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.

camping away from... no wait, at home (homecoming part 4)

after the more than somewhat depressing results of my efforts to figure out who bought me the plane ticket back here to drumheller for my my 5th hatching day, i was kinda wanting something fun to happen...

well this afternoon it did happen, well in a way. i'm starting to find this whole coming home thing to be a mix of coolness and unfortunately some sadness.

as she promised the other day, my old coworker amy tracked me down after this week's session of summer camp was done. man i haven't seen amy in a long time!

it was awesome catching up with her. though like everyone around here she thought my having ran off to the other side of the world was more interesting than her life... i should tape record the story. i've been having to tell it a lot!

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i sort forgot how funny amy was (i didn't really forget, but because it's been a while i wasn't used to it anymore if you follow what i mean...) it was really enjoyable being reminded of it!

our catching up was the biggest highlight of the trip so far. i really enjoyed the afternoon.

yet at the same time it made me a little sad. talking to amy reminded me of when we used to "hangout" in the old days...

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the times when we both worked at camp!

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the royal tyrrell museum's badlands science camp to be precise!

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the most dinosaur and fossil packed summer camp you'll find anywhere. that and one of the awesomest summer camps anywhere too... well that's what craig said anyway, and if anyone would know it's him. he's worked at few camps.

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back than i was one happy camper... well okay staffer. i might have hung around camp alot with the kids, but i wasn't really camping officially speaking. i was merely an employee (slash resident) of the museum (and being a resident it kinda felt like i camped at the museum... all the time hehehehe).

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the job was so fun though that with my small brain i'd forget sometimes. so even though i might have been wearing a staff shirt (like always!) i could just as easily have been wearing one of the kids' orange hats!

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so what was my job at science camp you might ask? well it's not an easy one to answer.

my old job at the museum had been to hangout in the cretaceous garden as a saurian part of the greenhouse, and educate/entertain visitors. what that amounted to really was me pretending to be a statue. from management's point of view that made sense.

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due to my ability to speak in english and that i usually did so without thinking much about what i said the higher ups, well, they thought it was best i didn't talk to the tourists. of course due to my small brain size i often forgot these instructions, and well the boss dudes they got sick of it, and decided to stick me somewhere the people i talked to might appreciate it. even if i didn't often know what i was talking about...

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which is why i ended up at camp. the big cheeses thought that kids won't mind a pea brained t-rex getting stuff wrong all the time... on that count they were wrong. kids can be way smarter than adults a lot of the time... that alone tyrannosaurs!
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at the same time kids LOVE me... i wish it was them running things instead of adults. than we dinosaurs would get some respect in the human world!
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anyways, i was one of the science camp educators. which meant i was supposed to help out the camp staff lead educational programs and activities... i say supposed to, because well, often i didn't actually get what we were doing or what i supposed to talk about right...
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like for example here where the idea was me talking about what science is... i tended to have to get everyone else working at camp to correct me before i'd get it right... man how embarrassing.
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one of the guys i worked with a lot was strong-man the strongest dude on earth. don't believe me? just look at his colossal muscles!

we used to tag team on leading stuff in the fossil lab. there were all kinds of cool things the kids would get to do there. here we were leading fossil casting. the kids got to make replicas of actual fossils and take home the copy!

lucky ducks. i never got to keep anything from work... oh right, they weren't working...

