Yes, quite literally what the title says.

I was out biking the other day, figuring I should get some exercise, fresh air, and sunshine, instead of being cooped up in the house playing Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility all day long. (Though I have to admit I still long for the days when I played Toontown. I did broach the idea of a month's subscription to my mother, which she immediately struck down. I'm already computer-addicted enough as is, I suppose.) So I decided to stop by the nearby park.

A very pressing matter in the town I live in is the bird population. We have astounding numbers of ducks, seagulls, geese, and pigeons. There are now signs at various bodies of water, such as at the reservoir and at the park I just visited, telling visitors not to feed the birds so that they'll continue with their usual patterns of migration instead of staying here permanently to gorge on bread crusts.

In fact, they've gone so far as to provide brochures in three different languages - English, Chinese (Mandarin), and Spanish, to "educate" the citizens about why we shouldn't keep the birds around. Something about how the birds poop in the water, which in turn makes the water dirty and gets them sick. (But wait...If they don't want the birds around anymore, shouldn't they just let the birds get sick and then die of their own accord? Oh, right, they wouldn't want to spread bird flu or some other disease. Or tarnish their reputation with the blood of several thousand innocent birds. Reminds me of the passenger pigeons being driven extinct.)

I saw some of the Canadian geese who have taken up residence at the park, and notice that they'd had their children (they're called goslings, right?). I thought it'd be nice to get close and take some photos of them. Here's a few shots...Sorry that they're a bit on the blurry side. Aren't the goslings so fuzzy-looking?





But while the goslings went on eating the grass (that's what it looks like, though they're actually eating the bugs), one goose stood guard. He stood there looking around suspiciously. Whenever I made a move he opened his mouth and hissed, showing his tongue. One time I tried to approach quickly and he ran towards me, flapping his winds and hissing like crazy. I hastily retreated until I was far enough that he decided I wasn't dangerous. It was actually a little fun, in a twisted way, taunting the goose. I don't want to risk getting bitten, though. I've heard goose bites are quite painful. But it would be nice to have animals that don't run away, growl, or try to bite me when they see me and actually meet an animal that likes me for a change.

Labels: animals, bird, birds, canadian geese, disease, geese, goose, hygiene, migration, park, pollution, sickness, wild animals

I'm not actually going around hollering outside, nor have I read the book by the same title. But I thought it was pretty fitting.

The weather is just crazy these days. It rains on and off and huge gusts of wind blow. I keep worrying that it'll knock over something. Quite a few years ago, there was a windy day and a vase we left outside hit the ground and broke. I am also concerned that it might get my wind chimes tangled up. This is always happening because one of my wind chimes (I have two different ones) has a lot of thin strings which tend to get caught together.

It seemed like the weather was clearing up, because the blue sky was showing again and the rain had pretty much stopped, but then I was driven home by my dad and it started to rain again. In fact, when I stepped out of the car, I heard a rumbling noise, and looked around for the source. I realized that it was thunder when I saw that grey clouds had returned again.

The weather was so bad that my street was out of electricity. The post office lost power too (I saw that it was dark and there was a vehicle outside, probably someone who was trying to fix the power or whatever). And I heard from a friend of mine who lives in the street "across" from mine that she suffered from the blackout as well. But not that far from our streets, the traffic lights were working just fine. It is really annoying, and ironic as well. My dad says the houses in my area cost more because they are closer to the mountains (and houses on the mountain are considered to be very expensive and nice) but the houses closer to the mountains tend to lose power first...And it's hard to get it fixed. It's not like everyone has power generators or backup power at their homes (though businesses, like my parents' offices, do) and no one is going to trek up the mountain just to fix a few mansions' power. (Well, we don't live on the mountain, so at least we get it fixed within a reasonable time. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to shower or do homework tonight, but it turned out that it got fixed while I was at school.)

This morning, I went to school early, because I heard the school had power and I figured it'd be better to at least have lights. Also, I hope that my teacher would have gotten there early and perhaps opened the classroom, but alas, that was not to be. My teacher was sick and couldn't come, so we had a substitute. I was disappointed since I was ready to take the Chemical Symbol Quiz (we were memorized the letters for thirty common elements, like O for Oxygen) and now that it's been moved back I have to take both a history and a science test on Thursday. I was hoping I could just concentrate on the history test.

Anyways, I saw a bunch of seagulls this morning. It was really scary. There must've been all of the seagulls in the neighboring towns and our town put together in the grass field. There were more gulls than I've ever seen together in one place in my lifetime.

