6 random things from my pre-blog life...

alright so it seems to be meme season here on the innerweb right now, so make sure you get your shots!
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i got tagged by not one, not two, but three people!!! you have etrilobite, raptor lewis, and the crazy harper to thank for this post... though i was going to be getting around to these stories eventually while back here in drumheller.

so the meme goes something like this:

Tag Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they were tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

however as i'm finding blogging time scarce enough at moment while visiting here back at home, i'm going to not pass it on. as contacting people is time consuming.

i did a similar 8 random things about myself meme a while back, but i couldn't think of any new random things about me (due to the small brain and all). instead since i'm home, and am surrounded by things and memories that predate my starting this blog, and my downfall at the tyrrell, i figured why not 6 things from before this blog.

so here's a few things you probably didn't know about me or my past.

1. my first friend

despite my having some troubles making friends in the post tyrrell era of my life, i did used to have a few (many of my human ones you've met in other posts)...

back when i was first discovered and hatched i was quite the popular little hatchling! not only was i the cutest, shiniest, and newest vivus-dinosaur on the block, but also the first vivus-t-rex to show up in the new millennium.

despite all the artificial attention my being the newest hatchling in town brought, i managed to see through the hordes of admires and attach to one who stuck with me beyond this cute phase... whether i was the master judge of character in a time i don't even remember i can't say. my legal guardian craig assured me that's how it worked though... point is i met my best and most important childhood friend in the first few weeks of my life.

that was this affectionate guy in the photo, zendin the troodon.

we used to be inseparable! we hung out almost everyday back in those days!

craig used to say it was good i adapted a brother as sensible as zendin (i now think he met as opposed to any of the other coelurosaurs, who of course were part of the pack of the primordial feather...).

man almost all my early adventures involved zendin somehow. we got into everything from trouble to out of trouble... as friends do.

we were quite the funny pair. me with a tiny brain always hanging with the rather capable large brained zendin! i used to wish i'd grow up to be as smart as him someday... which sadly i never have... back than whenever i didn't know something or need help figuring out stuff, zendin was the guy i'd goto for help, and he ALWAYS knew the right answer...

i still remember the day zendin went away. up until i was fired from the tyrrell, that was the saddest day of my life. partially because it just happened out no where. the day before his 4th hatching day we were planning big things, and than the day of his H-day he just disappeared. i was devastated. on so many levels too. probably the worst part was not knowing why...

craig at the time wouldn't tell me, and only told me that when i turned 4 i'd find out. the thing was he looked sadder than me. i assumed that meant the worst that zendin was dead...

now i know what happened. as they do with all vivus-coelurosaurs, the pack of the primordial feather came to take zendin into their ranks that day... i think craig was so sad because not only because i was now without my constant friend and companion, but he knew the future in store for zendin, and that i too would share it someday myself (though when the time came i pulled a fast one on him and the pack!)

i never did hear from zendin again... nor do i expect too now. everyone around here is asking ME if i've heard from him. which isn't a good sign, as of course i haven't, and drumheller is my last link to him...

so that's one random thing that makes me sad.

on to one that is less sad.

2. dinner doesn't always have to be food...

zendin wasn't my only childhood friend. he also wasn't the only one of my friends to be an unusual match with me (as in my being stupid compared to his being a genius). it was me and my friend norman that most people around drumheller would point out as the original odd couple.

me and zendin never stuck out as we were both meat eating theropods. seeing theropods together was an everyday sight in drumheller, and the average person won't take a second glance. only the expert would know that a t-rex and troodon are a little strange mix...

however norman, well most people couldn't help but gawk when the two of us were chilling together... the reason being, well you see norman was a...

ceratopsian. a centrosaur to be precise... that was also his last name as a quick aside. a centrosaur. norman a centrosaur. which made him unique on his own, as the majority of us living dinosaurs have the middle name "the" (making guessing our names easy on the middle section). not norman. his discoverer had a sense of humour, and on account of centrosaurs being extremely common in dinosaur provincial park, gave him the middle name of "a"... but i digress.

