It is damn near impossible to post a bunch of pictures and put captions on all of them in eblogger, so I finally got fed up and started a facebook page. Yep, I drank the kool aid, and so far I feel fine. If you drink it too you can see my vacation photos from Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland.

Yes I know, I haven't blogged in a long time. I haven't had anything interesting to blog about - and I still don't. So here are some pictures of my Obama-lantern from October and of the full moon through my telescope.

Ok I'm a little tardy with the rest of the Vancouver pictures.

In the second picture I'm pointing at a stained glass window that says "Clifton" but there's a glare on it so it's hard to read.

I got to see a little Asian woman freak out on the suspension bridge in the last picture. I guess it was a bad place to figure out that she was afraid of heights. Or maybe she just really doesn't trust bridge engineers. The bridge was a little wobbly in the middle.

This post will be photos of wildlife we saw on our trip to Vancouver. I'll do a separate post later this week with pictures of places we visited.

The timber wolf and grizzly bears were at a refuge (and ski resort) called Grouse Mountain - and yes that is snow in the background. The bears were rescued as cubs and the wolf was born in captivity. The bears' enclosure put them practically within arms reach, provided that you would be willing to stick your arm through that electrified wire fence - like a very dangerous adaptation of the game Operation.

So we were sitting on a short concrete wall in a big park, and this raccoon came running at us like one of those monkeys that steal things from people at that temple in Thailand (I may watch too much Discovery Channel). He probably would have run right into us if we hadn't gotten out of the way. There were several "Beware of Rabid Animals" signs posted in the park and this guy didn't seem to be feeling well, so after taking a few photos we decided to leave him alone.

The harbor seal near the dock was wild, but he had figured out that if he hangs around the fish cleaning station he gets a free meal of discarded fish parts. It seemed to be working pretty well for him, and he didn't have to worry about being eaten by an orca.

I got tagged by Caryn (and I haven't blogged in a while)!

1. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions for themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags some people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

10 years ago: I had just started college, and that's about all I remember.

5 things on my to do list for Thursday:
1.Wash the dog - she's starting to smell like a dog again
2.Move boxes of old documents from my office to a storage building on the bad side of town, try not to get shived
3.return books to the library
4.laundry
5.blog

Things I Would Do If I Were Suddenly Made A Billionaire:
1.Pay off all Debts; my debts and others' - even those that occurred as a result of being nice to trailer trash
2.TRAVEL
3.TRAVEL some more
4.donate some, invest some


3 of my bad habits:
1.drinking more wine than I probably should
2.procrastination
3.I'll think of the 3rd one later

Places I have lived:
northern California
northern Texas (baja Oklahoma)
southern California
central Texas

Jobs I have had:
fast food
retail (at a pet store and then at a home improvement warehouse)
environmental specialist for a transportation agency
habitat assessment biologist (my current title - it sounds cooler than it is)

Things most people don't know about me:
I hate it when people whistle songs, even if they are really good at it
I would rather be near a rattlesnake than a wasp
Ear-bud headphones won't stay in my ears - I'm not sure why...

I tag Sherry, Ginger, and Charlie

The first picture above was taken at the zoo where I work most of the time, and the following 3 were taken at the Houston Zoo where I went for a conference earlier this week. All of these were taken with my cell phone so the quality isn't great. The girls in the second picture are holding a 3-banded Armadillo which is a smaller, South American cousin of the 9-banded Armadillo that is common in Texas. The third picture shows some Meerkats that are watching (and probably smelling) the action across the sidewalk where handlers were walking two baby Cheetahs on leashes to get them used to the presence of humans. The Meerkats were pretty preoccupied with the nearby Cheetahs, which allowed me to get the picture of them on top of their "ant hill."

These are some pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to Palmetto State Park - except for the picture with the sign about the sheep, that's from Scotland but it seemed to match with the first picture.