X-Tra, Miscellany and Admin: December 2008 Archives

December's Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate is now up. Once per month I post all of the consumer focused articles from other places that are submitted - removing the garbage, the spam and the irrelevant.

Or whatever your family chooses to celebrate. My family celebrates Christmas. But I won't get offended if you wish me a Happy Hannukah or Solstice or Festivus or whatever.

We just finished opening gifts. Santa brought Brynhilde her first bicycle, and Ramona a set of dress-up.

My wife loves carousels, so every so often we go on on the Balboa Park Carousel, right next to the zoo entrance. Here she is with our younger daughter

some detail of the carousel

The origin of the term "brass ring": a free ride to the one that pulls it.

In the zoo proper, an Orangutang and a Siamang, which two species seem to get along pretty well, being from the same area.

Argus Pheasant, a kind of peacock

Long view of the big walk through aviary - not Scripps, but I can never remember the name

Half a dozen species of bird in the same tree

I think this is a Collared Lory at the feeder

Panda Su Lin, Bai Yun's third cub, still with the zoo and sleeping on a false tree trunk

Panda Zhen-Zhen, Bau Yun's fourth cub, sleeping in a tree

African Spotted Neck River Otters, one of my favorite animals. There are also Guenons in this enclosure. The monkeys aren't the only thing that climbs - the otters climb also.

A couple of quasi-free flyers from the Lagoon below, sitting on the raptor cages, completely unconcerned because they know the eagles can't get out.

Looking down at the lagoon exhibit

Arctic Diving Ducks - except they weren't diving today

A couple shots of a Turkmenistan Caracal, in the cage where the Pallas cats used to be

Polar Bear nap - it may be a cold day for San Diego, but as far as they're concerned it is warm enough

A different view of the same bear

Female Soemmerling's Gazelle

My girls have been going to see this guy since 2000, when Hilda was nine months old. He was in the Parkway Plaza Sears for years, then they decided to do something else, but he never had a contract, so he's had trouble landing gigs the last couple years, but we go wherever he is. He is fantastic, and his helper Eilene is a treasure in her own right. They have people who were originally "his kids" coming back with their children.

You can see their website at http://www.santalady.blogspot.com/ They've got all sorts of pictures of people coming back.

He's at Macy's Mission Valley this year. The schedule is at the website.

Here are Brynhilde (my elder - brown hair) and Ramona (my younger - red hair) with Santa this year

Here's two years ago:

Here's they are last year, with Julia as a puppy

And here's one more from this year