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now strong-man ,he was a lab expert... well okay except for his wearing shorts and open holed shoes in the lab... otherwise a real expert (besides the fossil lab was the lab for the public and not very dangerous... as for the real prep labs in the museum. well me and strong-man weren't allowed in them for various reasons. broken fossil reasons. me on account of being less than smart. strong-man on account of accidental crushing a few things with his HUGE might!)
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i on the other hand was... well, not so much of an expert!
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i was entertaining though! the kids loved me, and the only thing they loved more than me was my dr. phil currie puppet!
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man i love puppets. they crack me up, and the kids thought like me... which is funny cause again they're usually a lot smarter than me. how could we be thinking alike with such different sized brains?
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sadly strong-man didn't like my dr. phil currie puppet as much as the kids.
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he also didn't like it when i took things too literally... which i don't get. when you're talking shouldn't you mean what you say, and say what you mean?
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like this time when strong-man said fossils tell stories about the past just like books tell stories. i thought that was silly. books don't tell stories. they don't laugh. they don't sing. they don't do anything! they just sit there and go like this... well that in the picture.
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i get what he meant now. though i stand by my confusion back than. you read stories from books. they don't tell you them. the effort is up to YOU!
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anyways sadly our lab sessions almost always ended in strong-man losing his cool at me... which is too bad as he is a real cool dude. just not when he's angry. i really don't like him when he's angry. the angrier strong-man gets the stronger strong-man gets!... which kinda bugged me. it wasn't my fault...
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not that it bugged the kids. they thought it was funny! which i guess it probably was. i just at the time didn't think so. i kinda thought at times they were laughing at me...
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fortunately it wasn't all stuff i had no clue about. i also got to do the dinosaurs of alberta talk. if there is one thing i've always known a lot about its dinosaurs!

of course there were lots of other fun activities that the campers would do that i wouldn't have to do much for, cause none of the staff trusted me with anything serious.

i really liked the canoeing. we got to reenact how the old time palaeontologists explored this area. back than they didn't have roads to drive around on. the only easy way to get into the heart of the badlands was by the river that carved them.

which was the sort of trip we'd go on with the kids. including some authentic fossil hunting on the shore! in the middle of no where (the best place to find fossils)!!!

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okay i liked the canoe trips... sometimes the poor camper stuck on the boat with me didn't like it as much. i wasn't the best navigator... sure i'd been canoeing a lot by the end of my camp summers, but you try paddling with arms as small as mine and we'll talk okay!!!

the kids also got to see lots of stuff the normal museum visitor wouldn't be allowed to. like tours of both the collections AND preparation labs.

i learned a lot about real palaeontology while hanging out with the kids on these tours. learning from real scientists and technicians, like my pal caleb (whose now training to be a real palaeontologist... i'll have to look him up while i'm here in canada!)... though the campers sometimes complained cause i asked more questions than them, and sometimes didn't stop when it wasn't my turn anymore...

still me and the campers were buds by the end of any day. again unless the staff needed me to do something in particular, i was just like one of the kids and hung out with them mostly.

doing all the stuff they did... which come to think of it, with the amount of arts and crafts i did you'd think i'd have learned to draw or paint or something cool like that!?!

i think it was doing all that stuff at camp that started to make me grow up a bit. when i began working at camp i was 2 years old, and i left just after my 3rd hatching day (yeah one year on the calender, but TWO whole summers at camp). in t-rex years that had me going into "teenage"dom (though as a t-rex making it to your teens makes you OLD!).

everyday at camp was full of adventure, and you were always doing some different and new. even if you worked there all summer! i'm serious, at the end of a summer after 6 separate camps doing roughly the same thing, it never felt like the same thing! that and i worked it twice, remember people of the web wide world. it WAS different everytime, even if on paper they were all the same!...

the thing i miss the most about working camp though was it was the first time i was treated equally by humans. i wasn't just a specimen or display at the museum. i was part of a team, and depended on by the camp team EXTREME! (that was what we camp staffers used to call ourselves).

amy noticed me zoning out into the past, and brought me back to the present. after i told her i wanted to work camp again she sympathized. amy had just come from helping take camp down. the kids had all gone back home, and camp was done for the season.

ah nuts...

though don't get me wrong people of the innerweb. it was super awesome to visit with amy. we had fun going over old memories and stories, and remembering all our camp friends who'd since left drumheller.

sure it was sad to think those days were over, and they were never coming back, but it reminded me that new adventures must be just around the corner.

which i guess i was going to need to find. with no sign of who ever brought me back here, and everyone i knew around town leaving what was i going to do? i had a lot more time in drum to kill this trip, and it seemed i was fast running out of people to catch up with. amy was leaving after this catch and and heading home too...