It's not a good sign that all these seagulls are here. It means that there must be food and so the seagulls are getting lazy. Why live by the ocean and have to actually fish when you can stay here and eat leftover trash? But it's really unhealthy for them. It's kind of like how raccoons eat people's trash instead of eating forest food.

My household used to be visited by raccoons. A couple of times, in the nighttime, the lights would go on. (We have lights outside which will suddenly shine on if they sense movement. But if we "turn off" the lights they'll stay off.) I looked outside and there seemed to be some moving shapes. They were awfully big, and animal-like by the looks of it. It turned out to be raccoons. They were so huge! I always expected them to be small and kind of cuddly. But I guess you can't really assume things about animals you've never seen. (Really, I haven't seen raccoons much. Only pictures, and it's hard to tell from that.)

Labels: blackout, electricity, elements, food, hear my cry, power outage, raccoon, roll of thunder, school, seagull, size, storm, test, thunder, trash, vase, weather, wild animals, wind chimes, windy

Well, the common phrase is "Thank God it's Friday", which even inspired the restaurant called TGI Friday. In fact, I saw a poll one time and it seems the majority of people pick Friday as their favorite day. (Personally, it's not my favorite day, because I still do my homework on Friday so I have the weekend free...) But it seems to me that Black Friday, which was just three days ago, is not necessarily the best day of the week to go shopping.

I didn't go shopping on Black Friday because of a few things... For one, my parents said there probably wouldn't be good deals at the stores, because this year, because of the suffering economy, stores didn't stock up a lot, so they aren't desperate to sell off their merchandise right now. There might be better deals around Christmas or some other later time. Also, the stores were probably going to be really crowded, and my family didn't want to have to deal with that. (Thus, we escaped to the museum, as mentioned in the post "A building full of life and death")

On Saturday, since my family was going to be visiting the house of their friends (the friends had a new house, which the previous owners had lost through foreclosure! Scary), we took a detour to Great Mall, figuring we could buy a few things. There were already warning signs when we were driving there. At the turn-off that eventually leads to a different mall, Valley Fair, a lot of cars were stuck waiting. We went to the mall, and were having trouble finding a parking space, but luckily my dad snagged one later on when someone else was leaving. I had expected that everyone had gone shopping yesterday, but it was a wrong assumption, just like when I assumed that no one would go to the California Academy of Sciences on Friday because they'd be busy shopping. D:

We only ended up buying one thing (I did see a few items of clothing I liked, but it wasn't worthwhile because either the price wasn't really, really cheap or the clothes were not unique) which was, surprisingly, some earthenware. We got it from the store called Daiso Japan. There are a lot of Daiso Japans popping up in my area. I've seen three of them. I like Daiso, but I can't really read the labels because it's in Japanese, and my ability to read it is practically zilch.

The good thing about going to the mall was that Hershey's was giving out free chocolate at several locations that day. They had several flavors of Hershey's Bliss, such as Raspberry, Milk Chocolate, and Dark Chocolate. I think all the flavors are yummy but my favorite is Milk Chocolate, as is typical for me. No one really cares if you come back later to take a second chocolate from a place you've already taken chocolate from. My parents think Hershey's must've lost a LOT of money that day, giving away chocolate.

Then, after a few hours squandered in the mall, we went to my parents' friend's house. It's not a bad house, even if it is one-story (I've always wanted to live in either a multiple-story house or an apartment...My house has two stories, but there is only one room upstairs which we use mostly for storage). I was surprised to see that the family keeps a chicken. The chicken is almost 8 years old now. They raised her basically since she was a just a chick. She actually lays eggs. I heard there used to be another chicken except it was eating by wild animals...Raccoons or something...Yikes. My parents' friends set up some Christmas lights around the chicken coop and stuff like that to scare off the animals.

It seems to me that middle-aged Asian people really like to watch soap operas and other TV shows. My parents and their friends were having an exciting discussion about places to watch dramas, like PP Live and PP Stream and things like that. (I am familiar with them since I have seen my mother using them. Even my dad watches dramas sometimes, though he's more of a movie person) In fact, when my mom and another friend (there were two other guests) recommended a website, the host dashed off to his computer to check out the site. I didn't see him for quite a while after that, except for when I passed his office when heading to the bathroom...Wow. He was watching dramas, I think.

Labels: asian, black friday, chicken, chocolate, christmas lights, daiso japan, drama, friends, hershey's, house, mall, shopping, soap opera, wild animals

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