What we've seen the past few days.

Here's me driving 75 on the freeway:

 

Can I hear an "AHHHHHHH!! SCARIEST THING EVER!!!!!"?

On Saturday the family went to a zoo. I got to see my very first polar bear and giant tortoise! That was exciting. Although I felt really sorry for the animals - their cages were too small.

 

 

 

Things with horns:

 

 

Today, driving to Grama's, we took a detour to visit a two story outhouse.

 

It had five holes... Three in the bottom and two on top. There was a wall on the bottom floor that separated those holes from the stuff coming down from the top floor... Either way, I wouldn't want to be on the bottom while someone else was on the top, if you get my drift!

I've been doing some re-writing. I had hoped to have it all done by today.... But then I decided to re-do a pretty major part, which means re-writing a whole bunch more. I'll work on that a lot tomorrow, I think.
Also, of course, I've been reading. I'm waiting for the perfect moment to start The Return of the King (aka, sometime when I'm not about to fall asleep on my feet). I'm still reading Emma. And I started another Agatha Christie. This one is called Dead Man's Folly and so far it's one of my top favorites, even though I'm only a few chapters in and nobody's been murdered yet. I like it because it has Ariadne Oliver. She is a character! I'm not exactly sure how she and Poirot met... I haven't read that book yet. But she's a detective writer whose just a little bit dunderheaded. She's hilarious. I love her. I think she's one of my top favorite characters ever.

Here's a scene with her that I find fits us authors particularly well.
The pretense of the book is that Mrs. Oliver has set up a Murder Hunt (which is like a treasure hunt or a How to Host a Murder game). She has come up with all these clues and suspects for people to solve. The only problem is that she thinks something far more sinister is going on... So she calls in her good friend Poirot.
In this scene, she's trying to explain the plot of the Murder Hunt.

Mrs. Oliver gave a deep sigh and turned to Poirot. "Well, I'll  have to tell it you, then. Only I'm not very good at telling things. I mean if I write things, I get them perfectly clear, but if I talk, it always sounds the most frightful muddle; and that's why I never discuss my plots with anyone, I've learn not to, because if I do, they just look at me blankly and say - 'er - yes, but - I don't see what happened - and surely that can't possibly make a book.' So damping. And not true, because when I write it, it does!"

Anyways, I should be off to bed. Early to bed and early to rise makes a (wo)man healthy, wealthy, and wise!
Unfortunately, it's a little too late to be calling this early so... I'll just leave.
Goodnight!

Live long and prosper.

Day 15: More music.

Put your MP3 played on shuffle and list the first 15 songs that play. I have a problem... I don't have an MP3 player.... I do, however, have music on my computer so I'll just shuffle my list and do the first 15 songs.

1. Love Me Do by The Beatles.
2. Almost Like Being in Love by Natalie Cole.
3. Call Me Irresponsible by Michael Buble.

This is gonna take awhile... While I wait I'll post some picture from the zoo! My cousin, two aunts, and two uncles were in town this past weekend and while the men went biking, the women and my cousin and I went to the zoo.

 

A lot of the animals were being fed while we were there. Although you can't see in the picture... A few crows and a giant seagull were eager to join in on the penguins meal.

4. All You Need is Love by The Beatles.

"Hahahahahahaha." The wolves were lying around like usual. They are soooo beautiful! I love them. Very majestic.

5. Orange Colored Sky by Natalie Cole.

The orangutans were hiding in their burlap sacks...

6. She Loves You by The Beatles.

Two pythons in one cage! They were HUGE! Pretty scary. Mom told me a story about how her boyfriend in college was coming to the USA from Peru and wanted to bring his pet boa constrictor along. So he wrapped it around himself, put a trench coat over the snake, and boarded the airplane. And the airline didn't even know. And he took it to school and it lived under his bed. I told mom that I was glad she broke up with him.

7. I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles (I have a lot of Beatles, ok??!)
8. Day Tripped by The Beatles.

Elephant!

9. The Man Who Knew Too Much Theme (from my Music to Spy By CD).

Then we took a break for lunch and crows were EVERYWHERE!!! I had a giant chocolate ice cream cone. It was yummy!

9. Thou Swell by Natalie Cole.
10. *skips a Beatles song for something more interesting* (I promise, I have more than just Bealtes on my computer! Like....) Tango Para Una Ciudad (2da parte) by Astor Piazzola (from the CD that came with my new saxophone book.)

Look at those paws. GIANT! This jaguar was sleeping right next to glass.

11. Data, Data, Data by Hans Zimmer (from the Sherlock Holmes movie soundtrack).

Pretty toucan. They were flying around and putting on a show for us. It was hard to get a good picture of them.

12. With a Little Luck by Paul McCartney.

This gal had fun eating an apple and then some broccoli... And then regurgitating the broccoli. And then eating it again. Repeat. Five times. It was gross. And quite funny as well.
In the background her friends were eating too.... Well, when they weren't staring at us.

