So, Seattle, how are we enjoying our fall so far? I think by my count, we're up to:
-A minor windstorm
-A massive rainstorm (accompanied by massive flooding)
-A snow/ice storm (which pushed us over Seattle's one-month rainfall total record that's stood since 1933)
-Another minor windstorm
-Yet another minor windstorm today
-A major windstorm on track for tomorrow night

...and that, my friends, is only since mid-November. Welcome to Washington!

We're back in the house now, and the floors are all pretty and shiny! Latte literally ran laps around the house when she arrived back home, but I think she's just glad to be away from the vet! (we boarded her there) Poor thing had scratches on the end of her nose from pressing her face against the bars on her kennel for four days. *huggles her* But she promptly jumped up on her favorite chair and went right back to sleep.

I got lots of reading done while I was away! I read Robin McKinley's "Beauty" in less than 24 hours - I couldn't put it down! That one has joined the ranks of my favorite books. I'm reading the original novel of "The Princess Bride" now, and almost finished with that, too. I love it - it's like reading the movie almost word-for-word at times! I guess that's what you get when the novel's author wrote the screenplay as well. And it makes me think of Cary Elwes all the time. Mmmmm... I'm on a fantasy reading binge at the moment. :P Still waiting to move up the holds list for "Eragon" at the library, 'cause I really wanna actually read that one before I go see the movie. They have 150 copies of it now and I'm jumping up about 5-10 spots per day (#42 at the moment!), though, so hopefully they'll get down to my name in the next week or so.

And as many of you whale geeks know, they announced today that, in all likelihood, the baiji is now extinct. Not one sighting since 2004, and if there are any left out there, there aren't enough for a genetically viable population. :( That's just... I can't even wrap my brain around that. Extinct due to habitat destruction - the first whale species to go extinct because of human habitat destruction. But there's so many others on the brink, I can only hope this is a wake-up call to the world. But the cynic in me keeps thinking that not enough people out there truly care...

To the ho that sits next to me in Conservation Bio:
Please shut up. Just shut up. For once in your life. The whole class is sick of hearing the idiotic drivel that comes out of your mouth. You whine about everything. You sit and talk to the person behind you and pass notes to them like you're still in third grade. You wear flip flops on a hike, and complain about how you will get your nice pants dirty, when clearly you were too dumb to think ahead and wear clothes that were good for, y'know, HIKING. So please do us all a favor and stop coming to class, before we have to gang up on you and beat you. Kthnxbye.

Okay, now that that's out of the way... I finally wisened up today in lab, and just brought the Excedrin Migraine bottle with me to class. I popped a couple as soon as I felt a headache starting to come on (yes, right there in the middle of the trail), and it's okay so far... we'll see how it feels later tonight. We were out hiking in Torrey Pines. Again. That's four Torrey Pines field trips in three semesters now. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd pick a different trail! NO MORE PARRY GROVE TRAIL, PLEASE!

Buuuuuutt... there were DOLPHINS this time! Whee! Simo's husband (who used to manage that park) was going off about the same bark beetle and wildfire lectures I've heard a million times over. Personally, I had a LOT more fun watching the 3 bottlenose dolphins foraging and playing in the cove in the distance. No one else noticed them for a VERY long time, and I wasn't about to interrupt. But they were cute! We ran into them again later, too, when they seemed to be just resting/logging. And of course, that's the one time I didn't bring my camera to lab. *headdesk* I think the world conspires against me to keep me from getting wild dolphin photos. At the old Marineland site last December, I only had my 18-55mm lens with me, this time I didn't have my camera at all, and last time I went on a whale watch cruise, we saw NOTHING. :P Anyways, Torrey Pines is sort of a whale/dolphin hotspot, so it'd be nice to go there more often to go looking for them. But they freakin' charge $6 for a day use fee. Grrr. I suppose I could always use one of the free lots and hike in - it'd just be a LONG, uphill walk to the trailheads.

Been playing Pharaoh a lot. I haven't played that in ages - it wasn't even installed on this computer, and I've had this one for a year and a half now. Anyways, I upped the difficulty level from what I've done in the past, and haven't been doing TOO badly. Although I got pwn3d by the Pharaoh's army last night after I ran out of money. Doh!

I also had a REALLY weird dream last night. I don't remember much of it, but I remember that I was walking around my old neighborhood up in Washington, walking my dog, when I came across a site where they were filming Stargate. Dr. Jackson was playing some intergalactic SkeeBall game, and I spent forever talking to one of the crew about the strategies involved in SkeeBall. Dr. Weir was there, too, at some negotiation dinner event, but she had LONG hair (like, halfway down her back) and it was weird. :P I think I need to lay off the caffeine before bed.

I would also like to state, for the record, that when I got tacos at Taco Bell on the way home today, they put a spork in my bag. As if a spork will help me eat tacos.

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!!

Wow...wowowowowowow! Dolphins again! Yay! I was so psycho this morning. I got up five minutes before I had to leave. My alarm went off and I leapt out of bed yelling "Dolphins!" It was the FUNNIEST thing ever.

DID was awesome! It's VERY educational. I think they did ten times better than SeaWorld's DIP for the educational part. Instead of spending the whole classroom part actually in a classroom, you go out and see what your learning, in action. Watch a training session. Watch how the dolphins interact, etc. The actual interaction wasn't as involved as SeaWorld likes to do, but it was a lot more... well "open" for the dolphins. They're very frank about the fact that it's the dolphins choice to participate, and if they don't want to, well, too bad. They were great today, though! We did our interaction with Bob. We all gave him a good long rubdown, then got our pictures with him. I felt really special, cause when I was holding him for my pic, he started clicking a lot, and the traner said he was either really content or about to do something really mischevious. :P Probably coincidence, but he didn't do it for anyone else, so I felt special. :P We talked a little about anatomy and coolling and such, and then we each gave Bob a signal. I gave him a cue for a jump. :) We gave him another long rubdown, got soaked, etc, etc. then headed out to go change. For $75, it was a good deal!! I got a picture and t-shirt out of it, too, and free pop. :P (there was another CP in the group, so we were ALL about the free food. :))

Oh! The dolphin from the keys was Calvin, for thoes of you wondering. He was,... very rambunctious! He and Ranier were... how shall I say?... "playing baseball" as the trainers put it. :P

What else... oh, stopped at Innoventions to see if they opened the DDR section back up yet. Unfortuinately, they had. And unfortunately, there's no video games there anymore. :( It's all a "test zone" or something now, that's supposed to show stress tests and stuff for products. Icky. No more free DDR. How sad!

Stargate cracked me up... whoever thought Teal'c was a fan of the magic fingers? :P Oh, and one bit made me practically fall off the bed laughing. This guy goes "The spaceship's around here somehwere... oh! There's the clearing! I know where we are now!" Ten minutes later, still no spaceship... sounds familiar!! :P

Yep. Pretty much just been lazy.

Oooh! I'm on a quest to find all the mp3s to put together the Fantasmic pre-show music loop. I've figured out what most of the tracks are. I wrote everything down last night, and now I'm just trying to find the right versions of songs, and a couple that I was completely stumped on. Yay! It's a long, loop, I never realized it before. It's 27 songs.

That'll keep me busy for awhile!