Fishfishen!
Wheeeee fishies. After only an hour or so of sleep last night, I hauled myself out of bed and got dressed so I could go to the Adventure Aquarium with my sister. You can check below for my expectations and all that jazz. Just a quick recap for the lazy: my sister decided she wants to spend her Mondays off doing fun things, and I am allowed to tag along most of the time. This is in part because we've finally realised, after twenty years of omgewsisterew thinking that we're more alike in our interests than we've ever cared to admit. Sorta. She likes cute animals and suchlike. I think omgsquee and wet myself at the gory details about shark hunting habits and hippopotamii fighting for dominance and mating rights. Well, not really wet myself, but you get the idea.
Anyway, we had a blast today at the aquarium. Jack's already heard most of the highlights since I postoponed going to sleep until after he went to work. He didn't hear about the kjoot little diamondback terrapins we saw, or the humondo bluefin tunas, or the starfish I got to pet... Those things are so cool. We got stuck on the side of the touch a shark tank that the sharks apparently don't like, so I had to go without them. *sniffle* I've been to the aquarium a bunch of times and never touched one. When I was little it was because I was afraid of them or something. Not the lizards and roaches and spiders at the zoo, mind you. Just the sharks. And I'd never seen Jaws.
The Adventure Aquarium, formerly known as the New Jersey Aquarium at Camden or something along those lines, is trying to make fishfish omg exciting and fun to kids. In other words, there's a lot of "look, this is shiny!" and not a whole lot of "This is from X part of the world, it is adapted in these ways, lives for about this long, etc." I could have easily spent the whole day there, not just the whole morning, but there was a distinct lack of decent signage around. A given tank would have six or eight signs for the types of fish in there, but I had a knack for finding all the fish that /weren't/ on the signs. And alas, they were the coolest ones. Now what would be cool is if you could pull over your handy dandy aquarium person and ask them what it is, but you...er...can't. There are almost none in the actual fish areas. There are some in the African River area because they have birds loose in there and they have to warn people about getting shat upon and low-flying avians.
Monique and I spent at least twenty minutes in front of the biiiiig Ocean Realm tank playing name that fish. Of course, people were obstructing signs, so it was difficult to do that properly, but we ran into a lot of things that weren't named. Evar. Not even in other parts that had different signs for parts of the same tank. Mrah well. Next time I'm taking a Sierra Guide to fishfish and doing my own identifications. If only so I can figure out what the little purple, green, yellow, and orange fish swimming around in the hard coral tank was. Course, I'd also like to know what types of coral and stuff were in that tank. They were so effing cool looking. So many colors and shapes... But not labeled. Alas.
I think one of my favorite exhibits was the Creature Lab, which is home to the omgweird mudskippers and batfish, and the aquarium's two-toed sloth nicknamed "The Wookie." We got lots of pictures in there, but I don't know how well they turned out. My sister's are way better than mine. She got the most gorgeous picture of the lionfish...and then deleted it from the camera. So she took another, but it was nowhere as cool as the first. If I ever get the camera back from her, I'll upload and post them along with the pictures of Toby-puppy.
Other favorites were the three coral tanks (hard, soft, and Sparklypoo), and the Jules Verne Gallery. The last is ubercool- all freaky deep-sea fish like luminescent jellyfish, ginormous lobsters and crabs, a giant Pacific octopus, and sea dragons. I'm not sure if they all really count as deep sea or not, but it /was/ the sexiest gallery by far. No, the sea dragon in my badly-made icon of the day isn't from a picture I took. I made love to Google. I /did/ get some sea dragon pictures, but they're atrocious. Slow-moving animals and I still didn't get one without a motion blur, I think. Horrible photographer, me. Maybe I should have gotten Monique to take the picture.
Mah well. It was a really fun day, and if you're in the New Jersey area I really reccommend a visit. And then go to the National Aquarium in Baltimore and compare. Baltimore kicks Camden's ass by far, but I think the NJ fishville is cheaper. And they have good snackbar fodder. I spent five bucks on a lish veggie wrap, and my sister had corndogs. To quote her, "It's meat. On a stick. How much cooler does it get?" All I could think of was a story Jack told me about some English teacher that thought the pig's head in Lord of the Flies was Jesus because it was on a stick. "It's. On. A. STICK!" We're the only two that are going to find it funny, but who cares? My sister went down on Jesus today. (You can't tell me that's not what it looks like when someone eats a corndog.)
The only real problem I had today was a near-meltdown in the shark tunnel because there were a lot of kids poking and bumping into me, and making lots of noise every time a shark swam by. It really wouldn't have been such a problem if we hadn't been in an enclosed space, since they were being generally loud and screamy everywhere, but it was just really bad in that tunnel. I went and had myself a nice sit after that. At least we were near the end, because that's when I started to really feel that lack of sleep. Despite that, after the aquarium Monique and I went and got Toby a fold-up travel crate (I managed to talk her out of the small, cheap one and into a bigger, more expensive one...it involved me paying for half, but it worked!) for when he goes to visit or is being puppy-sitted.
