Wordle

I changed the image on my blog to be a word cloud (thanks to some help from http://www.wordle.net/). I love word clouds. This one is based on my blog content.

A couple of things I notice about me:
o I apparently have medium-strong tendency to use both the words "naked" and "nekkid"
o I use "really" more than I thought I did -- but "like" doesn't appear that often (where did the valley-girl talk go?!?)
o I ask for "directions" more than I thought, but then I do spend a lot of time on "Street"s (heehee)

I've always heard that it's interesting what the writing process teaches you about yourself!

San Diego Zoo

First - if you are staying at a hotel with shared bathrooms, please lock the door when you are using one. Please. Thank you.

Now, on to the day. I can see why the San Diego Zoo is "world renowned". My only complaint was that some of the viewing areas are a bit cramped.

I don't actually have any funny stories, but I'll leave you with a couple pictures.

I think this business is hysterically named...if I lived here, I would definitely be a patron...

Did I mention that our hotel is underneath the landing path for the San Diego airport?

The bridge (Laurel St) across the highway and into Balboa Park.

In Balboa Park, there a water lily garden.

While we were watching one of the polar bears play by the glass, another of the polar bears decided to pounce! There was a tremendous splash and then some wrestling. Very fun to see.

Watch out - they foam at the mouth! And I hear they spit too!

Very cute...

I love otters.

Probably the coolest thing I saw today - I've never seen a real, live koala before. Here's one with her "joey". All the koalas were sleeping. Apparently they sleep about 20 hours per day...I think that's as much as my cat!

I really liked the Elephant Odyssey - it took you through what we can learn about extinct animals based on the descendants living today. I also like the "W" in this picture.

European Accommodations

...in San Diego! I didn't pay a lot of attention when I booked this trip because it was in the middle of some really busy times at work. So I sorta found something that looked OK and went with it. It said "European Style Hotel"...and I thought "how fun!"

The hotel is nice...but the room is super dinky! It actually reminds me of when I was in Iceland (I guess that's part of Europe). It has small single-sized beds (I would swear they are smaller than twin beds...but maybe I am just a bit bigger than the last time I stayed in a twin bed) and you share a shower and water closet (no bidet though!) with the rest of the floor. (Although, to be fair, in Iceland we had private bathrooms and showers in the rooms.) Luckily the shower is a one-at-a-time deal with a lock on it so I don't have to feel like I'm back in college sharing a floor with 50 of my closet friends whose names I don't know!

Did I mention that it is ALWAYS an adventure of some sort to travel with me? (Luckily this time there were no airport or airplane incidents unless you count the squabbling siblings sitting in the row behind us.)

...you can do that?

So...recently I saw a young kid texting while riding his bike.  I thought he was super talented.  I can't do that -- I typically stop to text while riding.  Occasionally I'll take a call, but let's face it, I ride so fast that it's hard to hear over the wind.* 

A couple of days later, when I was forced to take a new route due to road construction (grrr), I saw this picture on in the bike lane:

I thought this was an amazing talent - certainly one I don't possess.  It reminded me of this scene from The Chase (1994) with Charlie Sheen (start around the 3 minute mark).

So I just want to take a minute to give a quick shout out to the person that put the template on backwards on the day that the road repainting happened. I giggled all day. It reminded me of the "not my job" picture.

* not sure if you can get the sarcasm there...I'm not really that fast.