I cleaned the porcupine holding next door... and when I looked back, the otters were makin' mad otter whoopee. THE OTTERS, THEY LIEK MY SINGING. XD

Also? Otter In A Bucket? CUTEST THING EVAR. (Denali, playing in the only "pool" she could find in porcupine holding while I cleaned her bedroom out. I have BadCellPhone!video and photos, alas, Photobucket is being a meanie-poo head.)

I think I had more to say... but it's been lost in the squee. XD

First off, I must give a big "F YOU" to the Seahawks for not showing up to the game today. And especially to Holmgren, for continuing to give Alexander playing time when it's clear that the soft cast interfered with his play. I think we owe that last fumble (and the GAME) to the cast - it got in the way, Alexander fumbled, Arizona recovered and scored, game over. You've really gotta be retarded not to realize from the first series or two that the cast seriously impacted his ability to catch/hold the ball. *headdesk*

Moving on... how do you scare the piss out of a zookeeper?
Radio call: Southeast Asia, anyone?
Us: Go ahead!
Radio call: Uh, we just had a guest report that something is coming out of one of your otters. They said it looks like it's having a baby.
Us: *craps pants*
See, we had a pregnant otter... or one we thought was pregnant. Unfortunately, small-clawed otters are prone to "pseudopregnancies," where their hormones are elevated like a pregnancy, their nipples protrude, and their belly gets big. I believe evolutionarily, it has to do with helping relatives nurse/care for their litters. According to the hormone spikes, our otter was "due" a couple of weeks ago... and since the window of opportunity had passed, we assumed it was a pseudo. So when we got the call, we started freaking out, thinking that she really HAD been pregnant, and now she was out on exhibit giving birth... instead, we got out there and, after careful inspection of the perfectly-normal otters, came to the conclusion that the guests had seen our male, Ralph's, wee-wee and thought it was a baby. Ah, good times! XD (We did bring the otters into holding after that, though, just in case)

( That 'Pluto attack' video...Collapse )

In happier news, I've been working on some Disney art, like a drawing based on the Share a Dream Come True Parade... I require Disney theme park motivation! :P
/SERIOUS withdrawls
//nothing but Disney theme park music plays in my car now

So I got freakin' nailed TWICE today. Me? Learn? Nevar! But this one requires illustration... ( stick figures, tapirs, and confusing diagrams ahoy!Collapse )

And OMG, this freakin' number (HSM 2 spoilers!!!) won't get out of my head!! :P

I still live! Erm, kinda. Been completely exhausted lately, for obvious reasons. But my bookstore days are pretty restful for me, compared to the insanity of my zoo days. Since I keep so busy, there's really not much else to report! :P

Everything's going well at the zoo! It's been a month already! Baby Bean's little baby is doing fantastic - she's out playing every day, and is very curious and energetic. The other day a little kid (maybe 7 or 8 years old) got excited when he saw her, and ran over and pressed his face against the glass. She came running over to him, and smooshed her own face right up against the glass to look at him! Cutest. Moment. Evar.

And it's time for the monthly book roundup! :D ( July 2007 Book ReviewsCollapse )

Oh, and I just had to use my new icon, because Marion + frying pan = OTP. :P

It's official!! Baby Bean's baby has made her public debut, so now I shall squee here! XD Baby Bean, our female lowland anoa, had a baby the night of July 4th and the baby (a little girl) is OMG SO FREAKIN' ADORABLE. Seriously, she looks like Bambi, just without the spots. And she's energetic and independent and OMG SO FREAKIN' ADORABLE! :D And today she made her public debut! :D I brought my camera awhile back, and here is a photo of momma and the baby in the holding area, when she was only 5 days old. :D

FurryPaws... ah, I've finally gotten ahold of a few great dogs to really kickstart my kennel... too bad they're all male! :P But egads, the new "dead squirrels" that bring grooming down to 0%... it wouldn't be so bad, but it's like there's a whole dead-squirrel-virus going around, because they're EVERYWHERE and it's really irritating having to re-groom dogs every 30 seconds...

And can I just say how much I love Fandom Wank? Seriously. I read it every day, and it cracks me up. Even if I don't know the specific fandom, the comments and wank always bring the lulz. (Any paid JournalFen members here wanna hook me up with an account so I can join in the commenting hilarity? :P)

Kirsten update time!

