Holy crizap, it's only Monday and I'm having an awesome week!

Headed up to hang out with kasatka and roguecows yesterday, and we finally scouted out the old Marineland of the Pacific site! :D OMG, that was just awesome! We were basically given free reign (or at least they never specified anything we couldn't go into, so long as it wasn't boarded up) so we wandered around just about everywhere we could get into! Some of the big highlights:

-The old trpoical aquarium that looked like a swim-thru type attraction. Drained now of course, but it was pretty easy to climb down inside and walk around. Kinda weird to be walking around on all the fake corals and such. It was also interesting to look at the broken glass in the underwater viewing windows - very thick!

-Found what seems to be the old animal food prep area - big walk-in freezer doors, and what look to be at least the base of food prep area sinks or holding area things.

-Puto the cowboy. That one is unexplainable without the photo.

-The old theater. Oh, man, the graffiti on the wall in there tells the whole story. It's kind of amazing to read, really - a lot of very anti-HBJ (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the company that closed Marineland) tags. You definitely get the sentiment that was going around at the time of the closure - bitterness, sadness, resentment... and one telling me to "smoke pot." Hmmm.

-The site of Orky and Corky's old tank - nothing but a wide field nowadays. I mean, you really can't even tell that anything was ever there. We scoured the site for leftovers from the Pirates of the Caribbean filming as we walked, but alas, they were too tidy. :P

-The site of the old dolphin tank. Very overgrown - the trees have filled in nicely. If you didn't know what you were looking at, it would be pretty easy to overlook, I think.

-The old restaurant. Wow - the view from there was GORGEOUS. The stairs up to the roof looked a bit iffy, but we carefully climbed up to get the view. Well worth it!

-Walked down to an old buiding with "Golf" painted on the roof - still not sure what that was all about. But there was a pretty spiffy bee hive there.

And what could make that all so perfect? As we walked out of the old building, someone (Janice or Kim, I don't even remember!) shouted "DOLPHINS!" I whirled around, and sure enough, there's three bottlenose dolphins cruising by!! EEEEEEEEEEE! The ONE time I don't have my giant telephoto lens on me - argh! They were moving at a pretty good clip, though! Occasional roostertails and everything. We followed along as far as we could (which wasn't far)... but how appropriate is that? They're gorgeous. I did get pics, but they're pretty hard to see since I could only zoom in to 55mm. Click on "original" under the photos to see thme a bit better.

Stopped to watch a gorgeous sunset over the ocean... so pretty!

Took a TON of photos. For anyone who cares, there is definitely swearing on the graffiti. Consider yourselves warned! http://xfkirsten.smugmug.com/gallery/1018078

Dinner at BJ's pizza - oh, man, that stuff was GOOD. Then it was off to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert at the Pond! That was a pretty damn cool show. The first half was more of a Christmas story thing that was pretty meh... I didn't care for some of the singers that they had. But the second half - that was pretty awesome! Very high-energy performances. The guitar and keyboard work is insane! And from a technical standpoint it was awesome. Amazing choreographed light setup, and great choreographed pyrotechnics. Definitely worth a look!

And as if I needed more to make my week awesome, I woke up this morning to a VERY, VERY awesome "The Long Goodbye" spoiler. EEEEEE! January 2 cannot get here fast enough!!

"Critical Mass" tonight! I'm way psyched for that!!