Owen and Mzee

Besides the panda cam, my other online obsession is keeping track of Owen the baby hippo and Mzee the 103 year old tortoise. After last year's tsunami, Owen got seperated from his family and was stranded off the coast of Kenya. Local fisherman caught Owen in a net and he was taken to a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa. As soon as they let Owen, he waddled right over to the sanctuary's long time resident, Mzee (which means "old man" in Swahili) the tortoise. At first, Mzee wasn't too happy about his young, new, sidekick, but Owen was determined to make Mzee his new family. Now, they are best friends and virtually inseperable. You can learn more about Owen and Mzee and read their caretaker's blog here.
I love Owen and Mzee's story so much that when I was doing a lit search for the grade 6 reading book, I got it put in. Now kids all over the country (hopefully, if the damn thing sells) will learn about Owen and Mzee!

I Want to be a Baby Panda Doctor!

Somehow, I'm Not Suprised

I knew all of those orgies and steak dinners would get me in the end!

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

What Book Are You?

Here are my results....

You're To Kill a Mockingbird!

by Harper Lee

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have
changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you've
also taken a significant amount of flack. But you've had the admirable guts to
persevere. There's a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you,
but you're pretty sure it's worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you
whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Panda Cam

Check this out

What Is Love? And How Do I Lose It?

love is a confusing process
of entrapment and betrayal
a conversation you can't foretell
there is no body on the stage
to gather around, cross ourselves
and pray
it undermines the consciousness
and assuages by mania
i reproduce the exact same thoughts
and gamble your obsession never ends
a confining process
love is
of lower case b's
and Russian tragedies

the startup

i think i have finally reached the point where i have to leave my job. i've been holding out, thinking things would certainly, finally, eventually, turn around. but no. i took many quizzies today: what english dialect do you speak? 80% normal English, 15% upper midwestern and 5% yankee. what were in your past life? an obese beekepper in siberia. how weird are you? 30%, just weird enough to freak myself out, but not anyone else. those are the only ones i can remember the results for. also, some of you were on the recieving end of my afternoon reading...."you know you're from wisconsin when...." and "you know you're from chicago when....." no, machine politics does not bother me, and yes, i do keep the AC on till november.
so anyway, career change. don't laugh. but how about a gourmet pet bakery? i could do it from home and mail orders....or open up shop in my verrrrry dog friendly neighborhood. i'm not much of a cook, but how hard can be to make biscuits? really. i'ma lso not a very good salesperson, nor do i have a head for numbers, and i do have issues with adverstising, marketing and any sort of self-promotion. but whatever, i have a vision and it looks like fun fun fun! no more sitting at a desk, in a cube, getting fat for me....just helping the puppies (maybe i could donate to shelters on the weekend....have in bakery adoption events.....oh wow) and ripping off the yuppies! ha!

when the lights go out in the city

nothing reunites two roomates after six weeks of seperation like a power outage in 106 degree heat. clothes were removed, stories were told, candles were lit, beer was spilled.
in similar fashion, nothing bonds three co-workers like a roadtrip to appleton, wisconsin. pretty sure we covered all the elements of a great roadtrip-- medical emergancies, emotional catharsis, tornado warnings, wrong turns, brat fries, cheese curds, outlet malls, cornfields, horses, very tall midwestern boys, dancing, lemonade and vodka, itunes crafted playlists, rootbeer floats, a run-in with the law, continental breakfast and tear-jerker nuptuals.

best part of my day so far?

Discovering Chuckles in the office vending machine. Rewind about 15 years....picture ten-year-old Regina dripping wet after swim team practice, hanging out at the RCC pool, carefully opening a pack of Chuckles. Chuckles have always come in a certain order: red, yellow, black, orange, green. I would always start at the green end, there fore saving the best flavor -red, duh- for my last bite. Each individual Chuckles has five lines that crease across the top of each delicious jelly candy. So naturally, I consumed each Chuckle in five bites. Nibbles, really. Five bites, six Chuckles, this process took me a while, but so worth it when i got to that final, red Chuckle. Today, after not tasting a Chuckle for a good 10 years, I began my snack in usual form- on the green end. The sugared rectangles were smaller than I remembered and dividing each piece into five individual bites was nearly impossible as my teeth must be bigger now, or my patience smaller. The yellow flavor still sucks, my taste buds still go numb by the time I reach the black. Chuckles, after all these years have stayed true to form-- no tropical or extreme flavors for these candies. Green, Orange, Black, Yellow, Red. Kudos to Chuckles for not giving into marketing ploys or fancy packaging or advertising in general. I like my Chuckles just the way they are.

let us

let's go home, let's go out, let's go to the party, let's get drunk, let's do a shot, let's take a walk. let's listen to the band, let's go to eat, let's go see, let's go swim, let's go to lisbon. let's have a talk, let's have a snack, let's enjoy the view, let's go to the bar. let's take a hit, let's take a drive, let's take a sip, let's have a smoke. let's spare some change, let's blow a wad, let's wait and see, let's jump right in, let's have tea. let's take a cab, let's make a call, let's go to bed, let's have a ball, let's just enjoy the show.

home alone

since many of you don't know about this little blog of mine, i've decided to start typing and just see what happens. just for my own amusement, indulgence and satisfaction. i have been sans roomate going on a solid four days now. i've stopped wearing pants. i still wear underwear, but not pants. i hate lounging in pants, especially jeans, and now i finally have the opporotunity to do away with them all together. it's fun. i just realized i can now smoke in the house if i am so inclined. i can SMOKE and NOT WEAR pants at the same time! but it's summertime, and the porch is more enjoyable anyway. except i can't go on the porch without feeling guilty since i am surrounded by many pots of cute of cute little flowers that i am too lazy to water. they look at me. they look at me so helplessly. i know i should water them. but the water is so far away. all the way in the front of the house. and the porch is on the back. so smoking on the porch leads to a staring contest with the marigolds and i leave the porch feeling worse than when i came out. maybe i should smoke inside. do you think i should turn off the ac if i do? is it like in the car? is that even true? if you turn off the ac when you're smoking in the car it won't get so smelly as if you had left it on. because for years now, i have been automatically turning off the ac when i smoke in the car. i hope that's true, i'll be mad at the person who told me that if it's not. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. actually, you probably don't. you probably forgot that you told me somethiing that has influenced my nearly habits for years. wow. that makes you pretty important and you don't even realize it! that's pretty powerful shit. i wonder if i've ever off handedly said something that has affected someone's daily habits without even realizing it. i hope not!

hello internet

i'm just taking a peek....trying to decide if we should be friends. topics that i am considering writing about include; my adventures at starbucks, adventures at the dog park; daily bean reports from on location at millenium park, state specific education standards for literature and the language arts grade 6-8, what people are reading on the el, or my late night adventures at the chicago park district. what do you think? anything worth posting, because that's all i've got.