Pretty but don’t eat them!
You’d think it was spring or something.
Sunning…
A morning drink (Edie, Isabella, and Ashford).
Google catching a few rays after breakfast.
Pensive in the morning.
Marbles wondering how he’s going to get that bird.
Hope your Thanksgiving was fun and your weekend is restful or filled with shopping bargains. I’ll choose the former.
My employer had its annual event for employees last night at The Phoenix Zoo. Not open to the public yet, we had the place to ourselves for ZooLights. “When the sun goes down and the animals go to sleep, the Phoenix Zoo magically transforms into one of the largest holiday lighting events in the southwest with 2.5 million lights and more than 500 custom-made animal and nature light sculptures.” It was still very crowded with several thousand people there but a little less so than when you go to the regular ZooLights. The weather was perfect, everyone was nice, and it was really fun.
I didn’t want to take my camera along and knew that to get really good shots I would also have to haul my tripod so all I had was my point and shoot. The link above has a video of ZooLights if you want to get an idea of what it really looks like but here are a few shots.
The photos look great on the little camera screen but, once home on the computer, they’re all blurry. Oh, well, you get the idea.
The Dancing Trees, set to music, are really fairly awesome and a lot of ooohing and ahhhing ensued.
Another highlight was Stingray Bay, where you can put your hands in the water, after washing them up to the elbow, and let the stingrays brush against them. The stingrays seemed to be having a really good time, swimming furiously around and around and making all sorts of human contact.
They were fascinating to watch. Although most of the other animals were safely tucked away for the night or out-of-bounds, a good time seemed to be had by everyone else.
I go through this intersection by the Crosscut Canal on my way home from work most nights and I always like the view. Even though it is very industrialized, I like the look of all the lines from the power lines to the palm trees to the signs to the lines on the road, all set against the backdrop of the mountains. Not conventionally pretty but sort of interesting graphically.
So I shot these out my window with my point and shoot while waiting for the light to change. It’s a very busy scene, which is my metaphor for why I haven’t posted in several days. I’ve been busy…with birthdays. Six people I know have November birthdays. Tomorrow, the 20th, is Tony’s birthday. Tonight I am baking a cake while blogging. My friend Jere’s birthday was the 15th so our little birthday club went out to celebrate her birthday a couple of days before. Jere chose the Arizona Humane Society as her charity of choice.
It was also both of my boss’ birthdays and our office tradition is we provide the goodies for our boss’ birthdays. And, additionally, 2 other people in my office had November birthdays and we celebrated those, too. Plus we attended a surprise party for another friend who has a November b-day, even though the party itself was on Halloween. So, Happy Birthday to a bunch of people I know.
Any other Scorpios out there?
Is it dark and dreary where you are? Is it snowing?
Oh, sorry. Not here. But it is one of those Arizona fall days where the clouds are fluffy, it’s a little breezy, and kind of cool.
More of the same for the weekend, low 70s in the day, low 50s at night. Brrrrr. Sweater weather, hot cocoa weather.
Probably gonna read on the patio a little, get some chores and shopping done, spend some time outside, relax. What about you?
Forgotten…
Foreclosed!
My next-door neighbor had to leave her home yesterday for an apartment. She had come on some bad times and was unable to get herself out of them so now she has gone. The house was in disrepair but it does have a guest house for potential income property, which is what she used it for.
One of the sadder results of this was that she had to take one of her two dogs to the Humane Society because she was above the size limit allowed at her new apartment. The dog was 11 years old and her owner thought she had a home lined up for her but, at the eleventh hour, it fell through. Despite tons of emails that she and I sent, no one wanted an older dog. The shelters and helpful organizations are full right now. She knows that it’s a very slim chance that her dog will get a new home but she’s in a predicament that many, many other people have been facing and felt she had no other options. We have 15 (mostly outdoor) cats, most of whom are dumpees themselves, and this dog is a cat-chaser so we couldn’t take her. Everyone had a reason why they couldn’t, even the owner’s relatives and close friends.
So now there’s just an empty, sad, bank-owned house next door and the uncertainty that it brings…will it become a crack house, a drop house, a wild party house, a house full of cat-haters, an abandoned eyesore, or what? It’s so tragic~people and animals losing their homes, homes that knew happier times sitting desolate and damaged. When will we feel the effects of the supposed end of the recession? Some people (and their unfortunate pets) will never recover from it.
