Wallaby cuddling

I have a long weekend, the last of my furlough days and a birthday gift for myself. I LOVE not going to work. I couldn't sleep in really but it's 10:25 and I'm still in my pajamas, so to me that's a good morning. Instead of calling clients, and desperately waiting for lunch hour, I am relaxing, watching Star Trek Nemesis (it's better than talk shows...) and playing video games. I may go shopping later, but then again I may not bother. It's bliss! Anyways, I unfortunately didn't really participate in anything for Remembrance Day because we had an interesting presentation at the Zoo on Wednesday morning about a conference 2 of the Keepers went to. There were a lot of fundraising and enrichment ideas and they wanted to get the Volunteers involved. During the meeting Boris, an African Spurred Tortoise, was walking around, enjoying a change of scenery, and he started getting into a bit of trouble under the Bird-eating Spider enclosure so I got to hold a Wallaby while the Keeper pulled Boris out. Lucky me, I got to keep holding Disney during the rest of the presentation and fed her some leaves, and cuddled her a bit. It was awesome. Apparently she really likes cuddling, and was really comfortable in her blanket. My arms got really sore, but I persevered till the end, not wanting to give up a wonderful opportunity like that. It is moments like that that make me so happy I started volunteering. Most of the time it's cleaning, walking around, occasionally really hard work, and of course the varieties of poop clean up. And, it's all completely worth it for those moments when the animals seem to recognize me and come over to say hello, or I get to touch or hold them. I even touched my first tarantula, not quite as nice as the Wallaby, but I was proud of myself for not completely freaking out and running away. Volunteering there is one of the best activities I've ever been involved with.

A week or so

Sundays seem to be the best day to catch up on things so here I am. I think it's the sleeping in (for me that's 8:30-9:00, though today was 9:30! WOW!), and lack of obligations. I may or my not change out of my pajamas. Sundays are bliss. Anyways, I spent 3 days training this week because we are switching to a new database in a couple of weeks. Day 1 was kind of fun and also made me want to slit my throat. By the end of the day I was almost in tears & raging. I thought I should quit and look for a new job. The training system was problematic which just made learning that much harder and frustrating. My temper couldn't take it and I couldn't imagine doing my job properly and envisioned myself going completely postal. However, on the drive home reality hit, and I realized that even if I could find another job I would still have to learn a whole new system. Finding a job is a huge IF anyways. I have a general arts degree and have spent most of my work life in sales or the food industry. I have zero marketable skills. Sure, I can photocopy reduce perfectly, but unfortunately nobody gives an f- about that. I sure as hell can't get hired based on my charms, though I hear cleavage can work advantageously if I chose to use it. Day 2 therefore was better, having no choice but to make the best of it. By Day 3 I was almost comfortable, or at least not completely depressed about it all. The weekend couldn't come fast enough though. Yesterday I volunteered as usual and then played video games for the rest of the afternoon. Not overly productive but that's a typical Saturday. My intention is to clean up today. Note the word 'intention'. Monday will be back to normal at work, and due to Remembrance Day and taking a long weekend next weekend I only have to work 3 days this coming week. YEAH!

On a side note, I rented 3 movies last weekend: Gran Torino, Coraline, and Sin Hombre. Gran Torino was amazing, and I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. It's got racial slurs oozing out of every pore but it's kind of like Gulliver's Travels in it's hatred, spreading the hatred and disgust equally among all the different types of people. Coraline was interesting, and of course really cool animation. I admittedly fell asleep half way through but I was tired so don't blame the story. Sin Hombre is a Spanish film about people trying to get into the U.S. and dealing with poverty and gangs. It was really well done, brutally sad, and worth watching for sure.