Arrant Nonsense

I have a title for the Bunny From Hell story, suggested by the Hubby, who is a genius, y'all. I'm...not sharing it, though. Because I'm mean. He also made a suggestion re: the ending, which I'm still mulling over. I may be posting it for the Concrit Group to tear into later today. I need to escalate the "creepy" factor before I do that, though.

The handsome and talented slushmaster has a poll up about snail mail vs email subs. Profic writers, go forth and vote and comment. You know you want to.

My gmail inbox remains empty. Woe.

"Lost" continues to rock my socks, y'all. That is some tasty tasty crack, and hey, dude who plays Ben? Here's your Emmy, man. Also, there's a new "Numb3rs" tonight, in case there's anyone on my flist besides bigsciencybrain who cares.

I have some new folks on my flist. *waves* I tag everything (mostly for my own record-keeping, especially as regards my fiction), so if there's a tag that piques your interest, click it and you can see everything I've ever written on the subject.

The Hubby bought a Dodge Durango yesterday, one of the old-style ones (because the new ones, although they have a Hemi, are butt-ugly). This may give him actual incentive to put the Willys on the block. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, nothing will ever be as cool as the Willys. NOTHING. On the other hand, we're getting old and comfort is a premium. I just hope he builds the Durango up so we can actually go jeeping in it.

We talked some more about the aracari last night, and I'm finally coming around to the viewpoint that the Hubby is right: The Green Aracari is (very slightly) prettier than the Ivory-Billed. The beak is just way more colorful. Do I lose Wife Cred for admitting he's right?

( Rambling about the stimulus payment, word pronunciation, the wacky wacky weather, and my horrible girly bits. )
For something completely different, I've discovered an object lesson in how a professional writer should not act under any circumstances.

Exhibit A: u have an attitude. then what the hell do you publish lip service? I don't need you.

Exhibit B: I have been published all over this world I don't need you attitude so I deleted your ass and have a good trip.

Exhibit C: Assholes like you are only amusing. And no, I don't need to watch what I say to editors. I am an editor of four publications. I have also published my poems 706 times in the last 14 months, in over 200 publications. Guidelines are important, but not to the point of exlusion for their own sake; over quality of submissions, or, even a novice such as myself to flash fiction.

These are all from the same guy, to two different publications...after he got rejected for sending them something completely out of guideline. Apex Digest doesn't publish poetry, and AlienSkin doesn't publish stories under 500 words, unless they're in the "micro" category, in which case they must be exactly 150 words.

But apparently Mr. Michael Lee Johnson thinks that he is a Very Special Snowflake, and the guidelines don't apply to him! After all, he's been published at a vanity press Lulu! You'd think that these would be the actions of a spoiled 18-year-old kid.

You'd be wrong. According to his profile on Blogger, he's sixty.

Oi.

We are back from San Diego! And I'm going to be paying for this trip, in a couple of ways, for days.

I gained six pounds. Woe.

All that walking around made my legs ache, y'all. I'm getting too old for this.

So, the first day, we checked the loads and decided that the earlier flight might be make-able, so we ran around like crazy creatures getting ready to go. And we actually made the earlier flight, so yay. Had pizza and mozzerella sticks at Oggi's. OMGYUM.

Tuesday, got up early to go to the zoo. Free breakfast at the hotel was a madhouse. There was nothing organized about that chaos. Hit the zoo right around opening time, bought our membership, and made a beeline for the panda exhibit.

Where I shot about 150 pictures just of the pandas. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my camera?

The trick, we discovered, is get there early on a weekday when school's in session. The baby was having a blast, running around, climbing on stuff, hassling his mom--and we could stand there for as long as we wanted, because the crowd hadn't gathered yet.

The rest of it is...kind of a blur, actually. We got to see the Hairy-Nosed Wombat out and about, which was the first time I'd ever seen one, so that was cool. The walk-through aviaries were neat, although the upper level of one of them was closed for repairs of the walkway, which appeared to be rusting. They have lots of hornbills, but they're sequestered behind wire, and this makes them hard to shoot, alas. No toucans, the echidna was sleeping, and the anteater was AWOL.

Oh! Honey Badgers! They were entertaining too. And the Green Tree Python had just been fed, so I got some shots of him with his mouth open and such. I'm sure I'll remember more as I go through the pictures (again). Ate at Sizzler and wandered through the Fry's Electronics, because we don't have a Fry's in SLC.

Wednesday, we visited the Emerald Forest Bird Garden, and Jerry showed us around his operation and answered our questions about the birds. And I shot NO PICTURES. He's got seventeen species of toucan, along with hornbills, finches, parrots, turacos, and at least one peacock (heard, not seen). It's a really impressive setup out there, and I think we're leaning towards a "YES" on the question of whether we're getting one, but it's contingent on finding out how much it's going to cost to feed it.

After that, we wandered down to Seaport Village and poked through the shops. Ate an indifferent meal at one of the small eateries there.

Thursday was our day for the Wild Animal Park. BABY PELICAN. It's like... a bird larva. Really really weird. And the Flamingos apparently decided, with much fanfare, that they'd all rather be there than here, and with much honking and wingflapping and swimming off, most of the flock swam away. And then five minutes later, they came back.

