Current Kiki Events - Part II

My vacation was, however, cut a bit short when F called me Monday morning to tell me there were fires all over the place near our apartment. This was on top of a fairly sleepless night, thanks to a tornado siren that went off by accident for over an hour (starting at 3am). I guess a lot of you have been following at least some of the fire news. The Witch Creek fire threatened our home and both of our places of work. I thought F's workplace would be bad because it was across a major street from a burning neighborhood. His building is fine, though. It turns out the Park was even closer to danger. Most of the eastern half of the property (the undeveloped half) is burned. The fire went right up to (and once over) animal areas and around the northern end of the Park to catch the property to the West of us. More information is available here. The reason the Park was around to open yesterday is that the fire management programs are well-planned and the Park was ready to deal with any fire right after finding out the Santa Ana winds would be so bad.

As to our personal story, our apartment never came under mandatory evacuation orders, but the evacuation zone was about half a mile away and the fire came within 2 miles on Tuesday. F evacuated on Monday with my kitty. I flew back into town Tuesday night. The flight over the mountains with fires on either side of the plane was amazing, but the flight right over the Harris fire was awesome. Fires in the distance looked like lava in the darkness. It was indescribably beautiful... Back in reality, I stayed with a friend in North Park for the night, then drove up to meet up with F in the LA area Wednesday. Then, I got up at 3:30am to move my cat back to my apartment and go to our department meeting and help with Park clean-up. Thank goodness for my fitted face mask; the air is still awful here, though generally getting better.

Already, it's mostly back to work as usual (though with much lower attendance numbers). Savanna Safari was amazing Friday because it goes right through one of the areas that burned. I also handled our Great Horned Owl for the first time. So cool! Yesterday I dressed up for a Halloween Weekend shift...and, oh yeah, I dyed my hair black...

On the gaming front, we finally are going to play again. Mutants and Masterminds this time. I'm still trying to come up with all my character stuff but I'm having a hard time. I like superheroes, but it's not as much my thing. I'd love to get back to D&D but I'll really play anything, since I just enjoy the company of my fellow nerds. D (the main GM for this adventure) wanted to help me better understand the tone of the setting and give me character-development ideas, so I now have homework: five trade paperbacks to read by Wednesday evening. It will be especially tough since I also have to rewatch all of Eva by November 7th (it goes back to my brother then), in preparation for watching the movies (or at least the 2nd movie).

I think that catches you all up on my life. Thanks for hanging in there for two long posts. I'll try to get back on top of it, now that I have a computer again (my parents' ran slow, mine was in LA until today, and updates at work can be difficult).

Current Kiki Events - Part I

Wow. It's been so long since my last post and I have tons to talk about. Before I go any further, I should mention that we are fine, our apartment is fine, and our respective workplaces (though both were imperiled) are fine. After that, it's hard to even know where to begin.

First, work is going much better in many respects. I'd rather not get into this too much but I will say that our interim director has been doing a great job of getting our "management team" to come up with more consistent policies and procedures. I think we, the peons, know more of what's going on and feel more involved. There, of course, have been bumps and things we don't like. My current least favorite change so far has been the new day-off-request policy...or at least the part that may keep me from going to Comic Con next year. We'll see how that plays out.

Speaking of days off, I just had some vacation. I went to visit my parents about two weeks ago. We went to the KC Zoo. I got to see their African hunting dog puppies (5 of them) play with the adults. The male black footed cat was out (they also have a mom with kittens) and active. I got this great picture of the meerkats.

[Picture coming soon]

Other highlights included some great scimitar horned oryx, a very visible pride of lions, active Sumatran tigers and orangutans, and a beautiful day.

It was very windy and rainy about half my time in KC. We planned accordingly. One rainy day, we went to see Across the Universe [review coming soon]. Another day, we took a trip to the Nelson Art Gallery and took a tour of the new Bloch Building. It's not my favorite style, but I thought it was a nice addiction to the grounds (I also love the giant badminton birdy sculptures, so I'm the pro side of both of the most controversial additions) and it's a very fitting surrounding for the modern art. We also ran through the European art in the old building and found all our old favorites. My only regret is that, because of the downpours, we couldn't tour the grounds. I don't think I've been through the sculpture garden since high school.

On another beautiful (though still windy) day, we went out to Liberty Memorial and toured the new World War I Museum there. We thought we'd be there half a day...we stayed from open to close. it is a wonderful museum. There is way too much stuff to read for a single visit. There are lots of videos, great recreations of the trenches and a mortar shell crater, interactive displays, quiet booths where you can listen to speeches, music, poetry, and prose of and about that time, and an absolutely fabulous set of various wartime posters. We didn't make it to the side galleries and barley made it up to the top of the memorial, before it closed, for a fantastic view of downtown KC. If you are ever in the area and are the least bit interested you have to go. Another reason: it's the only WWI museum in the whole country.

I didn't do much else, really. I went back to the Zoo to meet up with ed. folks to share program ideas. Hung out with D and some of his friends (and his cute, cute kitties). Did a teeny bit of cleaning of my stuff in the attic. Went shopping - bought: a new pair of shoes, Alien 3 for the SNES, an Ace of Base CD (ya'll can all just shut up), 3 Dragonlance books, Demon City Shinjuku (DVD), and a trade paperback with Batman and Tarzan for F (and to help support my theory that Batman will eventually fight with or against every other character ever created). All of these were bought on the cheap...and I totally needed none of them! Of course, I visited some of my favorite eateries, including Genghis Khan (awesome Mongolian BBQ joint in Westport) and Fiorella's Jack Stack (KC BBQ at its finest). We also went to a cute little new Japanese place called One Bite...so...good...