Rorschachs Journal - Year 37, Day 1
Thanks to everyones birthday wishes, I really appreciate it!
For once I was having a good day and I decided to go to the Aquarium.
Then after I got back, I had to go to Vegas for work. Danny Ocean called and all.
Then later during the weekend, I went to Frank N' Sons warehouse to get some cards, bought and broke a case of Zendikar (bday present for myself) along with a box of Worldwake and Rise Of Eldrazi. The Zendikar case was decent but the WW box had a Jace and the Eldrazi had a Vengevine. So that was pretty good. It also means I have an insane amount of Z and W as I had opened tons of that stuff in the past and sold off all of the rares and foils when I "quit" a few months ago. M11 brought me back. So uncommons and commons, I have a ton of from Alara block, Zendikar, Worldwake and M10. If anyone wants play sets, let me know. Im guessing
Amelia and
piratehookerrr will want some so Ill get to work on that but if anyone else (girls only!!) wants some playsets, lemme know.
Ok, so here are the pics...before we get to them, here's whats going on.
I went to Long Beach and got lunch first, then I bought tickets for a boat ride. But because I had 40 min before it departed, I went to the Aquarium gift shop and shopped. Then I went on the 45 min boat trip, then did the Aquarium thing. I ran through the place three times and then had dinner.
That shouldn't be too confusing except where I have different photos in several different places because I took better photos on different runs through. It's a really good idea to do what I did as the creatures there get up at different times and get active different parts of the day. If you run through in the morning, all nocturnal creatures are sleeping. It's probably why the place closes at so late at 10PM.
Ok, and there's like 200 photos so Ill spoiler most of them...
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Water Fowl of LB
After lunch, I went to go walk on the dock to check the schedule for the next boat ride and to buy a ticket. On the dock, the pigeons are quite fearless.
Along the way, while staring in to the water for a while to see if I could spot any fish or shrimp, I saw this awesome tern. Its a bird but it spent nearly all of its time under water! It swam so fast and I chased after the thing for several hundred feet in order to take its picture!
Some gulls chillin' like they own the boat (they dont)
Walking to the Aquarium, a cool bush of bamboo...this pic is for...well you know who you are, nom nom.
Gift Shop
Ok so I had like 40 min before the boat left...just enough time to shop but not enough time to walk through an entire exhibit at the Aquarium (from now on abbreviated as AQ cuz Ima lazy)
First a visit to the penny stretching machine! Last time I saw two machines and could only get one penny made. This time I got these two. Then later I saw like 5 other machines, each with 5 different pennies...next time Im bringing a roll of quarters and a fistful of pennies so I can catch them all!
Badass chess set!
I bought myself some goodies and some other lootz. J
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Advance To Boardwalk
Ok, now heading back to the boat dock, bought my ticket and off we went!
The ticket stand...next time Ill try the whale cruise.
The boat...and the view from...
Queen Mary
Artificial Island/Oil rig
Sea Lions!!
Cool eel says "Heyyyyyy" He'd give you both thumbs up if he had any arms/hands/fingers...
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 1st run, part 3 - Lorakeet Park
So I buy this tiny cup of what looks like jizz (it reminded me of this joke this guy once made about that drink Sobe, the pina colada flavor, looking like and having the consistency of jizz) and walk in to this double-layered cage. Supposedly I'm supposed to walk up to birds and get them to drink. Instead, probably due to my very casual stiffness (of my body, not of my thingie, you pervs..I know, I know, all that talk of jizz) from trying to hold a camera steady, I immediately have one, then two birds land on my head. From there they proceed down my arm and to the little cup.
Two birds walk in to a bar, one says to the other GET THE FUCK OUT!
Check out that amazing angle. Think about this, if you hold out your hand and take a picture, do you get this angle, this perspective? Try it.
So the green-necked one wins, the blue one flies off. Then the green one proceeds to gobble the whole cup. While that's happening, I just casually walk through the rest of the exhibit. Then the little bastard decides to slide up and down my arm.
Then the guy is done and he flies all the way to the end of the exhibit, sits on a trashcan and lets me take one last pic, as if to say "goodbye."
Oh, one really sad thing. As I was walking around the bird net/cage later, I see this huge whooping crane. I whooped out my camera to take a pic but the crane eyeballed me and then took off. It was the only thing I had a regret on, not being able to get a picture.
Looks like this,
Sippin' on Gin N Juice
Playful young sea lion, female I think. (not a seal)
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 1st run, part 5 - Back down under
More indoor exhibits...
Someone cleaning a tank.
Yay puffin tank! Boo, they are all sleepy except this one lil guy, the birds are either hyper or dead it seems. You can see this lil bird just going nuts, it took 20 shots to get this one pic.
Another touch tank, when I was little, I wanted so bad to be able to keep hermit crabs as pets. But overall Im against keeping pets, which is why I love animal parks and aquariums so much. Pet stores make me terribly happy and terribly depressed at the same time. Also a cool lil' shrimp.
This shot I was extremely proud of, that octopus is wedged way in there and where hes at, its totally dark. If you walked up to this tank, you would walk right by because it looks like nothings in it except rocks. He was curled up hiding in the tightest nook in the lower left-hand corner of the tank. If you looked, you would see only darkness. The flash really made this come alive. You can even see his beady little eye!