 

 

13. Catatonic by Hans Zimmer (from the Sherlock Holmes movie soundtrack).

Red Panda! Which my cousin had just done a report on.

14. Avalon by Natalie Cole (I have a lot of her as well).

Savannah creatures.
Usually the hippos lie in one place and don't move. Not this time. I never knew that our zoo had two hippos... This time there was one in the water and one lying in the sun... But not for long! The one in the sun soon got up and walked into the water. I have NEVER seen a hippo do that before! It was so cool! Then he and his friend started talking to each other.

15. The Avengers TV Theme song from the Spy CD. What a pefect song to end with! I have never seen the TV show Avengers but I want to because it's about secret agents and has a SUPER COOL theme song!!

Looking back I have a lot of love songs on my computer... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not....

Now I shall leave you so I can go watch Star Wars #5.

Live long and prosper!

The Zoo!

I went to the zoo on Saturday with my dad and two friends.
Here are some pictures I took:

A heron atop the penguin exhibit.

A penguin getting ready to jump in the water!

Penguin up close.

This sloth bear had a hard time making up his mind.... He kept rushing out of his cave and then rushing back in. In and out in and out.... It was very neurotic.

This frog looked very wisdomous.

The tiger. He kept looking at me. I wonder if he's related to Hobbes.....?

A very pretty bird.

A kookaburra! He wasn't sitting in an old gum tree... He was sitting right next to the glass. See the little girl's hand at the bottom left?

Close up.

This wolf was being very photogenic.

He posed for a very dramatic picture shortly before getting up and walking away (probably to get away from all the on-lookers).

Doesn't he look like he's smiling?

This wolf looked like he was dead.... There were four wolves altogether. They all looked exactly the same.

A bear that also looks like he was smiling.

The animals must have been happy... This mountain goat also looks like he's smiling! He was rubbing his head against the tree. That might have been the source of his happiness.

The Komodo dragon. He's always been one of my favorites. I can remember being a little girl and being super excited to go see the Komodo dragon for the first time (he was new to the zoo way back then). That was during my "dinosaur" faze (because EVERY homeschooler goes through a dinosaur faze).

An orangutan. They seem to always be hiding underneath their burlap sacks.... One got up and started walking around and one of my friends jokingly said, "He's thinking out of the sack!" She was also saying that in the wild, orangutans have giant leaves to cover them but since the zoo doesn't have that particular leaf, they give the orangutans burlap sacks instead.

The elephants were having a fun time eating the grass outside their exhibit.... And walking away from us. Whenever we got to a place where we could see them, they would walk away.

A warthog! I love warthogs.

The hippo always seems to be dozing or out of sight. He's never in the water. On Saturday, we were able to see him! Not very clearly, but that doesn't matter.

Me in the reflection of my friend's sunglasses. I've always wanted to take a picture like this.

A gorilla. =D "Eeee!"

Another gorilla. He's the biggest and I believe the leader of all the gorillas. He whipped the sack around his neck, grabbed a stick, and settled down in this stance. My friend said he looked like Yoda. "Adorable he is, mmmphh."

This peacock wanders around the zoo. He was near the exit on Saturday. A large crowd had gathered around him and he was very upset about it so the zoo workers had to fence him off. Poor animal... It must be so hard to have people staring at you and taking pictures all the time.

He kept turning around and around in agitation. The back of a peacock is just as beautiful as the front.

A drapery of feathers.

Showing off.

Beautiful.

My computer is fixed.... The only problem is that I lost all my pictures and documents. Some of it was backed up (like my American Girl Doll movie) but a lot of my more recent stuff will never be there ever again.... I am most distressed about my American Girl Doll photos and videos (I lost almost all of them.... All the pictures/photoshoots are gone and most of the videos. The Twelfth Night movie is the only thing that survived). I am also very distressed about a story I wrote for my friend Jen's writing competition a few months back. I had written this story based off a whole bunch of Beatles songs and now it's gone forever. You can never take words back, whether it's something mean you say, or something cool you've written that's been deleted forever.
However, I can be very glad that my AG movie was saved! I worked all last summer on it and it would have been a disaster if it has been lost.... I can also be glad that both my novels (the one I wrote last summer and my NaNoWriMo one) were saved as well! The aren't in document form anymore.... But my novel I wrote over the summer was published through Blurb.com and I have five copies of it. If I ever need to re-write it, I'll have to re-type it into the computer, but that's fine. And my NaNoWriMo novel I printed out because I can't edit in word documents. It's easier for me if I edit physically with a pencil on paper.
I am going to have to re-type everything into the computer (which will take forever I just realised...) but I was planning on doing that anyways because so far, I've re-written practically everything.
Although I lost many pictures and documents that I can never get back, I have to keep telling myself that it does not matter. I can't take pictures of documents to heaven with me. In 10 years it won't matter that a few pictures I took are gone. The real thing that matters is my faith in God.
It reminds me of this video: