One day I will have a month full of light hearted, super engaging books for you… but that month is not this month. Instead, I’m still knee deep in literary memoir and am taking y’all along for the ride with me! Not many people have had as much bad luck as I have, but not many people have had as much good luck, either. – Tig Notaro I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro Tig, a stand-up comic and comedy…
Getting bluebonnet pictures were really important to me this year. Even though I’ve admired the amazing wildflowers in Texas for seven years now, I’ve never actually taken any kind of bluebonnet pictures. Maybe that’s because of this hilarious tumblr that makes fun of people squatting in the bluebonnets for pictures, but mostly I’ve just been lazy. Originally, the plan was to meet my roommate at a little patch of bluebonnets by our house and take some photos of the dogs….
One time my super cool California friend took me to La Jolle Cove near San Diego, and I was surrounded by sea lions and harbor seals. This trip was made even more fantastic by three things: I listened to a This American Life episode years ago all about the cove and the battle between animal activists and beach patrons. It’s really interesting, and you can listen here. You can get close enough to touch the animals. Of course I don’t…
I spent my New Years with old friends in the California desert. Joshua Tree reminded me a lot of Big Bend in Texas. It’s a surreal, almost alien like desert landscape. While Big Bend was red and mountainous, Joshua Tree was tan and filled with boulders. Both are beautiful. My itinerary in Joshua Tree consisted of hiking with my friends and hanging out at the house after. There’s really no night life to speak of in the desert towns near…
I grew up watching Jack Hanna on TV showcasing all sorts of amazing animals from this legendary place called the San Diego Zoo. When I was younger, I was pretty sure that I’d grow up to be a marine biologist, zoologist or exotic vet… so I took all things animal pretty seriously. The San Diego Zoo was all over my favorite TV Channel, Animal Planet, as the be all end all zoo in North America. I didn’t know what wondrous creatures it held,…
I still have a lot of California adventures to share with y’all from my vacation over Christmas break, but I wanted to break up those posts with a more reflective variety of the past year and the upcoming one. I haven’t done any of my normal “end of year” posts since late 2014/early 2015, and I won’t be doing them this year either. When 2015 ended, I wanted nothing more than to shut the door on that tragic series of…
I’ve mentioned it here before, but when I was a kid I was obsessed with whales. I had little books about marine mammals, with profiles on every type of whale and dolphin. Bottlenose dolphins were my favorite, and the white speckled dolphins were my least favorite (which seems dumb now, because those sound super pretty and I would like to see one). In the whale world, I very much preferred tooth over baleen whales. Humpbacks were okay, but I didn’t like…
It seems I have developed a bit of a tradition spending my birthday around wild animals. One year of my late 20’s we went to the rescue zoo in Austin with friends. On my 30th birthday Tim took the day off of work, and told me to decide whatever it was I wanted to do. I suggested we venture out to the drive-through safari near San Antonio, although I pouted a little internally that he hadn’t come up with any plans of…