A note on the pictures...

No, this post isn't going to void the disclaimer(s) on the header bar thing. It's here to inform you that all of the pictures that I have posted that came/come from my camera, when you click on them, they become freaking huge!! See, I didn't know that when I posted them. I figured that they re-sized into something manageable. But no. They're huge. Uber-huge.

I'm sure you all already knew that, and that I was the only one who didn't. Things kind of work out that way with me. A lot.

ZOO!!

Went to the Portland Zoo today, and a ball-rocking time was had!! Okay okay okay, I know there are those of you who feel that zoos are more akin to orphanages/prisons than anything else, but this particular zoo at least claims to be about conservation and all that kind of hippie crap. Sure, most of them do, but it being Oregon I tend to believe them a little bit more than one in, say, Arizona or something.

Not the zoo entrance.

GF got the tickets online, which apparently means we don't have to pay for parking either. That's $2 in our pockets! See? The zoo saves us money!

He wasn't this blurry on the booklet.

So this cute as balls thing is looking all regal on the map-thing and I get all excited. I love the kitties. I could watch exotic kitties all day. I was looking forward to seeing this thing. Look at that little face! If I didn't know that he would maim me beyond comprehension, I'd want to snuggle that little face for hours, then feed him ice cream and sing show tunes into his face at full volume. That'd get him in a wrastlin' mood, I betcha!

Bear playing with a tree.

First of all, I think it's awesome that this relatively little bear decided to uproot a tree and play with it. He had a buddy not far from him that was way more into napping. But this guy was making the tree do all kinds of flippies and stuff. Kyoot.

Then we came across this sign...

Notice how it says nothing about being careful that a bear might fall on you.

So I glance up, see nothing, and go about my business of noticing how I can see my breath at 9:30am on an atypically sunny day. Then I notice people ahead of me looking up. So I look too.

Bear in a tree.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying... BEAR IN A TREE!

So yeah, about 20 feet above our heads, there was this cubby-buddy hanging out up a freaking tree. I mean, he was way the crap up there! But just remember that the sign said that he does this all the time and is perfectly safe. Again, I wasn't really worried about him as much as I was about the possibilities of this thing deciding to take a cue from his pal the flying squirrel. That's all I need is a freaking bear swooping all over me. Death from above - whatever.

Can you call something that never had hair in the first place "bald?"

This dude was all kinds of stoic. I snapped a few pics of him hoping that at least one would turn out okay. He kind of looks weird-beaky in this one. Hooky-beak or something. Whatever, he's smarter and wiser than I so I bow to him in reverence.

Angry looking turtle staring into my soul.

There were other critters and varmints running around in their unnatural habitats looking grateful for the rare sunshine.

Happy looking owl who was apparently blind. Still awesome.

Some of the habitat huts had some cool things in them. One had life-sized elephant-uglies (you know what I'm talking about) in small boxes so I avoided that one because my life actually did depend on it.

Um... ducks.

This is Frank and Benjamin. They were pretty cool. Their wives were wandering around about 10 feet to the right of here. The only reason I remember that their names are Frank and Benjamin is because I had the foresight to have GF do this...

100 = Frank and Benjamin.

Don't ask me why the one duck's name is Frank and not Franklin. I tend to go for Franklin more often than not when I'm naming things. This just proves to me that Frank and Benjamin were their actual names and they telepathically transmitted this information to me because they thought I was cool. Thanks, ducks!

Not team Jacob. Team Awesome.

There were 3 wolves. Two whiter ones walking around all irritated, and this guy who was just laying there at first, then got up and started staring off into the distance for no reason. Then we noticed two dorks wandering around the hillside behind the wolf pen. If it were up to me I would have let these guys go play with those tards. I'll take wolves over people any day.

Poser.

This guy seriously jumped up on this barrel right when we walked up. He was trying to divert my attention away from the awesomness that was right next door to him...

CHICKENS!!!!!!!!

Fearful of the sun.

Midget chickens.

Seriously, that little herd of chickens were all maybe six inches tall. Too cute. I wanted to take them home, but then remembered that we have two cats. It would have gotten kinda messy.


Saw some pagoons, but they were being transplanted to a different habitat while their normal habitat was being fitted with an x-box or something. The pictures came out blurry so I'm not uploading them because this page will probably already take about an hour to load up on your machines. You're welcome.

I will, however, upload this...

yup

Polar bear junk. Okay, here's a bunch of pics...

GF = 0.5 polar bear. Pink-hatted dwarf-chewer retreats in mortal fear.

Phyllis Diller Pig

Breeder.

 This woman really wanted to be in about half a dozen of my pictures. I figured I'll make her day and post one of them that she got into so she can point herself out to her friends at home. I didn't know I had such crazed fans!

Have I ever mentioned that elephants are GFs favorite creatures ever? They are.

 

That's a little baby with a couple of huges. feeding time, I reckon.

Mastodont = Metal

And yeah, it said "mastodont." I don't know why, and I'm too tired to look it up.

