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).

Recent Events

So, I know I haven't posted in a while. I've been caught up in a few things. First, I've been trying to get my new site, Melampous, off the ground and have been giving it a lot of attention. Second, my work hours have increased lately and the computer I normally post from at work has been crappy lately. Third, my parents were in town for a week, so I didn't pay attention to much else while they were here.

Speaking of their visit, I thought I'd share some of the pics we took while they were here. We took a deluxe 3.5 hour Photo Caravan Safari at the Wild Animal Park. Here, my parents are feeding acacia leaves to Baringo Giraffes and I'm feeding apple slices to an Indian Rhino. Actually, my mom's getting slimed by giraffes.

After the caravan ride, we went up to where I work and I was able to bring out Akisa, our Madagascar Ground Boa. She's about 7.5 feet and 22 lbs. She's a sweet girl and sleeps most of the time when we have her out (she's nocturnal). At 10 years old, she is retired from a breeding program down at the zoo, where she also was an exhibit animal. Isn't she beautiful?


Another day, we visited the Birch Aquarium (Scripps Institute) at UCSD. Unfortunately, I got eaten by a shark. Actually, I was able to poke it in the eye and escape. In all seriousness, it's a small, but really great aquarium and we had an awesome time.

The final point of interest was the Maritime Museum downtown. It's pretty awesome. You can look through the ships they have and/or the museum exhibits, which are placed on the ships. They have:

The Star of India, a mid-19th century barque, which is the world's oldest active sailing ship

The HMS Surprise, a replica 24-gun frigate (the ship from Master and Commander)

The Berkeley, a steam ferryboat

The Medea, a steam-driven private yacht

The Californian, a replica tall ship

B-39, a Soviet diesel electric submarine

The ships are all cool. The sailing ships are fully rigged. You can go through the boiler area on the Berkeley. However, I think my favorite was actually the submarine. You go down inside and then from the fore to the aft torpedo rooms. The thing is huge but teeny. It's like hobbits lived inside. And we had to get through four of these water-tight doors.

Anyway, fun was had by all. On previous trips, we have visited the Zoo downtown, Disneyland, the Petersen Car Museum (LA), the Tutankhamun exhibit (when it was in LA), and the Anza-Borrego State Park (desert). The Dead Sea Scrolls are going to be in town starting in June. Comic Con is in July. So, if any of you want to visit, just let me know. I'll set you up!