though an idea was occurred to me people of the innerweb. sure all the people of my past weren't sticking around, but my past itself can't go anywhere. i'm thinking maybe i should look into it!

what do you think?

special treat

well people of the world wide web due to all the commotion and craziness of the countdown of doom i've neglected a key promise i made to you guys a while back. i'd hoped to be sure to get a vlog up every 25 posts or so, but if you were paying attention i've gone a few over that with no vlog.

now sadly i still haven't had time in my busy schedule (what with the new job, and figuring out what life in dunedin is REALLY about) to get a vlog done. however the crazy guys at prehistoric insanity (the nice people who make my vlogs possible) have posted the UNOFFICIAL royal tyrrell museum training video. guess who it's about...

that's right... this is the true story of how it was all those years ago i got my job in drumheller!

it is kind of a fitting thing for me to post right now. the museum is no doubt in the midst of gearing up for a new summer, and this will be the first summer in years i haven't been there!

fortuently i don't have time to get sad or homesick about that last fact.

so take a trip back into my past... the year was 2004...

securing the job...

with my big triumph of getting a job two days ago, life has significantly shifted for me, people of the innerweb. in most ways good. all but one that is. due to the new time constraint put on me by working at the museum, i have less time to deal with the last couple outstanding criteria of the government's.

time is still ticking, and just as a reminder to us all (but especially me!):

T-Minus: 4 days!!!!!

i actually am close to fainting looking at this number!

that having been said i've got half the criteria met as of this moment. all i need is one more signature (hopefully not too hard to acquire), and a home. now the place to live has thus far proven with research to be the hardest to get.

the only free of cost places are wild and natural areas which are under the protection of the department of conservation. meaning my endangered species directives kick in when i move there. as i don't have a natural habitat here in new zealand i can't move into any of these...

meaning i need to move in somewhere that costs money. i don't have any right now. however that's where i'm hoping my new job at the museum will help me. with a job i'll be getting money, and with money i'll be able to get a place!

so with that in mind i went into work for the first time yesterday. why i didn't post about that day you might ask. it was probably a more interesting day then my second... you'd be right people of the web wide world.

only i'd have to kill you if i told you the details of my training. as a security guard of the otago museum i have been entrusted with the safety and well being of all the priceless artifacts and specimens contained within it's premises. so if i told you all about my training i'd be exposing crucial details about the museum's defenses and weak spots... which i can't allow...

that and as i haven't worked since the eco centre i was really tired after the shift, and too lazy to write last night...

alright so the otago museum. it's about the same size as the royal tyrrell, but different dimensions (not as in the sci-fi sense of the word either). rather then being spread out all over the place it is tall. three floors tall to be precise.


standing in the lobby i don't yet feel this is my museum like the tyrrell did, but hopefully it'll grow into it...


still looking into the vast inners of the otago museum i appreciate the scope of my new task here. from this vantage point i can see ALL the galleries at once. there's no question how big this place is (tourist at the royal tyrrell always got confused as to where to go, and how big the place was due to haphazard layout in places).


it also makes my job easier as i can watch and guard the galleries ALL from the same area.


this has caused only one issue. i haven't seen a lot of the museum yet because in order to watch everywhere i can't leave the lobby...


though i have managed to see a little bit of what's inside. all of it is on the second floor. being the middle i can risk venturing a tiny bit into its galleries...





my first discovery in the entrance to the discovery corner was a globe of earth. not a bad first discovery... as i was about to move on something hit my tiny brain though...


a GLOBE! the first thing they had on display... wow is there some sort of code that museums have that their first display HAS to be a globe???


check this out... i might be onto something here!

this was the first thing that you'd see

when you entered the tyrrell's lobby.

craig used to play with me here when i was 2 years old...

