Spring Break

WHOOT. WHOOT WHOOT indeed.

Soooo. totally awesome spring break :)

Monday went to Napa with my aunt and my sister. Did some major eating :D First went to this place called Copia, it's a small food museum type of place. They have a gallery upstairs and an exhibit about food, pretty fun and interactive :) And they also had a food demo based on their theme this month, which is Australia. So the food demo was for ginger and macadamia nuts (which originated from Australia, not Hawaii as most people think). There were also a sample of this flavored salmon made into a panini sandwich. GOOD! :D

Then we went to Dean and Delucas :D awesome! bought some cookies there and went to the vineyard across the street to get some lunch. They have a deli there and so my sister and I shared an Italian sandwich and we ate outside in a picnic type area.

We had dinner at this restaurant called "Ad Hoc" which was opened by Thomas Keller (of French Laundry fame) and was suppose to be temporary, but turned out to be such a hit that he kept it open. It's a great laid back place not stuffy at all, but some really awesome food. They have a set menu every night, and they only serve that set menu (you can ask what it is before you make reservations though). Monday night was fried chicken. :D There was a salad of baby green (i'm not much of a salad person :( ), then buttermilk fried chicken, collard greens and pancheta, roasted baby potatos :D awesome! Then there was a cheese course, sooo creamy served with a kumquat marmalade and an upside down banana cake with vanilla coconut ice cream for dessert. It's safe to say I left feeling quite satisfied :D
They also served the best ginger ale I have ever had there. Vernors, apparently it's more a localized thing in detroit, but it's sooooo goooooddd!

Tuesday: WHEE FUN DAY! The fabuloso Janice and Chrissy came to surprise me. Sorta, they were here in my driveway for like 10 minutes before I actally knew they were there. They called, but it showed up as out of area (even though it was a 510 number) :( so I didn't pick up, then I checked my cell phone and saw the missed calls...oops. LoL So I got ready to go and we went out to eat lunch at sushi avenue :) Sushi is good. Then Chrissy drove us to Stoneridge mall WHOOT I haven't been to the mall in such a long time before that. Chrissy and Janice both bought new shoes...I however lose. :( No new shoes for me. Although It would have been awesome if that song "New Shoes" by Paulo Nutini would have started playing LoL

Then back to Chrissy's house for Chicken and Rice. I hadn't had that in such a long time *sniff* brought back so many good memories :) so many tasty memories :) And jonesing for something sweet, we went to bakers square for pie. taaaaasty pie. (All this after telling myself I'd eat light cause of all the eating major I did the day before...oops)

Wednesday and Thursday...school work days. Got some stuff done, but probably not as much as I should have oops. hey it's spring break.

Friday, I had to go to the museum for an art history paper I have to write. My mom said she'd go with me..cause I didn't really wanna go there by myself. We went to the Legion of Honor in SF, beautiful works there :) There were quite a few artists in the gallery working on replicating works of art. So cool to see them in action, I wish I had talent...any talent LoL. Found a few paintings I could do, I just have to choose one later. Shady business though, on the wall at the admissions desk they list all of the prices, adult, child, people who take public transit even get discounted, but they don't list that they have a student discount rate, unless you ask. So if you don't ask then you get ripped off $4! lame. Those tickets are also good for their sister museum the De Young in Golden Gate park, so we went to lunch. Pretty good chinese place noodles and dumplings my favorite :) And then headed to the other museum. The De Young is more modern, like from the 1700's and on...The really modern stuff, I don't get....but seeing the stuff from 1800's-1900's were really cool. and then back home :)

Saturday. Oddly enough Friday the 13th went really well...Saturday the 14th, however I just can't say the same. So I was sorta excited, going out on my first trip where I'd actually have to identify fish and such. I got up at 6:15am and left the house at 7:00am to get there by 7:40am, which I did so :D I even straightened my hair the night before so it wouldn't be a very angry mess after all the wind on the boat...:(

Got there, got on the boat at 7:45...stood around...looking awkward cause no one else was there yet and I had no idea what I was doing, it's my first day (actually working, it was my second day on the boat)! Then it's 7:55 and more people start coming around and a face I recognize :) the other intern James shows up. But no one else shows up...as in the group that they're supposed to take out on the boat and teach. They're supposed to board at 7:45am...but nobody. They wait around for a while, and we chat a bit. I mostly stand there looking awkward and lonerish. And so they're not going to go out if there's no group to take out. I waited around a while to see if there was anything else I could do, but it didn't seem like it and I was only planning on going for the AM voyage and not the afternoon, so since they weren't going out, I just said adios, and left. Arugh. so freaking frusterating.

Second days are always the worst. First day at the zoo, went fiiiine, nice keeper I worked with everything went well, left with all my appendages and fingers and toes. Second time I go in, suddenly there's a different keeper on that string, but no one tells me so I have no idea who I'm looking for, again looking awkward and lost. Then I meet her, she's nice, morning goes fine, after break, she leaves me to clean one of the night houses, fine. But I'm still new! so it took me a lot longer than I thought and I didn't have a key, so she left the fence locked and I was just going to jump over. Jumped over..half way, then fell the other half. ugh not graceful. Then I couldn't find her! ran literally all over the freaking zoo, like a chicken with its head cut off. Finally found someone with a radio and talked to her, she said "meet me at the main zoo" I thought that meant the main entrance, not the bottom of the zoo, so I wait there for 10 minutes, until I radio her again only to find she meant the bottom of the zoo. O.M.G. I was so wigging out that day and so stressed. I thought my head was literally going to explode.