Cool jellyfish shot...usually I took most photos without flash as the light bounces off the glass in to your lens but in this case, it worked perfectly...although I think I made the thing angry, I imagine a murloc blrublgrgggrblrblrgrrr sound.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 1st run, part 6 ZOMG ZOMG
Theres a signpost up ahead, next stop, Otter zone,
Took about 30 pics here, then edited them down to three. The otters were pretty sleeping and just lounged or were totally laying down.
So, MOAR FISH AND STUFFS.
See that giant rock behind? The crabby is BIGGER.
According to WoW, this guy drops Blue Pearls, which are worthless. Except you need them for this one quest...
Clown fish, yay
LOLTANKZ, hey, last time at this same exhibit, they had something similar except it was full of poisonous fish! Not kidding...
Speaking of poisonous, poison dart frogs, these guys were also a pain in the ass to shoot.
Frog buddha meditates...
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 1st run, part 7 Lil Sharks and Friends
Shark eggs...the funny thing about this exhibit is some of the babies already hatched and are swimming around, if you look closely at the shots, you might spot one. Theyre adorable, like super coollooking turbo fish with a catfish face.
They have this cool-looking way of cutting out the side of the eggcase and replacing it, carefully, with a piece of plastic so that you can see inside the egg. Saw a video of it, oddly in a totally nonshark related exhibit on the other side of the joint.
I love seeing giant manta rays, Ive been lucky to see some while deep sea diving in the past. These guys were small but it was still fun to get close ups as they swam up to me.
Staring fish is staring at you!
Sea horses/dragons and other various oddities, sea horses and sea dragons swim in very deep places and thus have no design that has any relation to humankind at all yet why do they look so cute and beautiful to us? Strange...
I took a pic of this fish just because it was so huge, I left in some of the aquarium displays so that you could see just how big this sucker was.
ZOMG MY FAVORITE FISH! This puffer fish was so huge, he swam around with his mouth open like he just dont care! He was so big, he was bigger than the ass on that fat ass diver in the back ground!
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 2nd run, part 1
Took a break and had a snack. Usually I try not to snack but it was my bday so I splurged a little. Just a little.
When you come in, theres this huge blue whale model hanging from the ceiling, this time I got a good shot of it by going up a flight of stairs, this is coming out of the 2nd floor of the indoor aquariums.
More sea horses!
Remember that eel from way earlier? member? You member! Now fully extended, this is a funny pic because the other eel and the lobster look like theyre lining up to race, a la Flash and Superman.
This shot is just like like the octopus one, the giant shrimp was hiding in a dark tunnel and the flash brought everything to life...
Outdoors again, shark tank, this skate skated right up to me...
Bunch of cooool sharks, for some reason last time all the cool ones were away, now you see a sawtooth, hammerhead, and a hugeass shark I dunno, probably a tiger shark.
2nd run on the seal/sea lion tank. Again people were teasing the sea lion but this time he got mad, cool-ass shot.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 2nd run, part 2
Ok, back above ground, the daylight is just about running out but its still light. Right before I reach the shark tanks is where the the Lorakeet park is and this is when I see the crane.
Heres the second run on the sea lion tank. This time the sea lions are snoozing but I get about 20 minutes of face time with this pretty seal. She was eating something, chew, chew, gnaw, gnaw. So adorable.
Seal time!
As you can see Im only inches away,
More outdoor tanks, another visit with the poor, bored touchtank girl.
Ok remember the birds near the outdoor tanks that were all sleeping? Now theyre awake and look at those legs!
Snout!
I kept turning to see what they were looking at too.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 2nd run, part 4
Few more fish and stuff, its dark outside now.
Sea snake! Actually a krait, he wasnt around before but now at least his stripey is showing, no head though.
Bad ass lion fish. I took pics earlier but they sucked, now with more lights on because of the nightfall outside, these pictures turned out well. Must be close to feeding time as they came right up to me.
Sea dragons one last time, these pics turned out best. Last time I was here, my last bday, I didnt have a camera but my friend had this $5000 bad boy with a $3000 lens, but he hardly took any pics and didnt share any with me because he just deleted them. He only shared one, the sea dragons in this tank so getting my own pics this time was something Id been waiting a year for.
Sea horse dotrio/Ghidorah ATTACK!
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Aquarium, 3rd run
3rd run, bird tank, and finally, the PUFFIN!!
This crazy guy was splashing all over and going crazy, even once he got on the rocks, he was still preening, spraying his wings all over the place. I took like 30 shots here and edited down to these, sorry for the water on the glass but Mr. Puffin was splishsplashin.
And now the otters finally do their thang!! I sat here for an hour, hungry but determined, and shot maybe 60 shots, edited down to these. These shots were very, very tough as the otters were swimming fast all over the place.
Some otter on otter action.
Puffin!!
Otter!!
If you read and viewed this whole thing, you have my tremendous gratitude. Hope it was fun as I had a lot of fun taking all of these pics and seeing the wonderful critters in this place!
R
.><.
& I totally agree with Porphyria I wish I could have gotten you a birthday present! You definitely deserve it!
I loved looking through all of the pictures you took. I have to say though the jellies are definitely my favorite!!! Jellyfish are sooo awesome & cute. I totally love them! I recently bought some jelly plushies & they always make me feel better when I'm down!
I would love love some Magic cards! I've been having a lot of fun recently working on deck building and such. Thanks to you! <3