(those were the days)

the eco-centre had one

as well greeting their

guests...

the globe connection... i'll have to look into this discovery later... very curious though!





elsewhere there's some really cool stuff on this floor all about the maori. they were among the first people to move to new zealand. they made a living off the ocean, and we've got some sweet examples of the tools they used to make this living...

they also have a FOSSILIZED skeleton of a moa. though it kinda looks like a dinosaur it is actually a giant extinct bird (which okay still technically makes it an advanced dinosaur, but not an old skooler like me... more a young wanna be!).

completing my quick inspection of the maori gallery was a model of a maori house. a thought entered my mind seeing this. maybe i could strike out a deal like i had at the tyrrell where i could live in the otago museum...

my supervisor this morning said that was out of the quest... unlike the tyrrell where i served as a display while living there, the otago had no such purpose for me... after all they don't have dinosaurs down here... i guess a long term goal could be to convince them that maybe they need one on display...

point is this is a pretty sweet place to work!

bound to be plenty more for me to discover... however i should stop using my puter here, and get back to watching the lobby!

also need to come up with a plan to solve my outstanding government criteria...

messing with the roommate

man oh man. the rain still hasn't stopped people of the web wide world...

i'm not heading out into town, and getting soaked. that just isn't going to help me in any way really.

after my run in with the germ-man i don't really feel all that safe wandering around salmond hall either. so i was going to hang out here in craig's room...

now his room was in pristine condition for a human to live in, but it wasn't really suited for a
t-rex to chillaxate in. there was no nest or ferns anywhere for me to relax in. i'd been running around so much lately trying to fix my government troubles i hadn't properly taken time to make myself at home. so thought this weather caused lull would be a great chance to do so...


oh man i should have used my peanut sized brain a bit more... craig said NOT to settle in... not only was he really busy at skool... but i was supposed to move out in the next two weeks...

well maybe if i cleaned up my handy work before craig got back from class he won't notice... i just needed to use the little dinosaur room (or big human room too i guess)...

just my luck craig would get home while i was in the washing room... boy was he not uh happy we'll say...

i haven't heard anyone yell my name so loud since when i lived with craig AND dan...

well i guess it's pretty bad... in fairness i had to check all the drawers and selves to see if there was a nest of fern hidden away from sight...

i could have done worse. last time i lived with craig the basement did kinda turn into a jungle... if you don't believe me just play the five parts of the movie you find on the other end of this link.

reunion

T-Minus: 28 days...

Location: Salmond Hall

Objective: Home

alrighty things were looking good again people of the innerweb. after my getting lost in the woods of the botanic gardens i thought i'd lost the trail of the watery leith aqua duck... however thanks to the intervention of the helpful security staff i was back on the trail of the stream.

emerging from the garden though things were looking easy peasy... my destination lay only a single block ahead. directly across from the garden gates and everything. just to make sure i walked preciously along the leith which sunk a few metres below the sidewalk. i didn't take my eyes off it until i lost track of the leith due to a parking lot...

not just any parking lot mind you, but rather the lot of my destination...

oh RIGHT!!! i'm so sorry people of the webwide world! i totally forgot to tell you what my destination was or more importantly who i was looking for!

where is my brain the size of a peanut been lately?!?

well rather then spoil the surprise i'll just keep telling you the story...

my destination was salmond hall. a student residence. it was here that i hoped to find myself a permanent home in new zealand and thus meet the first of my criteria for the government!

all i had to do was find the one person i knew in new zealand... the university claimed this is where he lived... i had no choice but to believe the universities information. i figured why not isn't being smart and giving out information their job?

but even more critical then this question was the person i sought here?

boy was my luck holding out today! he sure was!

my legal guardian, craig, was indeed staying here... meaning i had a hope of staying with him...

now craig wasn't too surprised to see me... unlike the last time i showed up unannounced at someone from the tyrrell's doorstep... he predicted that i'd make my way to him sooner or later...

craig let me into his room... very nice i thought. be a perfect new haunt for my new life in NZ... but wasn't going to be as easy a solution at i thought.

you see craig was still very very annoyed with me over the supposed "incident" i'd caused when i "smuggled" myself over here in his bag... he got held up in costumes and the government had been giving him some trouble about going to skool here due to it... i guess... not that i know ANYTHING about how i got into his bag...

