Quote-o-the-day

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."
-Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies






(this is one of my favorite trees in my neighborhood. it makes me so happy to look at it whenever i pass by it--so beautiful and majestic)

Creating Twilight Fans, One Friend at a Time

I'm slowly but surely converting my friends into Twilight fans. Last week, my friend Kellyn texted me to tell me she's in the middle of reading Twilight. After I was talking about it so much, she finally decided to buy it and give it a try. And now she's hooked. YES! Another person who now understands where I'm coming from! Another friend to accompany me for the midnight release of Breaking Dawn!

Grunion Rap

The night herons are out
Maybe looking for the grunion scouts

Are they here for fun
Or are they here for the run?

The tide is high, the moon is low
The time is right, lets hope they show

Grunion,
We're on a grunion run
I said grunion,
We're on a grunion run

...okay, maybe I should stick with my day job. I thought it was a pretty clever rap around midnight, but I think it was the lack of sleep kicking in. My friends and I have become Grunion Greeters, and monitored a stretch of beach for a possible grunion run from 11pm-1am last night. Unfortunately, we didn't see a thing, not even ONE grunion scout. It was still a lot of fun though--walking the beach by moonlight, being silly with our grunion interpretive dance, making up a rap, and trying to lure them up the beach with our grunion vocal call, shuffle dance and spirit fingers. Nerds, I know. I'm sooo jealous to hear that the night before, there was a HUGE run over in Seal Beach. Hopefully we'll get to see something the next time we monitor!

twilight

I have a problem. Well, I have many, but I'm going to come clean about one of them right now--did I ever mention that I'm addicted slash obsessed over the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer? Well, since this blog's readership is probably a grand total of 5 people, you probably already know this from talking to me. I am seriously freakishly obsessed. And I am SOOOOOOOOO excited about this:

Twilight Promo Video

oh my gosh. CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!

All In a Day's Work

(4th grade girl, last night, after dinner during one of our programs): "No wonder I'm so skinny--I only ate one piece of pizza, and other people ate, like, three slices."
Kids. They can be so entertaining.

Quote-o-the-day

"Live in the sunshine,
swim the sea,
drink the wild air..."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Laughing Babies

The adorably cute Miles Hagan at his 1st birthday party this past weekend. I love laughing babies. There's such beauty and innocence contained in their whole-hearted smiles and laughs.

All In a Day's Work

(While we were looking at a large pod of Common Dolphins swimming around the boat today): "Are these Mahi Mahi?"
Goodness, no! Dolphinfish are an entirely different thing from Dolphins. Dolphinfish are fish. As in the kind you eat. Dolphins are mammals. As in the kind that are protected.

No whale sightings today, but dolphins are always fun to look at. We also had an awesome Mola mola sighting. I usually see those guys as we cruise by them on a boat, with no time to stop and admire. But today, we did stop and admire the big guy, just floating at the surface on his side. So cool.

And for the record, I was asked the sonar question again.

heat wave!

whoa, 94 degrees in the lbc today. walking outside feels like walking into an oven. and then....it's dropping to the 70s tomorrow. gotta love the crazy california weather!

"AHHH! CUCUMBER! OH NO!"

I've recently realized that a lot of amusing things happen where I work. Sometimes funny, sometimes crazy, often ridiculous, I think it's about time that I start recording these stories. I mean, how often do you hear someone scream "AHHH! CUCUMBER! OH NO!" while munching on your lunch? Especially when they're not talking about the cucumber you eat on your salad, haha. While some of us were eating in one of the classrooms yesterday, one of my coworkers was cleaning the fish tank and accidentally sucked a sea cucumber through the tube. It was hilarious. Really, it was....Maybe you had to be there...

All in a Day's Work

In this episode of Ridiculous Things People Say/Do/Ask, we will be listening in on whale watching trips.

(Very angry, after not seeing any whales):"I can't believe I paid all this money for my family to come on this trip, and we didn't even see any whales! You are an established whale watching institution, you should be able to predict where they are!"
Seriously? *sigh* People can have such ridiculous expectations sometimes. We have predicted where they should be--on their annual migration off our coast. As far as being able to find exactly where they are, that depends on two things--being lucky and having good eyesight. It's a big BIG ocean, people. Whales are big, but not that big.

"Can't you use sonar to find the whales?"
Hmmm. Call me crazy, but for some reason, I think that would be a HUGE problem.

"Do you control the whales?"
Why yes, yes we do. We have this button right here, and when we push it, the whales come up to the boat. And all that driving around the ocean we did the past two hours? No, we weren't desperately searching for whales. It was just to keep you on your toes until we pushed the whale button.

Done. Camping.

The 10-day work week is officially over! Our trip to the island was cancelled, which was extremely disappointing. I had been looking forward to the trip for over a month. *Sigh* so sad. Instead, we did some physical labor and fixed up the boat a bit. And now, I get to go camping! Woohoo! I always say this, and I will say it again--I wish I would/could camp more often than I actually do. This Leo Carrillo trip has become a bit of a tradition, so at least I end up going at least once a year. But that's sad, just once? I love it so much, and should really make an effort to go more than that. So the group for this weekend's trip has grown a little bit, and we now have 20 (!) people going. I'm looking forward to seeing friends that, due to our busy lives, I don't get to see too often. I didn't get to hike or tidepool or bbq on the island, but at least I'll get to do it this weekend! A bonus is we'll be boozing it up too (none of that while working on the island.) Don't worry, I won't be boozing it up too much-we don't want any birthday-esque blackouts...