of course why me being friends with norman was SO unusual is that, well, ceratopsians are us tyrannosaurids' favourite food (well okay apart from albertosaurs and asian tyrannosaurids. albertosaurs on account of being specialized to hunt duckbills, and the asians not have any proper ceratopsians to hunt). which is true, i LOVE eating ceratopsians. however, i met norman before i knew this.

he was too young to know this too, and much to the horror of "the herd" we both started playing together as hatchlings. (all the vivus-ceratopsians of drumheller hangout together in a huge mix match herd... unlike the mesozoic when they'd have separated into their own kinds. as there isn't enough of any one kind [except maybe centrosaur] to do this in the present they make do with each other).

those were the best times ever. you couldn't have asked for a better friend to play t-rexes and triceratops with!

me and norman's friendship wasn't as simple as mine with zendin. there was an awful lot of tension on account of our coming from different sides of the food chain. especially once i started occasionally eating ceratopsian when i got older.

at the same time we were able to see thorugh each others niche's (as in me the monster butcher, or norman the delicious steak on legs) to the good dinosaur inside . when we got older we used to have really deep meaningful discussions about our place in the world, and the expectations put on us different dinosaurs.

in fact it was these talks with norman (plus zendin adding his big brain's worth to the issues) that really started my being aware of the tyrannosaur sterotype. the three of us also banded together against dinosaur oppression in the modern human world.

speaking of the three of us, those were some of the happiest days of my life. when it WAS the three of us. me, zendin, and norman. the world seemed a happier and safer place.

of course zendin disappeared, and my childhood ended then as a result. norman stuck around drumheller longer, and we remained good friends despite the lack of our troodon trickster.

yet things were never the same. we were both getting older. i was having to eat more and more meat due to my growing metabolism (though it soon leveled as i stopped growing!). norman on the other hand was getting lots of bullying from his own kind for hanging with a carnivore.

than about a month before i started this blog, and i was going to be fired, the museum decided to send a local dinosaur to calgary to act as an ambassador/advertisement there (as a lot of the tyrrell's visitors end up passing through calgary at sometime).

i'm planning on looking up norman a centrosaur when i head back into calgary after my trip here in drumheller. it has been too long...

3. speaking of not speaking too...

i wasn't sociable with all the dinosaurs in town, for a number of reasons (as you'll see).

however at the same time there was one type of dinosaur that i have never, ever spoken to. not one word. i don't even know if they can speak (though i assume they can)...

those would be my close relatives the ornithomimids...

i'm not sure why i didn't ever speak to one. there were a few around town. it's not like they were scary or anything, and we'd have plenty to talk about as not only are we both coelurosaurs and ancestors of birds, but we even speak the same language coelurosaurian (in theory... again i've never heard one speak).

at any rate even though i tried a few times to pluck up the courage to go try and talk to some (sometimes on a bet made by zendin troodon) i never carried through with it (like in this photo zendin snapped of my failed attempt to approach these struthiomimuses).

4. not everything was safe and friendly

well if ornithomimids proved difficult to approach, there was one type of dinosaur i found impossible!

this was in part due to a "slight" fear on my part (though you'll note i used "s to show the sarcasm in my saying that. i was TOTALLY scared of these guys!). unlike many of my fears this one had a very solid foundation, and when i say solid i mean solid, especially at the back end.

these dinosaurs were even slower and dumber than me. they basically had three modes. eat, sleep, and try to kill theropods. no matter which of these they were in they were always grumpy about it.

these were the tanklike armoured ankylosaurs. the tyrannosaur banes!

when i made that list of my fears a few years ago, i forgot these guys (on account of my brain size again), but they sure are on my list!

as you can see in the picture. when i saw one even across the street i'd run away. there was even this one time i ended up running in a circle when four of them happened to all wander down different ends of the same street... man did the locals laugh hard at me... like to see how they reacted if instead of us meat eaters, the tankosaurs were hardwired to take out people instead!?!