i told craig all about my situation...

now me and craig we go way back... he after all was the one who hatched and raised me... so i know him pretty good... i was a difficult hatchling to be sure, and i've made craig mad lots of times before... but this time i could tell he was REALLY mad with me... i thought for a second he'd turf me out for sure...

suddenly to my surprise he said he'd let me crash with him TILL my deadline. if i didn't find a different place at that point though craig said he'd let the government do what it wanted with me...

oh man people of the web wide world i'm feeling kinda bad. i think i might have actually caused craig some real grief... NOT that i had ANYTHING to do with my being in his bag... just craig was the one guy who usually looked out for me... and now even he is upset with me...

i'll make it up to him though! now that i at least have a roof over my head and a base of operations i'll be able to focus on getting my criteria done in no time! then i'll be able to work on making something of myself, and pay craig back for his troubles!

xmas tickles

well i may not have gotten my old job back, i still don't have a clue what the future holds for me, and being in drumheller is bringing up all sorts of memories...

at least i'll get some free turkey before i leave!!!

the museum was nice enough to at least invite me to their xmas party.

i've never really gotten what xmas is or what it's about. all i know is that the trees get really bright and pretty, and there's a lot more food about then normal.

the party was at the new place in town the quarry... the COOLEST name ever! though to be fair it is the farthest thing from a fossil dig i can think of. staffed by adam and his excellent crew, we tyrrellers were in for a night we won't forget soon... well unless their like me and have a brain the size of a peanut anyway...


i got to sit with my good buddy cam for dinner. i was really glad we'd sorted out that whole him being the one who fired me thing. it would have made things kinda awkward.

at one point cam went to put his arm over my shoulder for a picture. by accident he found my ticklish spot. everyone thought that my laugh was really funny...

it kinda set the tone for the night...

during my hanging with kirsta she interrupted the conversation we were having to make me laugh again...

before that we were having a chat about where other people from the museum were or what they were doing...

dan decided not to come to the party. mostly cause i was coming, and he was still mad at me for trying to eat richardo. have to make sure that i patch things up with him. me and dan go back a long way... i don't want him to stay mad at me forever.

craig had left the museum to head back to calgary to prepare to head overseas to new zealand. kirsta was really surprised i hadn't heard anything about this... i had been in BC for the last few months, and in exile before that... how was i supposed to know. though i wonder why he hadn't told me. he is kinda like my legal guardian and stuff...

krista thought my tickled laughter was very funny though, and that's as far too catching up on other museum people as i was going too.

lastly i caught up with brad... well brad 2. he's just not brad 1 is why i make the distinction. brad 1 was nice enough to give me my job 4 years ago, but then he left the museum (some said he just couldn't live with himself for some reason... i never did find out what it was cause people would always suddenly glare at me in the middle of the story... not sure why they'd do that... i didn't know the end of it!!!)

anyways brad was having a good time. like me he doesn't work at the museum, and was just there for the fun. he had heard about my "not being with the company" anymore... though that was a weird thing to say as it's a museum. not a company!

i told brad all about the events of my return. how i had no idea what i was going to do. it was becoming clearer and clearer that i needed to find a place without any dinosaurs so that i could be the only deal in town. everywhere in canada i'd been there were dinosaurs, and they were all trying to immigrate to drumheller which seemed to say that things were even WORSE elsewhere around here.

i told him about how while looking at the badlands the flatness of the prairies reminded me of the ocean for some reason. he said that was pretty obvious why... i just looked at him... then he remembered my brain size.

"well traum it's pretty simple. i think you were smarter just then, then you think you are. there's got to be a place over the ocean that doesn't have any dinosaurs."

wait a minute! brad was right!!!

there has to be somewhere over the BIG ocean that dinosaurs haven't been found or put in museums... but where???

just as i realized who i was going to need to see to help me figure out a new possible home for me suddenly brad reached over and hit my laughing spot.

"sorry man." brad apologized. "your laugh is just too funny."