Second days are never good. At least this saturday wasn't ...that that bad I guess...
Although on my way home today, after getting up at 6:15am on a saturday of spring break, and wasting $4 crossing a bridge only to come back home. A rock. hit my windshield...and left a big honkin' chip in it. ARUGH. I was so pissed, I wasn't even driving behind a big truck let alone anyone, the only car in front of me was a van in the next lane over. ARUGH. Now my nice windshield has a BIG effin' chip. and so do, on my shoulder.

I really wanted to go out on the boat today damnit.

Work hard, play hard.

Last week was the epitome of the saying, "work hard play hard"

As I predicted yeah, last week sucked. But that was a gross understatment. GROSS understatment. I had never been as mentally fatigued as I was on thursday afternoon, I was about ready to just breakdown. I don't know, tomorrow I find out if it was worth it because I get my results back, gah.

Friday I went to eat dim sum with elisa yay! that was definitely good and it was good to see her, I don't think I've hung out with her since we went to eat at Titos (chili's LOL) in mid january! :) although she got back to work late :( sorry 'bout that.

I guess it's good to start with the good :) Saturday I went to a training for the fish database internship thingie and I got there okay and the training, it was a little bit slow at points, but it was very informative. Also I got to go out on the boat later in the day to see first hand what an intern does. The people I've met so far have been really great and nice, very friendly and outgoing. The zoo's good, but people wise, not the most sociable volunteers there. After the training and before the boat we had time to go to lunch, so I went out and the only place I could find was Applebee's so I went in there, by myself...and when I entered the song "ALLL BYYYY MYYYYYSELFFFFFF DON'T WANNA BEEEEE ALLLL BYYYYY MYYYYSELF" was playing, LoL I was so cracking up. It was hilarous LoL On the boat, I got to check out some of the fish they caught, I'm definitely going to have to brush up on my fish identification...but hopefully by the summer, or maybe even spring I'll get better at it, and like with most things practice makes perfect. So I'm planning to do that in the summer.

After all of that fun and enjoyment in the day I went to chrissy's house at night :) I hadn't spent quality time with her in a really long time, so it was definitely good to have some laughs. Laugh inducing moments included a three teated cow, trying to put her puzzle together, billythewitchdoctor.com, making chrissy watch Ben Affleck striptease at a gay club, and last but certainly not least. Thank you myheritage.com I think I lost a few pounds from all that laughter. And from being a crackhead, some of the MANY celebs my heritage is linked to, donny osmond, some korean communist leader, viggo mortenson, the rock, this ooold lady Grace...uhm i can't remember her last name, but the eptome of an OLD white woman, GARY FREAKIN' BUSEY! THEY LABLED ME AS GARY FREAKIN' BUSEY! I was a crack head for the rest of the night.
They just traced chrissy back to all of these fobby asian girls. Me, I'm now Gary Teri Busey.

And Freakin' a. Chrissy has this lego block calender from hong kong which defeated both of us.


Sunday, less good :( So I got at the zoo to volunteer and like normal started preping the diets and such and the keeper got the rest of the diets, but as we were about to go, I notied one less bucket...so me and my friend were like, aren't we missing something? and then he told us that one of the sunbears died a few days before. Arugh. that was heartbreaking.

A few months ago, they had brought in a new sunbear from the San Diego Zoo because in SD they were trying to mate a male and another female and so this bear was sorta the third wheel and we had a very large enclosure here for only one bear so they thought they would try to put our sunbear and the san diego sunbear together. When she first got here they said she was very agressive and anxious and just a very bad tempered bear. Then they put them in separate cages next to each other, they didn't really get along, but that's pretty normal when introducing two mature females. They would bark and growl every once in a while, eventually it seemed to lessen slightly although both seemed pretty stressed. Since it lessened and it had been a few weeks, they decided to let them in the enclosure together to see how they'd do. They just fought and fought until the keepers could get one back into the nighhouse.

After that fiasco, they kept them separate and would just rotate them inside and outside, but after that fight outside, I could tell that Kaika (the sunbear which was here first) was just worn out and she wasn't pacing or anything unless Ting (the sunbear from san diego) started barking or growling. The past few weeks Kaika was just more submissive so I thought maybe they'd finally start to get along a bit better, but it turns out the life was just draining out of her. On Friday they found her comatose in the nighthouse and they couldn't wake her up, so she died. They did a necropsy and found that something made her lungs stop working, but the couldn't determine exactly what, so no conclusive answers were found, but the keepers basically say it was just the stress. I'm sure she was just shocked to have this new bear come in and then start challenging her, then they got into the fight which probably cause her to be a lot more nervous and stressed out. It was just not a good situation and she wasn't as young as she used to be, so it just consumed her.

There have been 2 other deaths on this string with the animals I work with. One was from advanced cancer, Spike, the othe sunbear was put down and then Macho one of our deers was also put down because he was getting very very old and stopped eating. Both of those were unpreventable, but this one was worse because it was a stress induced by the keepers so it might have been prevented. It could have gone either way though, ting could have been a great companion, they didn't know until they introduced them.

The whole thing just sucked because our keeper took it especially hard and it just made for a very depressing sunday. At least she's no longer under that stress...

At least saturday was good :) and today I got my art midterm back and I did pretty well on it, so there's always a balance to life.