365 days 75-85

75/365


Labradors are definitely water dogs, as evident in the not-so-tiny Riley. She ADORES water in all shapes and forms - digging in her water bowl, making a gigantic mess attempting to drink said water, and leaping into her kiddie pool are some of her favorite hobbies.



76/365


Happy St. Patrick's Day!! One of my semi-traditions is giving holiday-appropriate props to creatures and taking photos of them, so enjoy Kogi being the cutest green bean with his shamrock!



77/365


Dylan and I went to the beach after dinner and saw this enormous kite zipping around in the wind. It was like a giant dragon swooping over the ocean.



78/365


We had a cookout at Raf and Lyia's house to celebrate a beautiful spring evening. We ate burgers on the patio and then sat inside with the windows wide open to drink Moscato and carnation pink wine coolers while their dog, Raja, peeked in on us to see how we were doing.





79/365


I caught this little lizard friend in the theater and took a couple of glamor shots before letting him go (if I see a lizard, I can't just not try to catch it).



80/365


Sunset walks at Sunset Lake.



81/365


We've had a myriad of animals in our bathtub (like our spiny soft-shell turtle from last summer), so it wasn't really a surprise to me when I overheard Laura speaking to someone on the phone about keeping a great-blue heron at our house overnight. I quickly asked her how much time we had before our new temporary roommate arrived and, thankfully, it was enough time for the speediest shower of my life.



82/365


Riley is obsessed with Chunk's huge rawhide bone, so she steals it on a regular basis.



83/365


Corpus Christi is the birthplace of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, a well-known tejano singer in the hispanic community. Everyone is OBSESSED with Selena here, and just a couple of years ago they created a festival to honor her called the Fiesta de la Flor. I've never been (considering the most I know about Selena is what I gleaned from the movie featuring J-Lo that I watched in Spanish every year of my life from grades 7-11), but this year one of my co-workers won free tickets as well as free drink tickets. I can't say no to free alcohol and an adventure, so we headed to Selenafest to check it out. It was like a tiny convention where everyone was dressed as Selena or bore shirts/jewelry with her name and face. Little girls wore bustiers and rhinestone jumpsuits, there were tons of taco food trucks, and the most interesting installment of all was a silent disco - essentially a DJ spinning tracks you can only hear if you wear headphones. It was a little disconcerting to see a glowing mass of people wearing blinking red headphones migrating in a slow circle, singing Selena songs at the top of their voices in unison as they listened to the music that was silent to us. The DJ was ferociously spinning his beats (dropping his beats?), a screen with colorful Selena-inspired graphics dominating the space behind him, but nothing could be heard except for the joyful crowd. SO BIZARRE. I wanted to join in on the experience, so we made our way into the pit and joined the mass of people slowly making their way in the circle, singing to Selena. However, now we could HEAR said songs! We participated for a couple of circuits around the circle and then headed out. Now I can safely say I've experience Fiesta de la Flor (and I probably don't have to go back. As one of my friends so delicately said, "well it's not like she's doing anything new so it probably won't change much year to year...").



84/365


I attended a friend's wedding shower at a small wine bar called Glow. It was aesthetically adorable, there was free sangria, and I got a beach towel as a shower gift.



85/365


On Sundays I like to hang out in coffee shops and "work". This involves editing photos, making blog posts, writing in my journal, and working on other artistic projects that I've given myself. It helps me get out of the house and do the things I enjoy that stimulate my mind vs. watching Gossip Girl in a stupor all day (which I ALSO enjoy, it just doesn't stimulate my mind as much).

NEI ADVENTURES

In December I was able to attend the Natural Encounters Inc. contemporary animal training workshop. It. Was. Magical.



I spent the week learning from some of the best trainers and behavioral modification experts in the field, broadening my mind and expectations, and making progress with hands-on application in training green (non-experienced) baby macaws. I also ate a ton of delicious food and everyday at promptly 5 PM we had a wrap-up wine and cheese discussion.










We were split into teams where we could work one-on-one with our team lead (a senior trainer at the facility), as well as the other trainers running the workshop (like non-TV's Steve Martin and my favorite person ever Susan Friedman). In our flight we had baby macaws named after Firefly and beer (two of my favorite things!). I ended up working with both Serenity, a blue and gold macaw, and Miller, a scarlet macaw. Our tasks involved training a wave, a spin, putting each on cue, chaining them together, training a backwards spin, chaining that one instead with a different cue - there was a lot to accomplish in a small amount of time. I had serious breakthroughs and serious breakDOWNS (there were tears at one point due to comparison between myself and others). In reality, it was an important lesson to learn - although the learner is not wrong, sometimes antecedent arrangement does not make for a good training session.

For instance.



Little Miss Serenity.

