Bad pic but a great day

This is my reflection in the glass around the slender tailed meerkat's exhibit.  It is turning in to a beautiful day to be all alone at the zoo.  For the first two hours it was chilly and there was almost no one here but me.  I watched them feed Jade (the. smallest of the giraffes), the asian small clawed otters, the ducks, the harpy eagle (dead rat), Patrick (the silverback gorrillia) and the red crowned cranes.  Now I'm basking in the sun with the meerkats, eating an apple (me - not them). 

I have another hour before Sheela will be done followed by nearly an hour on the train.  She decided that riding alone is not something that she's ready for after all.  There were too many people asking for money and too many homeless people spending the night on the early train for her to be comfortable.   

Funzoids

Today is the DI Tournament.  Sheela's team named themselves the Funzoids.  They are still in the elementary school but are competing in the Middle School division because most school districts include the 6th in MS.

The presentation is Improv - more later.

Maya doesn't always hate Sheela

Training

Sheela is off at Zookeeper training today.  Tomorrow she starts her service. 

Work

I haven’t written much lately because of a combination of travel, a massive workload, an FDA audit, an MRP system crash, some home PC crashes and a serious need to blow off steam.  We’ve spent our free time eating out with the kids.  We’re in a “try something new” mode for our eating out.  Last week Sid took the kids to a German place.  This week we are looking at Greek but haven’t really finalized the details.

It may be right but I don't have to like it.

I'm sulking this evening.  My trip to Palm Springs is about to be cancelled.  Something more important has come along that we don't get to schedule and I need to stay in the office.  I know I need to be here and I know that I can more easily be replaced in CA but I really wanted to go.

It isn't just the desert in winter for what amounts to a four-day party or that I've waited 15 years to be invited to this trip or that I actually had a need to meet with some of the sales team but that I wanted to be included on the culture training and the chance to teach in front of 100+ people.  I'm really bummed.

Hanging out

The kids and I are putting their brand new rec center memberships to the test today.  Sunil convinced us that he can not practice his basketball skills outside when the net freezes; the ball gets stuck in the net.  So here we are unfortunately the basketball courts are tricked out for volleyball on Wed nights and Saturday mornings.  Those are the best two times for me to bring him up here.  We are consoling ourselves with ping pong and air hockey.

Public Transportation

I take every opportunity that I can to ride the DART trains here.  I’m not a big fan of the buses and it really never occurs to me to use them at all but the train is fun and frequently goes where I want to go.  Saturday Sunil and I took the train to the American Airlines Center to see the Globetrotters.  It honestly takes almost twice as long to ride the train as it does to drive but it’s basically simple and its fun; so we do it anyway.  I was a little steamed this time though with how difficult it is to buy the tickets.  The kiosks are entirely automated and come with pretty clear instructiosn but half of them were out of service, none of them take credit or debit cards, half wouldn’t accept bills and half wouldn’t accept coins.  I was unable to purchase roundtrip tickets for us as I didn’t have enough cash so I paid more for one way.  On the way back I had to try three different machines to be able to make the purchase.  The first one warned you that it would not make change and I had a $20 but needed less than three dollars in fares.  The second wouldn’t let me buy both my ticket and Sunil’s at the same time but it did accept my two $1 bills and produced three quarters as change.  Then I had to go to a third machine to use those 3 quarters to buy Sunil’s ticket because it was in a bill only mode.  It’s hard to be excited about it when you have to work this hard.