My parents are retired.  That’s a totally crazy concept to me.  I can’t even imagine never knowing what day of the week it is, or not really caring that this weekend is a three-day holiday?  EVERY day is a holiday to them.  But one thing is constant:  happy hour is at 5pm.  ON.THE.DOT.  I love these people.

Every winter, they head down to Carefree, AZ for a few months.  I love it down there, and they sprung for a plane ticket so their only daughter could spend a week in the sun and in their lovely company.  After a quick search of things we all haven’t seen/done in Phoenix, the Phoenix Zoo sounded like a perfect opportunity for me to take some pictures and hang out with Mom and Dad.

After planning out a route on the zoo map (no cracks about actually being organized, it was mroe to keep my dad walking in a straight line, I swear), off we went.  First up were the reptiles and other slimy things…

The snakes weren’t my favorite, but I loved this little guy…

Next up, prairie dogs.  This guy was holding court over all the others.

There was a family of giraffes, having a snack,

And a brother and sister lion pair sunning themselves (apparently they were rescued from a playpen in a Philadelphia apartment).

Rhinos,

Baboons,

and elephants, Oh My!

River otters,

and my favorite of the day, the Orangutans.

A surprising 4 hours later, we were all done.  Right in time for happy hour.

** If you’re interested, you can see the rest on my Flickr or Smugmug pages.  Enjoy!

….for the spam tonight.  I’ve been using Twitter some lately and found a way to cross-post with my blog.  Since it’s starting to look like summer is fading fast here in Seattle, I’ll probably be finding more time to post here.

So, if I’m lucky, I’ll get you all caught up on what’s been going on.

Till then!

Thanks to the laser-sharp eyes of Kristina, we now have a winner of the first “Post Easter Egg” game (thinking maybe I’ll be working on a better title) and a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

When I started processing the picture of my new Kindle, all I could see was a nice shiny-bright F-bomb sitting right in the middle of the image.  I thought to myself, “Self?  This is no good!  It’s bad enough that your friends think your taste in literature is one step above Britney Spear’s taste in clothing.  What kind of off-the-cuff crap will you get for this?”.  And the reply was “Jen? Who the hell cares?  Oh, and by the way?  Quit admitting to having conversations with me.  You know that’s a one-way ticket to a straight jacket, right?”.

Ahem…moving on.

I sarted reading Jen Lancaster’s blog after finding her as one of the hilarious contributors to the now-defunct Snarkywood.  Since then, she’s published not one, but three memoir-style books (the most recent just made the USA Today bestseller list, GO JEN!!) where she thinks and says the things that never make it past my internal filters (surprising, huh?).  The book my Kindle was serving up to me on a beautiful digital platter was Bright Lights, Big Ass, and the page in the image above was explaining exactly what happens when you get sucked into those stupid workplace charity campaigns (March of Dimes/United Way, anyone?  I know you can feel her pain!).  Anywhoo, Bright Lights was a great read, just like this one was and this one will be (now if she’ll only publish her latest in a Kindle edition, I’d kiss her feet).

So there you go.  Congrats on taking the time to getting the magnifying glass out, Kristina!
 

I’m feeling particularly uninspired.  Not just to write, but in general.  This happens right about this time every year for some reason.  How could this be? I mean, there’s nothing about my life right now that sucks.  Well, maybe the lack of a boyfriend, but that could be argued either way.

If I take an inventory of all that I have, it’s staggering:

• Amazing family.  Check.
• Some of the funniest/best friends around.  Check.
• A very nice condo in one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been to.  Check.
• A great career that takes me all over the world and promises more to come.  Check.
• The ability to do, for the most part, whatever I want, whenever I want.  Check.

The list could go on, but usually when I get that far I start feeling very spoiled-rotten-only-child-like.  It’s as if I need to throw a pity party for absolutely no reason at all.  Maybe it’s that the Seattle grayness has gotten to me a little late in the game.  Maybe I just need to get the hell over it.  Yeah.  That usually works.

 I’ve lurked around blogs of some kind for quite a while now.  Several things have kept me from starting my own, mainly a fear of the unknown, and a stupid thought that there wouldn’t be a soul out there that could possibly want to listen to my random rants and musings.  I really didn’t figure out until recently that what I think of as just part of daily life is pretty out there for some people, and pretty entertaining for others.

I’ve always been a busy person.  In addition to a full time job as a Software Engineer, I’ve supplemented with things like volunteer firefighting, officiating boat races, and pit crewing for a drag race team.  The past two years, I’ve been on about 80% travel for work.  I’m sure you’ll hear all about it in the months to come.

So here goes.  Thanks to the encouragement of one of my best friends, I’ve been at this for less than 24 hours and I already think I’m addicted.  This is not a good sign.