Away we go!

Off to Ireland and then England today for three weeks!!! Very excited! I’ve never been to Ireland before, and my friends Ty, C, Di, and CO and I are bound to get into some trouble on our adventure. After they head home I’ll be heading over to Torquay for the enrichment conference, which will be good fun to see all of my cool int’l zoo type friends, and do some work for Shape.
Photos to come of these adventures in a few weeks when I get back!

The Shape of Enrichment

The Shape of Enrichment, Inc is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of animal welfare through environmental enrichment and behavior management. It was started by two pretty incredible women, Valerie Hare (my Mom!) and Karen Worley, in 1991. What started as a small newsletter to allow keepers to exchange enrichment ideas for their animals has become a multi service international non-profit organization.

Shape still publishes the quarterly newsletter (which goes to about 40 countries), runs enrichment video libraries out of several region branches, is the official publisher of the International Conference on Environmental Enrichment’s (ICEE) proceedings, and provides workshop curricula and instructors to institutions around the world. I’m now in the Core Group for Shape, and am excited to announce our new website at www.enrichment.org.

Also, I’m excited to go to the 9th ICEE conference, hosted by the Paignton Zoo during the first week of June in Torquay, England.

Star Trek - May Have Just Rocked My World

Don’t worry - no spoilers for the new Star Trek movie here!

All I have to say is that its AMAZING! I’m a long time fan of J.J. Abrams and Star Trek (I’m more of a TNG kid, but still), and he got it right, all the way around. If you have the opportunity to see it in IMAX do so - the sound is INCREDIBLE! I saw it last week on preview night in regular format, but the THX sound in the IMAX theater made it an entirely different movie!

Also, keep your eyes peeled for a tribble and for R2-D2.

Check out these Star Trek links on Hulu:

Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto on SNL's Weekend Update

The Onion News Network Covers Star Trek

Some People Are So Inspiring

Fotokids

I’ve heard of this organization before, but until recently had not looked into it. By introducing photography and education into the lives of young people in Central America this organization is giving children opportunities they would never have to travel, learn, and grow up safely. Through their photography, these children are able to bring awareness to the world of conditions in poverty stricken areas of Central America.

Mutants, mutants, mutants

Went to the midnight showing of the new X-Men movie last night / this morning. As far as movies go, especially the comic book adaptation types, it was pretty okay.
At first I didn’t give it much credit, but it was actually a funny, well choreographed, well filmed, action packed movie. Lots of good fight scenes, really good explosions and action sequences. Logan finally gets his backstory, and a lot of fan favorite mutants who were noticeably missing from the first three movies make appearances.
There are a few portions of the movie that I take issue with on a consistency basis (like Logan’s trademark leather jacket), and there is one particular mutant at the end who was literally photoshopped in, which makes me sad.
Of course Gambit was in it, which makes me happy, and now I’ve found an on screen mutant I’d rank with an awesomeness factor over Wolverine. Liev Shreiber was awesome as Sabretooth (but then he’s awesome in every movie he’s in), and Ryan Reynolds as Wade kept up with Hugh Jackman’s off the cuff humor. Stryker was played perfectly evilly by Danny Huston.
Any comic book fans will probably be overly disappointed, the characters are all over the place, even more so than in the original three X-Men movies. All in all though - a good show!

Favorite dialogue:
Stryker: “You boys were supposed to be killed by firing squad at 1000 hours, how’d that go for you?”
Logan: “It tickled a little”