I'm getting considerably more independent at the zoo. Now that I've gotten the basic routine and cleaning and feeding stuff down, I work on my own for a good portion of the day. And for whatever reason, I feel a lot more comfortable with what I'm doing there than I did at Rocky Shores. I think I felt more intimidated by all the rules (and, to be honest, some of the staff) at Rocky Shores, whereas at Asia I feel more confident in my own decision-making power. (Half the time at RS, I was terrified to even go find enrichment for an animal because I felt like the other staff would disapprove of my choices) I'm getting to know the animals a lot better, and most of them I can tell apart fairly easily now. I still have to look closely at the otters to tell them apart, and I have a bit of trouble with the tapirs when they're out together, but other than that I'm pretty good at it. And I'm having fun! I really love doing otter fish feeding, 'cause the otters are adorable. And I got to give a couple of treats to the gibbons yesterday, which was neat! They're really fun to watch during treat times in the afternoon.

Still getting back into the swing of Furry Paws! I've picked up a few great dogs in the last month or so, although it'll be awhile before I have any that are old enough to start breeding. And I missed shows last night because we all went out to a bar after work and I didn't get home til after shows had run. Doh! Ah, well, I'll live. I had to break down and get access to the Show Entering Form, though, 'cause entering all my dogs in 50 shows a day each got too time-consuming for my schedule. :P

( Mmmm, Disney geekiness!Collapse )

Not much reading in the month of June, sadly! Between crazy schedules and stuff to get done, there wasn't much time. That and reading big books. Hopefully I'll have more by the end of July, but here's the very, very short June rundown... ( June 2007 BooksCollapse )

ETA: Oh, yeah, and freakin' HEAT WAVE this week. So it's not bad compared to everywhere else (and it really doesn't feel bad to me compared to Florida or SoCal), but we're setting our own records. It's into the mid-90s here for the next few days. I'm fine outside, but my room is starting to get pretty damn warm.

I live!!

Had my last day at Rocky Shores on Friday - sadness! :( I fed both seals, though, and did the usual stuff. We went over to Taste of Tacoma for lunch... of course, it POURED that day, so we were just wandering through the rain. It was worth it, though, for whole corn ears, scones with strawberry jam, skewers of strawberries dipped in chocolate, and alligator on a stick. Yes, alligator. AWESOME. It tastes kinda like pork, and was breaded like fried chicken. YUM.

The new job is going fantastic! It's a great area, and it's really fun learning new animals. LOVE the Asian small-clawed otters. They're so adorable! Whenever we walk by them in holding, they come running up to the fences and squeak and stick their little arms through. TOO CUTE. The tigers are gorgeous, of course. And the gibbons and siamangs are loud as hell in the mornings. Quirky, but really entertaining. :D I've been doing a lot of shadowing, learning diets, learning how to shift (with rotating exhibits, there's a crapload of chutes and gates to learn!), and learning specifics on how each animal's holding area is cleaned.

Oh, and my internship project, for the win!!!! I did observations of the bears in holding, seeing how they reacted to one another through the fence to help determine who should be introduced first... and it all went well! Woo!

On my way home tonight, I stopped and bought about $60 worth of fireworks to shoot off ('cause our neighborhood is made of awesome and we can use them legally)... only to come home and find out that my mom had bought a bunch, too. That's a lot of stuff to blow up! :D Now we're just waiting for darkness, which comes rather late at this latitude in the summer. Nothing like celebrating kicking the crap out of the Brits by blowing stuff up. ;) *runs from all the UKers on her f-list* :P

Hope everyone had a great Fourth! :D

Okay, I've been wanting to blurt this out all weekend, but I wanted it to be a little more solidified first...

I got a zookeeping job!!!

When I was at my usual zoo shift last week, one of the staff mentioned that the Southeast Asia exhibit had openings for part-time help, and set me up for a chat with the senior keeper about it. I was offered the job on the spot! So I've spent the weekend doing the paperwork and sorting out scheduling issues. I went in today to turn in my new hire paperwork, and should be put on the schedule ASAP! It should be close to full-time hours, too. I'll still be working at the bookstore, but I talked to my manager there about it and I'll be cutting my hours back quite a bit so that I don't die of exhaustion.