We were using specifically peanuts for training, and after a couple of reps of waving she would decide she was done and fly into the rafters to hang out with her friends. It was frustrating, especially when I was only halfway done training the wave and everyone else was ahead. Antecedent arrangement-wise, we learned that if we put all her friends away in the smaller enclosures within the flight, she was less tempted to join them. We then discovered she didn't care for peanuts, but LOVED walnuts! In fact, one of her trainers thanked me in discovering this since they had also been having issues with her attention span. With these arrangements in place, we were able to have slightly longer, more successful sessions. I didn't end up doing everything on our list of tasks, but when asked if I was confident that I could train these behaviors I said YES! Because I know I could, especially if I had the time and perfect antecedent arrangements. It was a good learning experience.





Toward the end of the week, we were able to choose showcase behaviors that we could train to present to the rest of the class. I wanted a mini obstacle course, but ended up narrowing it down to a ramp behavior with a spin on top and then a flight to the hand near the end. Someone else wanted to chain sending her parrot to a perch, to wave, and then fly to another perch, another wanted to train a retrieve behavior, and the last team member wanted to train a circuit flight (one I was very interested in since I've wanted to train a circuit flight with Kogi since forever). It was amazing to see the different training styles and how each goal could be accomplished in so many different ways.







This little blue and gold's name was Vera *snicker*







This was Tesla, a blue-throated macaw. They're incredibly endangered and NEI has a fantastic breeding program for them - in fact, a couple of very late chicks hatched while we were there!




A great green macaw named Selva (another endangered species)




Miller the scarlet macaw




















This course literally changed my life. It will change how you think about animals, their learning processes, and the way you train. I HIGHLY recommend it as an animal trainer if you have the money, time, or interest (and you don't even have to be a bird trainer, in fact I was in the minority!)


Plus you get to play and see lots of cute birds.

365 days 64-74

Another weekend has come and gone; this one entailed reptile expos (where I seriously considered adopting a new friend), iced coffee, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (that I've reached an infuriating stalemate in), crying over a children's cartoon, extracting baby birds from my hair, and eating out at a sketchy but delicious Chinese buffet.



64/365


I was obsessed with this bike - it's just so happy!



65/365


I'm a sucker for cute shops painted in bright colors.



66/365


I had to go back to the afore-mentioned flower shop to take more photos of their amazing fence. Look! A PURR-MAID!!



67/365


I'M IN MIAMI, BITCH!! Last year, Megan sent me a link to the Pitbull After Dark Party. Basically it was a cruise where you partied with Pitbull for the entire weekend. I exclaimed that it looked fun, albeit a little noncommittally. The next day, she surprised me with tickets to said cruise - and that's how we ended up on a BFFL trip to Miami! We both woke up super early, met up at DFW where we had a tearful reunion (Megan's suitcase ran over my toes as I tackled her) and got Starbucks (Adam and Magen FOREVER!), and then we were in Miami. Our Air B n B was perfectly situated right in the heart of South Beach so we could walk pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. We ended up on Lincoln St. in the evening, where we saw a man with a lemur, drank the best mojitos I've ever had at Havana 1957, and admired the art deco style buildings.



68/365


Our first morning in Miami was spent drinking mimosas like the CAS ladies we are as we lounged in our apartment. And then again at the beach.





69/365


While in Miami, I REALLY wanted to see Wynwood Walls. It was SO AMAZING, I highly recommend going if you're ever in Miami. We explored for hours, obtaining iced coffee from Panther Coffee, local beer from J Wakefield Brewing Co. (as well as admired their Star Wars murals and paraphernalia, which originally led me to the location!), we got donuts from The Salty Donut, and I ran Megan ragged looking for the mural of Yoda with the "stop wars" sign. Luckily, we were able to find it after asking several gallery owners. It was the best afternoon.



70/365


I was bad at taking photos with my DSLR on the cruise. I was too afraid of dropping it overboard or getting too drunk and smashing it into something or someone (not an unwarranted fear), so I rarely carried it with me. We got to port mid morning and spent the rest of the day exploring the boat, taking six shots of vodka within two minutes during a cruise bon voyage with Pitbull, and spent the night dancing our asses off. Here's a photo of us come nightfall after a few several drinks.





71/365


Beach day! We stopped at Grand Stirrup Cay for the ultimate beach party - latin pop blasting from speakers about a mile away as we swam in the caribbean. We even saw a couple of creatures and found a small tequila bar with a tiny line compared to the main bar down the beach!



72/365


Pitbull performed for us on the pool deck at 2 PM in the afternoon - it was a surreal experience. Our first Pitbull concert had been the previous night, where we achieved the full concert-going experience in what would be considered the floor ticket area. On this afternoon we watched from above on the upper deck, able to full enjoy the costumes, dance moves my The Most Bad Ones, and the confetti that jettisoned from party cannons surrounding the stage.



73/365


The flight home - it was sad to leave, but I was also looking forward to sleeping for more than five hours a night. The sunrise was glorious in penance for our lost vacation.



74/365


I got right back to it - time waits for no sloth to be trained!! Or something.