and i moved to the ukraine, and it was cold, and everyone had guns and smelled like soup

Hungry hungry hippos!















Tammy was v. excited to pet a goat in the petting zoo.















Maybe I need to check into the San Diego Zoo, since my bloodlines likely classify as critically endangered right now.















Granted, schoolchildren painted this, but the combination of the ugly pandas and the ridiculous dragon is not worthy of a nationally-acclaimed zoo.

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I'm having a great time visiting Tammy in San Diego! We spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo, which was quite entertaining - I can't remember the last time I've been to a zoo, and this one is quite nice. We wasted our time (and an extra ten dollars) on the bus tour of the zoo, since one couldn't really see any of the animals from the bus, but we had a great time wandering around and seeing things at our leisure after the bus tour. However, I do have some philosophical doubts about whether one should save animals that clearly have already made poor evolutionary choices (in particular, the giant panda, which with its 1-day-per-year fertility cycle would have already died out if we didn't think they were so darned cute); on the flip side, there are some animals, like elephants, that I don't particularly like to see in zoos because I feel like they probably know what they're missing and aren't all that enthused about their 60-70 year lifespans. Despite all that, though, the zoo was really nice, and it was a great way to spend an afternoon, even if we did get freaked out by an anaconda that didn't even faze a five-year-old a few minutes later.

After the zoo, we had dinner at a great sushi restaurant in Del Mar, where we had a lot of delicious sushi while mocking the guys at the table near us - one of them was a dead ringer for Brandon Davis, aka 'Fat Elvis' on my favorite gossip blog, who is friends with the Paris Hilton crew. Then, we went to a McCafe for ice cream, but they actually didn't have the chocolate/vanilla twist that I wanted - they're too fancy for that now. We topped off the night by renting 'Blades of Glory' and watching it in my hotel room. I hadn't seen it since it came out in theatres, but I absolutely love it - I had forgotten some of the classic scenes (such as the disastrous North Korean 'Iron Lotus' performance), and we had a great time reliving the magic.

It's time for me to go to bed - tomorrow we're basically eating a lot and watching movies, which sounds like a great time. Then, Saturday it's back to the Bay Area, where I have a lot to accomplish in the next week or two. Goodnight!