 |
Please keep an eye out for Strawberry, aka Tikka,
missing from Normal Heights since Saturday, 10/11/25 |
I got back from my trip on Wednesday, and went straight to Adams Avenue Theatre to see CityNerd. My trip was great. I stayed with my cousin in LA the first and last nights, camped 3 nights at 3 different camps (Gaviota near Santa Barbara, Morro Bay, and Monterey) then stayed 4 nights with Darren's nephew in Hercules for the memorial for Evelyn in Lake Merritt and other Bay Area activities (like me driving around San Pablo Reservoir aimlessly and doing a big shopping trip to Ace Hardware to do some house upkeep.) We got in a visit with Darren's mom, and after Toby and Darren flew home, I got to visit with my niece at USF. All told, I was able to do LA Zoo on the way up, Oakland Zoo, San Francisco Zoo, and Fresno Zoo and then LA Zoo again. I saw otters and sea lions in Morro Bay and Moss Landing, stopped at a few state parks with the pass I checked out from the library, and particularly enjoyed the sunset at Seacliff, near Santa Cruz. The weather was perfect the entire trip, even with brief overnight rain in Monterey. I was lucky at the LA Zoo to see the debut of the two female chimpanzee babies on their first day on habitat, and I feel like that set the tone for the whole trip being full of surprises, like getting basically a private tour of the Fresno Zoo by a girl in the education department just by asking a couple questions. I have a lot of photos to share over time, but gotta get to listings for this week first. I definitely wanna do it again; driving California was spectacular. When I do it all again, I would make sure to also catch the Santa Barbara Zoo, which I missed when my whole trip was delayed a day for some necessary auto repairs, and Sacramento Zoo, which would just make sense for the route that I traveled.
The whole thing was great, though now it's been dampened by the fact that my cat slipped off our balcony on Saturday night and we haven't found any sign of her. I've walked my neighborhood for hours on end, at different times of day, and nothing. Today I found out that her microchip was done before she was at the Humane Society, so I have to track down which of several companies could have done it, and it really only benefits if someone actually catches her and gets her scanned. I'm not quite ready to think of the alternatives, but let me tell you how shitty people are who post comments on PawBoost posts. I don't need your stupid advice on what I should have done. Anyway, this post had enough links built up that I'm just gonna post so I can get on with my other work. I'm not even gonna get into my whole thing with paid parking at Balboa Park and the Zoo, since the former seems to be on ice for the time being and the latter seems resolved to be free parking for members if and when paid parking is implemented. I also am aware of the government shutdown and lots of other stuff that went down while I was gone. The good thing about driving up the state, is you can't doomscroll social media while driving, so I listened to my True Crime podcasts and YouTube programs and turned my brain mostly off to the news.
Stay safe out there. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