The lions were entertaining as well. They've got a Land Rover in the exhibit, and they spent a lot of time on top of it. I got a couple of fabulous cub shots, and a really nice head shot of the male. Ate at Outback, which is always always very good.

Friday, we visited the ICR Creation Museum, which entailed a lot of standing around reading signs. They had a really cool video of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, and the ark exhibit was neat, too, giving you an idea of the scale of the thing.

After that, we hit the beach. I got pix of terns and some sort of long-legged shorebird-thing.

And then we tried to come home. Apparently the length of the runway meant weight restrictions on the airplane. So, while they had empty seats, they didn't have any empty seats for us. JetBlue had a flight going out after that one, which was late. We hung around their gate for a bit, the Hubby made a phone call to $CompanyHeWorksFor to see if they could do anything for us (they couldn't), and then asked the gate agent if there was any way we could buy a ticket there to get home on. The gate agent basically blew him off, so we were going to just suck it up and stay in a hotel overnight (hoping to find one that could take us to the airport at five in the morning!), but I said, let's ask at the actual counter, where they're not slammed.

So, we did, and wound up buying tickets. Which we hate to do, because we're cheap that way, but we're home, so yay.

I have no idea if I'm going to be able to catch up with my flist. I've filtered the comms and feeds out, so I'm just reading journals, but I'm sure I'll be at skip=200 or something by the time I give up.

I have made hotel reservations. I have made sure a car is waiting for us when we get there--after trying to reserve a car at one place and finding out that they actually close the counter at the exact same time our plane hits the runway. That...could have been bad, had I not noticed it. The airline knows we're coming.

I've printed out maps from the hotel to the zoo, the wild animal park, Seaport Village, and the toucan place (Google Maps is my very good friend). I've printed out two different sheets of questions for the park and the zoo for Da Boy so we can count this as "field trips." I have a list of good places for birding, including one place that's known for owls, which I hardly ever see in the wild.

All I need to do, I think, is let the toucan guy know we're coming. I tried to find a city map (by phoning the local map shop) but they didn't have a map of San Diego. I might try a couple more places, but it's not a huge priority.

Oh, and pack. Packing would be good. We're leaving on Monday and coming back on Friday.

Yay!

I've discovered a toucan group in Yahoo Groups! I would have discovered it sooner, had I poked more around Emerald Forest's homepage rather than just going straight to the bird info. *facepalm* The list is pretty active, too, so that's a good. I'll get to pick some brains, maybe, before we make a decision. I've already found out that, yes, fruit can be frozen.

I've also decided that the aracari I like best is the Ivory Billed Aracari. LOOK AT THE COLORS. And they're all cute and little! Seriously, they weigh five ounces. That's, like...a cheeseburger. *dies* And they're sexually dimorphic (which means males and females actually look different--the male has a black head and the female has a brown head, in this case). The price on them isn't outrageous, either... Erm, at least, it's not outrageous for an aracari. They're not the least expensive, but they're not the most expensive.

I have a deep and burning need to visit Emerald Forest, y'all.

In other news, we've decided not to buy the airplane. We really can't justify the expense. A toucan, though... The Hubby has eleven days off in a row next month for the Moab Jeep Safari--which we're not even sure we're going to go to, because it's early and the Willys doesn't like snow. Like, at all. San Diego is looking GOOD...

Yes, again.

I called a local vet, and they treat and board birds, including toucans. She wondered why we wanted one as a first bird (maybe I should have specified that we're getting an aracari rather than a toucan), and I explained about how they're sweet and don't bite and they're pretty and don't live as long as parrots. And she told me they're messy (all birds are messy), and about the iron thing, which I was already aware of. High maintenance, live a long time, etc. Which we've already researched. :)

Today we're going to toddle up to Bountiful and see what Pet Village has for bird cages, and if they have the softbill diet. We may have to have that special ordered in.

If we even do this. There's an exotic bird expo in Tucson in April, and we'd want to visit Emerald Forest before we made a final decision. It's a huge commitment.

I've had a slight toucan obsession over the last few months. The Hubby and I are seriously discussing buying an aracari, in fact. And I just realized that I never posted the pix from our Christmastime trip to the Dallas World Aquarium.

So, without further ado...

( Twelve toucans, aracaris, and hornbills. )

94% Mitt Romney
89% Fred Thompson
85% John McCain
79% Mike Huckabee
78% Tom Tancredo
69% Rudy Giuliani
66% Ron Paul
44% Bill Richardson
37% Hillary Clinton
33% Barack Obama
32% John Edwards
30% Chris Dodd
27% Joe Biden
18% Mike Gravel
12% Dennis Kucinich

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

There's not a question there about campaign finance reform, which would have dropped McCain and Thompson lower on my list, I think. McCain/Feingold is a travesty, and they should repeal it.

In other news, we're talking about wandering down to Phoenix and Tucson for a few days and visiting the Phoenix Zoo, Out of Africa Wild Animal Park, and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

And I've been looking at toucans. BECAUSE I WANT ONE, I DOES. The biggest obstacle, at this point, is figuring out where the huge-ass cage would go. Amazingly enough, the Hubby isn't completely opposed to getting one. Considering what the initial outlay would be, this is...surprising.