vel's journaly thing

Where to start? Well, I have a bit of a cold at the moment so I'm just resting up, and I see I've been neglecting lj again.

Easter Weekend

Friday night I had to work, and after that I met up with Josh at the Sonoma Chicken Coop in downtown San Jose for a group dinner event with his motorcycling friends, the South Bay Riders. It was pretty fun; much of the time was spent trying to convince Josh that he should go to Disneyland at least once in his life.

On Saturday we got up relatively early to drive down to Fresno for my cousin David's 20th birthday party. It was held out at my aunt's ranch in Clovis. While we were there some of us walked down the road to a neighbor's place to see my remaining duck in (her?) new home. The surviving duck turned out to be Kikumaru (I seem to be the only one who could tell them apart), so I guess Ooishi is fox food now. =( Maybe I shouldn't have named him something that sounded so close to "oishii"... ^^;

But all reports say Kikumaru is doing well and has buddied up with a black and white duck in the new pond, so I guess that's good. The neighbor is really nice and says we can visit anytime; we also went to another neighbor, a friend of my aunt's, and I talked horses with him for a while.

( Kikumaru at the new pond )

Then back at the ranch we went to visit the cows grazing in the pasture. My aunt and uncle don't live at the ranch (my aunt inherited it from a friend of Oma's; she's hanging on to it, but they actually live at their own house), but they let a guy who raises cattle graze some of them on their land. There are 10 acres split into three different sections; right now there are five cows in one of them, and some of them were actually friendly. Josh didn't seem to think much of the cows, but I thought they were cute!

( Cows in the field )

It's amazing how green it is out there from all the rain California has had. Normally it would all be brown and dried up by now. I'm glad it wasn't raining while we were down there, though. We stayed down in Fresno until about 7:30, then drove back up to San Jose.

Sunday morning I went to work and it was pouring and windy. That was good because it meant nearly no customers and I was able to leave early like I was planning on doing anyway. I left work at noon and went to Josh's aunt and uncle's place in Saratoga for Easter brunch that was really good. After the food we watched a photo album DVD with pictures chronicling the life of one of Josh's relatives...his grandfather I think? I wasn't paying all that much attention and fell asleep on his shoulder. When I woke up it was time to go over to my parents' house to have Easter dinner with them, my brother, and my grandma.


New Apartment

Josh and I are pretty much settled into the new place. I think all that's still left to bring over is my bookcase, and there's still some more decorating to be done. I don't have too much to say about it; it's a pretty decent place, and I'm happy wherever Josh and my computer and high speed internet are. *g* Anyway, onto the pictures...

( New apartment pics )

Thanks for the well wishes everyone ^^ I definitely have a full blown cold...I've been pretty much lying in bed all day sneezing and blowing my nose and generally feeling icky. My voice is still almost nonexistant and now my nose is raw in addition to my throat :p I was supposed to go to the A's game with my brother today, but I knew there was no way I'd make it. Turns out they lost anyway, so I didn't miss anything good. Instead I just stayed here and caught up on Kaleido Star, and I finally am able to start watching Mirage of Blaze because I accidently found that Jet Audio can play ogm files.

Happy birthday to alliandra! *hugs* Hope it was great (since I think it's already tomorrow where you live)!

Eiji is hosting Tenipuri on the Radio this month! ^_^ This makes me very happy.

Video files of my ducks! For anyone who would like to see them doing stuff. The one where they quack is pretty funny...Ooishi has a normal duck quack, and Kikumaru still peeps like a baby for the most part...but when he does quack it's really loud and sounds like he's laughing! Watch it and see what I mean :)

in their pool when I had them at home
eating lettuce out of my hand, also at home
pecking my shoes at their new private island home
on the island
in the pond (Ooishi is quacking, Kikumaru is squeaking)
quacking and laughing (Ooishi is quacking, Kikumaru is "laughing")

Must find some Nyquil...this stupid runny nose won't let me sleep!

I made some duck icons! ^_^

So as you may know, I finally got to go to Magic Mountain this Saturday! It was my first time there after TWELVE years! I love roller coasters and they have some great ones, so I'd been wanting to go back for the longest time; the only problem is it's in southern California and a pretty long drive from where I live. But as it turns out, my cousin Daniel also loves roller coasters and Magic Mountain, but no one else in his family does so he has no one to go with. So I found a roller coaster buddy in my cousin :) He lives much closer to the park than I do, so I was able to stay with and visit his family for the weekend as well as go with him to the park.

( ducks )

( drive down )

( X )

( Log Jammer, Goliath )

( Batman, Splashdown )

( Superman )

( Gold Rusher )

( Batman Begins stunt show )

( Riddler's Revenge )

( Viper, Revolution )

( end of the day )

Oh! I forgot to mention that on Thursday night I went with gokumew2 and wasabi_fiend to the circus in San Jose (seeing my Pierrot icon reminded me). The clowns sucked, but the animals and some of the human performances were cool. They had some gorgeous Friesians and Arabians and Norwegian Fjords performing, and I also liked the elephants and tigers (but the tiger trainer was a total nutjob; he had one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard!). I wonder which of the circus people had gone riding at the stable two days before...After the circus we got In N Out for dinner and went back to my house to talk about anime and watch some of the Seki Tomokazu panel from AX this year. 'Twas much fun ^_^

I forgot, sapphie_lp wanted to see pictures of my dogs, so I took some the other day of Sequoia playing in the hose water. You can see the little pool before she chewed holes all through it :p

( Labradors )

And here's Ooishi and Kikumaru for the heck of it =D

( ducks )

So far the ducks are doing fine. I've read up on taking care of ducklings online from as many places as I could find, and I think they'll be okay. This morning I tore up some lettuce for their breakfast and they gobbled that down. Then I called around feed stores trying to find waterfowl starter for them...no one seemed to have any, so I bought pheasant food instead which I'm told will work (apparently they can have feed meant for wild bird species but not chicken feed because it will stunt their wings).

Judging against developmental pictures of other ducks I've seen online, I think these ducks are only around 1-2 weeks old. I'm keeping them out of the pool for now because they have to be watched and then dried off, so in the meantime they're sleeping in a towel and just getting their food and water out of dishes. I think they may even be getting more used to people; they're not all terrified and trying to run away peeping loudly as much as they were yesterday. The big one even takes food out of my hand sometimes!

What should I call them? Maybe Eiji and Ooishi because they literally are a "golden pair" *snicker*

By a pair of ducklings to be exact. They're so fluffly and adorable! My brother came home and found them hiding underneath our big truck. I have no idea what happened to the rest of their family or even how they got to our house (they're lucky one of the cats didn't get them!). They were starving and ate some bread, and my dad and brother managed to catch them in a box. Right now they're in the kiddie pool in the dog pen in the garage. So...anyone know anything about taking care of ducks?

( duckies! )