Evil god or cute hat?

Ball rocker supreme.

 This dude was all kinds of speedy. We took about a thousand pictures and maybe two came out where he wasn't just a blur of spots and eyes. Ocelot. Animal kingdom-speak for "hells yes!"

It's a baby... thing.

 Yeah, don't remember what that thing was, but there were two of them and they were cuter than you. Sleepier too.

So I was beginning to lose hope of seeing the cat thing on the map, then I turned a corner and saw this...

Eeeeaaarrrsss!!!!!!!!

Yup, there he was. All kinds of awesome, but not wanting to have anything to do with my picture-takingness. I had decided that this picture was good enough and went into some other exhibit, only little did I know that said exhibit actually looped around and I got to see this...

Buddy!!!!

 That right there is a freaking buddy. Check him out. I loves the kitties and this dude was kitty supreme. It's called a "caracal" for some reason. I want one.

Hipposlugs. Actual size.

Why the long neck?

 This thing was so dainty and delicate that it almost defied logic. Look at it, it can't be much to eat. But it's pretty.

I didn't realize until just now that his tongue is sticking out. Defiance!

 I forget what these things were called. Wait, I think I took a picture of the sign... it's a "duiker" which is apparently pronounced "dye-ker" or something. Sounds made up. But it was cute in a weird pea-goat kind of way.

Negative

Percher.

And that last guy there we found on our way out.

So that was our trip to the zoo. Ummm... yeah it was awesome. Can't wait to go back, although I think next time I'll pass on the $8 grilled cheese sandwich. If they had had one on display, I would have much rather had a gibbonburger or something.

Upcoming "Adventure [exclamation mark]" news!

We went back to the nature park walk park again for the third time and picked a brand new route. Only took a few pictures, but I'll upload them with stories pretty soon. We did notice that each trip there turns out to have a theme. More soon.

Today we're headed out to the zoo. I'm pretty excited. I haven't been to the Portland zoo in about 12 years, if not 15. It was cool back then, even though it was raining and a lot of the exhibits weren't open (those two things didn't have anything to do with each other). Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Been kind of sick lately, but I'm hoping that won't take anything away from the awesomeness of the zoo. We'll see.

Stay tuned...

Nature park 1

So we decided it would be a good idea to go to our local nature park thingy and walk around in the great wilderness that is downtown Beaverton.

We tried finding this place once before but ended up driving right past it. Not that we cared, we were more about adventuring at that point. But this time we looked it up on a map and went straight there.

The view from the parking lot.

So here we are at Tualatin Valley Nature Valley Habitat Park Beaverton Habitat. Looks nice. Not too many people milling about looking seedy or whatever. If you'll notice the little sign at the far right, right next to the flag pole... here, I'll blow it up for you...

Seems pretty straightforward, right?

 So yeah, needless to say not 5 minutes inside the park and we hear the sound of a small dog. The "family" were walking towards us on their way out of the park with the cutest little buddy ever. I almost took a picture of him for proof of people's idiocy, but I didn't. And then sure enough not 200 yards later we had to sidestep some doggie doo in the middle of the path. Not only did they not obey park regulations, but they littered with their pet too. Some people don't deserve to be a part of my species. I'm just sayin'.

I'm pretty sure that's a bigfoot right there.

 The park was awesome. Lots of trees and moss and yetii and crap. Considering its vicinity to major roadways and transit systems, it was shockingly serene. At times it seemed like we were miles from anyone and anything.

Thug GF snapping phone pics.

So many photo ops, but upon reflection all the pics of trees and crap kind of look the same. It's definitely one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. It was really pretty. Except for this thing...

Gore. And no, my shoe was not the cause of it.

Yeah, it's a half-eaten banana slug. Little did I know that GF has this fear of them. It's a pretty powerful fear. For the following 30 minutes after seeing this thing she kept asking me if I was sure if it was a slug, because its size suggested something far more diabolical. After a bit I had almost convinced her it was a tadpole for some monster-sized frog.

Then there was a pond like thing...

No, she's not ralphing. She's looking at something.

We got to see power lines in their natural habitat.

Indigenous commuter-train. So beautiful!

Then we came across this marshland bridge system which had these cool little factoid-plaques all over the place:

Seems vaguely apocalyptic for a nature park plaque.

There were more:

Why else would it unite its vertebrae to form a backbone?

And yes, I think I'm funny...

Apparently others before me were also against these things evolving unabated.

Okay. But just past this we saw the cutest thing ever:

Nature!

She was just chillin' about 30 yards off of the path. She sat there very patiently while GF and I snapped a buttload of pics.

But then, just as we were leaving I made the mistake of pointing something out...

Creature from beyond time. With no pockets.

I just casually said "hey look," to which I was regaled with screams and much arm flapping. My bad. And yet she got right up in its, well, I guess "face" is a poor choice of words, but whatever. She couldn't stop looking at it very intently while making a myriad of "icky" faces. It was cute. GF, not the hunk of slimy weirdness.