Next Monday we're going to the Cape May Zoo, which apparenly has a brand new baby bongo named Abe. I'll be sure to get pictures and hopefully steal the camera back from my sister. She's getting her own soon, so...I should get it. Whee. And it's outside, so I can use the flash (though given how bright it's been I shouldn't have to.).
Still no news about the job. Mrah well. I'll call 'em Wednesday if they haven't gotten back to me yet.
Anyway, we had a blast today at the aquarium. Jack's already heard most of the highlights since I postoponed going to sleep until after he went to work. He didn't hear about the kjoot little diamondback terrapins we saw, or the humondo bluefin tunas, or the starfish I got to pet... Those things are so cool. We got stuck on the side of the touch a shark tank that the sharks apparently don't like, so I had to go without them. *sniffle* I've been to the aquarium a bunch of times and never touched one. When I was little it was because I was afraid of them or something. Not the lizards and roaches and spiders at the zoo, mind you. Just the sharks. And I'd never seen Jaws.
The Adventure Aquarium, formerly known as the New Jersey Aquarium at Camden or something along those lines, is trying to make fishfish omg exciting and fun to kids. In other words, there's a lot of "look, this is shiny!" and not a whole lot of "This is from X part of the world, it is adapted in these ways, lives for about this long, etc." I could have easily spent the whole day there, not just the whole morning, but there was a distinct lack of decent signage around. A given tank would have six or eight signs for the types of fish in there, but I had a knack for finding all the fish that /weren't/ on the signs. And alas, they were the coolest ones. Now what would be cool is if you could pull over your handy dandy aquarium person and ask them what it is, but you...er...can't. There are almost none in the actual fish areas. There are some in the African River area because they have birds loose in there and they have to warn people about getting shat upon and low-flying avians.
Monique and I spent at least twenty minutes in front of the biiiiig Ocean Realm tank playing name that fish. Of course, people were obstructing signs, so it was difficult to do that properly, but we ran into a lot of things that weren't named. Evar. Not even in other parts that had different signs for parts of the same tank. Mrah well. Next time I'm taking a Sierra Guide to fishfish and doing my own identifications. If only so I can figure out what the little purple, green, yellow, and orange fish swimming around in the hard coral tank was. Course, I'd also like to know what types of coral and stuff were in that tank. They were so effing cool looking. So many colors and shapes... But not labeled. Alas.
I think one of my favorite exhibits was the Creature Lab, which is home to the omgweird mudskippers and batfish, and the aquarium's two-toed sloth nicknamed "The Wookie." We got lots of pictures in there, but I don't know how well they turned out. My sister's are way better than mine. She got the most gorgeous picture of the lionfish...and then deleted it from the camera. So she took another, but it was nowhere as cool as the first. If I ever get the camera back from her, I'll upload and post them along with the pictures of Toby-puppy.
Other favorites were the three coral tanks (hard, soft, and Sparklypoo), and the Jules Verne Gallery. The last is ubercool- all freaky deep-sea fish like luminescent jellyfish, ginormous lobsters and crabs, a giant Pacific octopus, and sea dragons. I'm not sure if they all really count as deep sea or not, but it /was/ the sexiest gallery by far. No, the sea dragon in my badly-made icon of the day isn't from a picture I took. I made love to Google. I /did/ get some sea dragon pictures, but they're atrocious. Slow-moving animals and I still didn't get one without a motion blur, I think. Horrible photographer, me. Maybe I should have gotten Monique to take the picture.
Mah well. It was a really fun day, and if you're in the New Jersey area I really reccommend a visit. And then go to the National Aquarium in Baltimore and compare. Baltimore kicks Camden's ass by far, but I think the NJ fishville is cheaper. And they have good snackbar fodder. I spent five bucks on a lish veggie wrap, and my sister had corndogs. To quote her, "It's meat. On a stick. How much cooler does it get?" All I could think of was a story Jack told me about some English teacher that thought the pig's head in Lord of the Flies was Jesus because it was on a stick. "It's. On. A. STICK!" We're the only two that are going to find it funny, but who cares? My sister went down on Jesus today. (You can't tell me that's not what it looks like when someone eats a corndog.)
The only real problem I had today was a near-meltdown in the shark tunnel because there were a lot of kids poking and bumping into me, and making lots of noise every time a shark swam by. It really wouldn't have been such a problem if we hadn't been in an enclosed space, since they were being generally loud and screamy everywhere, but it was just really bad in that tunnel. I went and had myself a nice sit after that. At least we were near the end, because that's when I started to really feel that lack of sleep. Despite that, after the aquarium Monique and I went and got Toby a fold-up travel crate (I managed to talk her out of the small, cheap one and into a bigger, more expensive one...it involved me paying for half, but it worked!) for when he goes to visit or is being puppy-sitted.
Next Monday we're going to the Cape May Zoo, which apparenly has a brand new baby bongo named Abe. I'll be sure to get pictures and hopefully steal the camera back from my sister. She's getting her own soon, so...I should get it. Whee. And it's outside, so I can use the flash (though given how bright it's been I shouldn't have to.).
Still no news about the job. Mrah well. I'll call 'em Wednesday if they haven't gotten back to me yet.