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5. i stood my ground with some

when i said earlier i wasn't sociable with all the dinosaurs in drumheller i wasn't kidding. it was way over half of them who didn't like me. part of this was because i was a theropod, and most of the dinosaurs in town are plant eaters. so you can kind of see why i wasn't their favourite on that end. making it worse though...

it was also partially due to the competition we dinosaurs are put into by the human world. only those of us that attract attention, which is just a nice word for saying being popular enough for people to pay to see you, had an easy go of things. despite my not being well off like most of the other dinosaurs in drumheller (there was and still is, too many of us there), but because i was a tyrannosaur i was perceived as being one of the chosen ones who had an easy life...
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which couldn't be further from the truth! as a dwarf tyrannosaur i had it nearly the worst off of us all. i was seen as a wasted chance. another tyrannosaur to bring in thousands of tourists who grew out his cute hatchling state, and got stuck at a small theropod. who wants to see them in the first place. that alone a tyrannosaur version. if not for craig being in town to back me up, i would have been in really rough shape (isn't funny how i was fired 3 weeks after he left town!).

despite my lack of true success, the fact i had a job at the museum (due to craig) brought out a lot of hate and resentment from my fellow dinosaurs. in particular the boneheads (i mean that in both a literal, and insulting sense), more commonly known as pachycephalosaurs, took it upon themselves to try and bother me on a daily basis. in particular the small stegoceras who hung out on the outskirts of town centre.

now i'm not the bravest tyrannosaur at the best of times, but i wasn't going to let a bunch of dinosaurs with brains smaller than mine (they're the smallest brained dinosaur family of us all) push me around. or at least that was the theory. sadly due to the battering ram that is their head i occasionally was bashed around a few times that i stood my ground (which is worse than being pushed).

zendin helped me come up with a few traps for them though. i'd dodge them at the last second, to see them run into something embarrassing (or as naught was it was painful!). sadly when zendin left so did these great tricks, and my encounters with the stegoceras typically ended in pain.

even a broken rib or two. oh well, i guess it is for the best. among us theropods such things are seen as badges of honor... though if you ask me it is dumb. there must be a far more enjoyable ways to be cool than scares and broken bones.

6. the true bully

of course i couldn't stand my ground all the time, and in fact i usually didn't. especially against one certain dinosaur. who you of course already know for his mean spirited nature, but i thought i'd show you a little of how it began...

that was of course my JERK! of a cousin, larry. who earned his title way back in these early days. he was just always so mean to me...

the thing is i'm not sure why, but it has something to do with my mom the huxley t-rex and her sister, larry's mom, black beauty (both now are fossil skeletons at the tyrrell). i'm not going to go into it too much this post (but a later one shortly), but there was something about my mom when she was alive in the cretaceous that makes larry feel inferior to me...
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not that something 65 million years ago should matter. the point is here in the present, larry has always been a JERK! to me!!!

back when i worked at the museum he won't just contain his bullying to my life. he'd also extended it to my human coworkers. especially that last year at the museum, at badlands science camp. there were a few really bad incidents.

the worst had to be during the heat wave. larry decided to time his daily swim in the red deer river perfectly with our canoe trip. normally the kids were thrilled to have a visit from a dinosaur...

not that day. fortunately for us he didn't actually hurt or kill anyone (it'd be bad for his movie career). at the same time he terrified and capsized many of the kids canoes (which was GOOD for his movie career. as a dinosaurs star you want a rep as being scary... just not a real killer or no one wants to be in scenes with you...).

there are soooooo many more stories i could relate and tell. after all it was a whole chunk of my life without a blog. however i have things to blog about that are going on right now (and i have lots of pictures of these... unlike those days before i owned a still life rendering machine).

so that's 6 random things about my past.