Caturbunkle.

This thing wasn't very big, maybe an inch and a half, but I'm sure it would just as soon kill us as give us the time of day. Nature is goofy that way.

So that's it. We went back the next day and went a different direction. I'll post pics of that soon. Mostly though, it's just more pics of trees. But maybe there's a surprise or two in store for y'all! Then again, maybe not. Whatever. Up yours.

The Move [Epilogue]

By the way, "epilogue" in this case is pronounced "ehp-ee-low-GYOO". You're welcome.

So after we had unpacked and been settling in for a few days, going shopping for food and cat junk, that kind of thing, we decided that since the average temperature here was 40 and rainy we were going to have a fire.

That's right. A fire.

Yeah, our new digs has a fireplace. Nothing fancy, it's your typical apartment fireplace. Here, here's a pic:

The fireplace, acting innocent.

Nothing fancy. This pic is actually after our first fire. Here's what it looks like when the fire is actually burning in it:

How the fireplace should look, with fire.

Nice, right? Yeah, that's what it's supposed to look like. What happened that first night wasn't exactly as picturesque as this.

So I get in there and open up the flew (flu? Fliue? whatever...) as far as I can, but I notice this weird little handle off to the left of the fire opening thing. You can't see it in the picture, but after turning and pulling and pushing this thing, I decided that it didn't do anything at all. So I throw a log in, light it up, and sit back and bask in my own glory. Only one problem...

Our apartment in filling up with smoke.

I'm turning the useless handle and nothing is happening. I'm going outside to see if the handle is doing anything out there. Nothing. So we open the windows and doors and figure we'd just wait for it to burn out and then never do this again. Then the smoke alarm starts going off. I run over to pull it down and take the battery out, only when unscrewed from the ceiling it only falls about 2 inches. It's hooked into the building's power, which means I can't just pull out the battery. Figures. So I hit the button and it shuts off. For about 5 minutes. And it keeps going off. Mind you, the fire is only about 20 minutes old at this point, and the box clearly states that these logs have a burn life of something like nine weeks. We start thinking of what we can do to make it all just stop.

I run into the kitchen and grab the biggest pot we have. I figure if we can get the burning log into the pot and get it outside, we can dowse it with water and put it out or something. Problem is, how are we going to get the burning fire log into the pot?

I very, very, very, very, very, very briefly think about filling the pot with water and just dowsing the log while it's in the fireplace. Very, very, very, very, very briefly. Even I'm not that dumb, at least for very long.

You have to remember that we have only been in our new home for something like 2 days. Not really the kind of impression we'd like to give to our new neighbors and landlords. Although, you'll hear/read about one of our neighbors in something like 2.0 or 2.5 or whatever.

So it is with mild trepidation that I do something I have only ever done a handful of times in my life. I called the police.

I have to explain to the nice woman that while my apartment is not on fire and does not appear to want to be on fire, it is currently filling with smoke and probably won't stop on its own for 79 hours or whatever the box said. She says she's sending the fire department and to wait outside for them to arrive.

We were in our pj's and getting ready to watch Paranormal Activity 2. Mind you, it is not easy to get GF to watch horror movies, especially at night. So we're waiting outside in our pj's joking about how people must be looking out their windows and seeing how the new couple has already had to call the fire department. Grr. Anyway, after a few minutes they arrive. I flag them down and explain the whole situation to them.

Did I mention there are about a dozen of these guys pouring out of this truck? Seriously, it's like a freaking clown fire truck or something. They just kept filing out of there.

So they go inside and start doing their thing. I ask one of the stragglers (hereby referred to as "sexy firefighter") if it's okay to follow them in. He gives me a look that says in no uncertain terms "what do I care? do what you want, idiot." So I do. I get inside and one of the other sexy firefighters is on his back in front of the fireplace reaching inside. Don't worry, he's a professional and he's wearing special fire retarded gloves or something superhero-like. Another sexy firefighter is leaning over him asking him "is that it?" to which the upturned turtle sexy firefighter replies "yeah." The third sexy firefighter (the one who was crouching or whatever) looks at us and says "your flu (fliu? flue? Wait, I think it's "flue"! Yay!) wasn't open far enough."

My reply? "Man, now I feel like a dick because I don't even know how to work my own fireplace." His reply was "aw, don't feel like that. It happens all the time," but the pause between my statement and his was long enough to speak volumes, namely "yeah, learn how to use your fireplace before putting fire into it, dick."

They give us a few pointers and are then on their way. I thank them and leave the door open behind them to continue airing out our apartment. The fire continues on just fine, no more smoke pouring in. We've had a fire or two since then with no problems whatsoever. And in retrospect, it's kind of funny that we had to call the fire department on our third day here. Still unclear as to what the little lever on the side is for. I pointed it out to them but they didn't think it was important enough to comment on apparently. And no, we still haven't watched PA2 yet.