Valentines Day

Thursday was the over-commercialised day of romance also known as Valentines Day. Bluey had been planning some things for a few days earlier, while I was going to buy the dinner. We headed off to the shopping center to pick something up that Bluey had organised and to get a 2GB memory card for a action cam that we ordered (A valentines day gift for Bluey from me… I know...romantic hey!)
Anyway, we then had to go by train somewhere. On the way Bluey gave me what she had ordered. A heap of photos printed from our time together. We have heaps of pictures, but all saved on disc & not real photos, so it was great to have something to put into a photo album. When we arrived at the needed trainstop, we had to walk a little bit to get where we were going. I had no idea as to what Bluey had planned til we got near it. She had tickets to 2 shows in the planetarium. It was great. Laying back comfortably in reclining chairs, watching the stars & planets coming, going and moving was just wonderful. I could have stayed there for hours watching..but I would have fallen asleep it was that comfortable. Bluey would tell you that she caught me with my eyes shut, mouth open and starting my heavy-breathing-just –before-snoring phase, but I was just relaxing and thinking about the cosmos^^.
When it was over we were hungry & needed food. Being partial to meat, I decided we should go to a steak house. A good choice I say. I ordered the T-bone steak with baked potato while Bluey ate the turkey with mushroom sauce and baked potato. When our meals arrived I was a little miffed to find out our meals did not come with salad, but as Bluey pointed out, it said on the menu that the salad was extra. I checked the menu again anyway...just to see if the salad was

included in the fine print. (Bluey was right...it wasn't included^^). However, the meat was just SOOOOO GOOD. A 500 gram T-bone that was so tender, flavoursome and cooked perfectly. Mmmmmmm yummm :-P´ :-q.
It was a very good day spent with a wonderful, wonderful person (I am refering to Bluey, not myself.)

Snow & Zoo

Well, a lot has happened as it has been a while since I last put a post in…yes I know, I’ve been a bit of a slack-arse.
The most exciting things are that it has snowed, we went to the new tropical house at the zoo & yesterday was Valentines day. The snow was a few weekends ago. It came down in huge flakes. Unfortunatally that was because it was too wet & the ground was too warm for it to last long, but hey, it did snow.
The zoo was great. Bluey & I went last Sunday and Erik & Maria joined us later.We went earlier because we tend to take our time a lot more than the others. We hadn’t heard details about the new tropical house at the zoo, so we were very pleasantly surprised to walk through the entrance door to go into a room where ring-tailed lemurs were interacting with zoo visitors. Bluey & I love them (Bluey more so since her Madagascar trip...but hey, you'll just have to read about that in Blueys blog ;-D). They were adourable. I kept thinking the song line “I want to move it, move it… He wants to move it, move it… she wants to move it, move it…we want to….MOVE IT!” Those of you wondering “What the hell is he going on about?”, watch the movie “Madagascar”, then re-read this & it will all become clear to you as you will have been enlightened. We would come back to them about 4 more times because they were just so cool. I found that carrying the back-pack was not so bad because it provided them a comfortable sitting place and a spot to jump on their way to somewhere else. Later when Erik & Maria were there with us, I felt the backpack was quiet heavy. Later Bluey said I had 6 of them on me at that time. I wish we could have taken a flash photo at that time. Clear photos were not so easy to take either due to the fact that you can take photos only without the flash. When lemurs moved too fast, they became blurry. Also when you have your arm out to take a photo, one may jump on your arm or back & BUMP…blurry photo…LOL. It was great. We thoroughly loved their interactions. After spending a fair amount of time with our little friends we moved on. The rest of the zoo was well designed with lovely, roomy enclosures. I was a bit upset not to see the king cobra, because he chose not to come out of his hide through a hole in the wall. Not the zoos fault that he was not in a very sociable mood on that day :-). I have no idea how big he is, but looking at the shed scales in the enclosure, it is a pretty good size. One point that did bug me was that they had a enclosure with a nice sized reticulated python in it, however the sign said “Green Anaconda”. I know it may be trivial to some people, but I don’t like people getting false information from somewhere they should be learning more about animals. However I liked the tropical house set-up in general. I love reptiles and will always be a devoted reptile lover, but I do have to admit…lemur interaction was probably the highlight of this visit.

Tattoos & Transformations

Yesterday Bluey & I went to the city to arrange a appointment for me to get my tattoo. Erik had told us that our favourite studio was well booked out. When we enquired, we were told the earliest appointment was July. We didn't really get a answer as to how much my desired tattoo would cost, however going by the price of Blueys previous ones, we didn't expect it to be cheap. Hers are great works with fine detail, but shaded in comparison to my somewhat larger, detailed & coloured tat would immediately push the price up. So we went off to ask at another reputable studio. We were relieved that the bloke immediately recognised the subject, said it was a great picture & suggested it be a bit larger & went off to enlarge the image so it would be better sized for my arm. At first I was somewhat concerned that it was an attempt to make it more work & thus more money for them, however when we enquired about the price, we were quoted a very good price much cheaper than we expected. However, once again we were faced with a booking dilemma. This studio had its next appointment sometime in November! What is going on here...why is everyone suddenly getting tattoos? When we first got ours done we had about 1-2 weeks wait, not nearly 1/2 to 1 year! Ahh well, what can we do but wait & hope that there is a cancellation & I can get in earlier. Fortunately Bluey has only 2 months to wait ^^ to get her tattoos refreshed.

Another thing that has happened is a few nights ago we were laying in bed, just about asleep & Bluey asked "What the hell is your praying mantis doing?" It was on the top of the enclosure, hanging lower than normal. "It's shedding I think!" I said as we quickly went to investigate & sure enough, there it was hanging under its old shed skin with tiny wings not yet developing. It's a bugger we missed the actual shedding, but we did manage to get photos of it at different stages of develop-ment throughout the night. Now, I just need to get a orchid praying mantis as well ^^...maybe. We will just have to see what future blogs may bring won't we? :-)