Fun with Hammocks

After joining a rats group on facebook and seeing all the cute pictures of happy, sleepy rats in hammocks, I had to get one for my girls. With all the rats I’ve had, I’ve never gotten a hammock for any of them, although I knew about them before. So I got one at my local pet store and they love it. Even though I give them a kleenex box or some other option where they can hide away in the dark, they prefer the hammock now. It’s hard to take a good picture of them in it since the cage bars get in the way, but here’s the best one I’ve gotten.

Engrish?

When I was looking through the pictures on my phone to get the fat rat pictures, I found one that I took over Christmas break while I was in one of the many China towns in Houston. It was a sign printed on the front window of an Asian grocery store.

If you can’t make it out, it reads “No Guns, No Pop Pop, No Fire Works, No Scooters, Allow in the Building.” We couldn’t quite figure out what “pop pop” would be, if not fireworks or guns.

More Gardening

A lot of the flowering plants that I bought for my flower box have since died or were well on their way, as tend to happens with flowering plants. Thus, I went to the the nursery again this weekend and got some new plants. I think the selections I made this time were even prettier than before. They just had a really nice variety as compared to before. I also decided to rearrange the layout on my patio. I think it looks better and it keeps Sammy from having to jump over them or knock over my aloe vera all the time. I have attached pictures of the new flowers and arrangement.

Fat Rat

I went to the pet store last weekend and saw something unusual. Generally when I go to the pet store and look in on the rats, they are all either hiding in whatever housing they’ve been provided or back in a corner. I think with all the constant traffic and strangers peering in, they just aren’t ever super confident or comfortable. Well, this past weekend I saw a rat that seemed to have no issues with relaxing in that environment. She was propped up with her back against the front corner of her cage, going to town cleaning her stomach. Never have a seen a pet store rat so quite at home. Not to mention that she was a bit of a chubs and there’s nothing cuter or more amusing than a fat rat lounging back on its own fat. I took two pictures with my phone that I have attached.

Pickin’ Them Off

I played BF2 for the first time in about a year last night, which makes for a funny looking BF2Stats KDR graph, I might add. I was at Jordan’s house, so we were squaded up. I expected to entirely suck, being ridiculously out of practice. It was kind of ironic actually because he had an early birthday present for me – a BF2142 special edition Logitech G5 gaming mouse – which he he had already ordered and planned on giving me before I out of the blue told him I wanted to play BF2 last night. He told me he wished they had a BF2 edition, but it was the closest they offered. Anyway, the most fun and surprising part was that we didn’t suck at all. We got 3rd and 4th on the server in several games. I got to do my favorite thing of gunning in the attack chopper, when the Sharqi map came up. We also played Strike at Karkand, another of my favorite maps, in addition to a slew of others. I may have to get back into this game. It also makes me miss BF1942, including the incredibly intense and enjoyable El Alamein map. The cap the flag tricks we used to do with the Stucka were awesome, and usually suicide, but when we succeeded, it was such the rush. The AA in 1942 was also a blast and was great for taking out tanks as well. Too bad AA isn’t fun at all in BF2. And too bad that BF2142 was such a disappointment.

Jump For It

Apache and I had a jumping lesson this weekend. It was hardly his best performance. We didn’t start recording it right away because he kept bucking and not really wanting to listen to the half halts. At one point, I half halted and he came to a dead stop and was tossing his head in the air. We eventually got him listening a bit better and Erin started recording. He still wasn’t doing his best. For much of the time, he was doing more of half canter, half stepping pace, rather than carrying a true canter step. He bucked once more after we started recording and ran off from the jump up the diagonal as well. Regardless, we still had fun and learned a lot, as always. You can watch the video here.