I'm really excited for this! It's with a very different group of animals than I've worked with before: white-cheeked gibbons, siamangs, Asian small-clawed otters, Malayan tapirs, lowland anoa, crested porcupines, and Sumatran tigers! So it's gonna be really fun to learn some new taxa. And OMG YAAAAAY, paid experience!! XD

I ordered my copy of A Dog's Breakfast on DVD this week! Yaaaaay! I'm so excited, 'cause that movie was freakin' hilarious.

The longest day of the year has come and gone... and after living in SoCal for so long, I forgot how long days are here in the summer! When I drive home from work at about 10:15-10:30, I can still see light in the western sky. It's rather odd. Oooh! And today there was an awesome, RAINBOW cloud! It must've had ice crystals in it. It looked like a rainbow! I actually had my camera on my and got a photo, I'll have to upload it later.

In Disney news... AHAHAHAHAHA! Florida is getting stuck with Block Party Bash next year! I'm taking bets on how badly they neuter it due to union regulations. I mean, it's not that great to begin with (although the high energy is entertaining), but WDW is going to have to take out half the stuff that makes it even worthwhile - I don't see them paying for all those tumblers, since they'll have to be Equity. And I'd be willing to bet the dances will be seriously dumbed down to make it easier to cast (so they don't have to find so many people with high color codes) and because there's probably a lot of stuff in there that WDW performers aren't allowed to do. But at least it means it's off Disneyland's hands! :P I wonder how many show stops they'll be able to fit, though... I wouldn't guess more than one, since the Studios parade route is so freakin' short. MAYBE two, and they'd definitely get overlap between the two areas.

Zoo day yesterday! I finally got to see Qannik! Hee, he looks so tiny compared to Bee. They're together now, getting free reign of both the holding and exhibit pools. Qannik won't go into the exhibit pool yet, though, because it's still Big and New and Scary to him. Oh, and the zoo website now has pictures of the move up here!

Still working my way through Bleach! I'm up through episode 17 now (just getting to Renji, unspokenlonging!) and I'm totally turning into a Ichigo/Rukia 'shipper. :P And Rukia is so Made of Awesome. I want to be as cool as her. But with better drawing skills. ;)

I've got myself back up and running on FP, and a few decent dogs to start me off. A LOT has changed since I last played. They finally added the genetics and litters and made minimum levels for some food/accessories, and just today added in stuff like grooming and using food/water bowls and beds. So I gotta adjust to that. A part of me is annoyed because in the end, it really drives a wedge in the gap between the newer kennels and the big, always-winning ones. It seems like the new rules make it easier for the winning kennels to dominate, and the others fall farther behind. Ah, well. Still fun. :)

Finished my Marahute piece, too, just in time for the contest! :D It's up here on dA. Lots of things that annoy me about it, but my short attention span struck. ;) Time for the next project! :P

Zoo day again! And what a gorgeous day it was for it, too. I spent the morning at bears, lugging the Massive Hose of Doom out around the exhibit to clean, then spending a small eternity cleaning out of the of the holding pools when Glacier decided that he had to spend the entire night pooping in the pool. Had to try twice to get Rascal to eat, because he did NOT want to come out of the den, and with the MASSES of screaming school groups there today, I can't blame him. He finally ate, though! I also got to feed Kenny and Boris (both of whom were rather squirrelly today) and fed Louise for a bit.

And since word is out, I can squee publicly... most of you who follow the marine mammal parks have probably already heard the news...
WE'RE GETTING QANNIK!!!
*bounces around* I'm so excited that we'll be getting a new beluga. And sooooon! Bee really needs another whale to keep him company, and I'm so glad that we're finally getting one. :)

And WTF?! This has to be the biggest piece of garbage ever written. Who wrote that, a 12-year old??

And one last piece of local zoo news... Hansa died suddenly today. That's so sad to hear. :( We went to see her soon after she was first out on public display. She was absolutely adorable. She's always been so much fun to watch. Last time I saw her, she was playing with her ball and trying to climb on top of it. Poor thing... :(