Day Off after 2 Years

That's right folks. Your friendly neighborhood Grantis Mantis has been a working engineer for over two years since last Wednesday! I actually didn't notice this when I decided to take a day off this Monday - the reason for taking the vacation day is, quite simply, that I've accumulated too many days over the past year and if I don't start using them, I'm gonna lose them!

So, what did I decide to do with my long weekend? Well, as some of you may know, Cherrie has started doing volunteer work at Brevard Zoo, working at the special Summer Butterfly Exhibit. I'd never been to Brevard Zoo, despite having lived in Brevard County for over two years now! That seems to be a fairly typical thing - we never tend to visit the attractions that are right near our hometown. Take me, for example. I lived in Boca Raton for six years and have only been to Miami Beach, which is just an hour away, one time. Or Cherrie - she stayed in Xi'an for four years of college and never once went to the awesome Mount Hua or the famed Terra Cotta Warriors archaelogical site. Maybe something in our heads just says, "You live here! You'll always get another chance to go there!" every time we want to visit a nearby attraction...

So, on Saturday, we decided to take advantage of Cherrie's free admission to the zoo (although I still had to pay for my tickets), and I went to Brevard Zoo for the first time ever! Some quick facts:

• Brevard Zoo is somewhat small, featuring four main areas - the Rainforest, the Florida Wetlands, Asia/Australia, and Expedition Africa
• Brevard Zoo was built entirely by volunteer workers. In retrospect, this made the zoo seem quite a big effort
• Brevard Zoo is the only zoo in the country that features a kayak tour right through their wild African animal habitat

That third one is actually really cool. It's also a guided tour, made possible because most of the workers at the zoo are volunteers. It's a little more expensive than the train tour, and, in my opinion, rightly so. You see basically the same stuff, but it's more fun on a boat!

The number of animals at the zoo is actually pretty good, and morst of them have a fairly large habitat, rather than just cages. The giraffes (one of which was born just 18 months ago at the zoo) have over five acres to roam (though they share with some small antelope and big Rhinos), the apes have their island, and really the only animals in cages were some of the smaller monkeys and the snakes and large lizards.

Check out the photos from the zoo in the Brevard Zoo Photo Album! Big Cats! Tall Giraffes! Chinese People!

I started on my homework over the long weekend. I never thought I'd say this, but it was kind of fun, doing math problems for homework again. Over the course of the weekend, I studied and did homework for about eight hours, and if it weren't for the fact that it cut into my DS playing time, I might not have really even noticed - the time went by pretty quick! Of course, it's only the beginning of my management degree career - if I'm still saying this kind of stuff in two years, then I'll be impressed!

Quick update on Grant's real pad - it's still growing very quickly - the tile was put in this past weekend, and the exterior is pretty much all complete! Check out the photos here: House Building Photos

Swimming Tiger Wows Crowds

Good time as any for a news post. Curiously, this is the second post this year involving tigers. This one is a white tiger that dives for food in a big tank. I'm not sure this behavior isn't normal for tigers, but the pictures in the story look pretty cool!

Swimming Tiger Wows Crowds

Bloody Pirates!

Not much to say today, just writing to fill the void.

Last weekend, when we visited my parents before their trip to Taiwan, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I haven't ever said much about Pirates, but the fact of the matter is, since Johnny Depp strapped on his sword and hopped into his pirate boots as Captain Jack Sparrow in The Curse of the Black Pearl, I've been a huge Pirates fan. My fandom is manifested on my desktop wallpaper at work and in my Facebook profile as well as my Blogger profile. Though I didn't enjoy Dead Man's Chest nearly as much as I did Black Pearl, I had to go see At World's End, if for nothing else than for closure of the series.

At World's End is actually the only movie of the Pirates series that I saw in the theater. Unfortunately for me, I decided to see it at a theater in Boca. Even with my trusty, expired student ID, my ticket was $7.50! That's not plain ol' highway robbery, that's piracy! In any case, I found At World's End to be quite good, though not as good as the first film. It was easily the largest production of the three films in the series, highlighted by the fantastic sea battles and an outstanding portrayal of Captain Hector Barbossa by Geoffrey Rush. It was also quite long, spanning nearly three hours. Apparently, its length was the source of criticism from many viewers, but I never really had much of a problem with long films - the more the merrier, right? I was somewhat disappointed that they didn't showcase more kung fu - after all, they recruited quite a cast of Hong Kong action actors, and it would have been cool to have a battle that pitted Chinese swordsmanship against Western fencing.

I think the biggest thing that I have to say about Pirates 3 is this. I don't really understand why Disney deviated from what I thought was the most enjoyable thing about the first film. The best parts of the first movie were when nothing really was going on, and they just let Captain Jack Sparrow do his awkward bumbling and sharp witted conversationing. The characters were what made it Black Pearl such a masterpiece, not the supernatural special effects, or even the sea battles (although I have to concede that the sea battles in At World's End really got my excited). However, the sea battles, the locations, and of course, closure, made the film worth seeing.

Moving right along, my house has entered the next major phase of its birth cycle. The drywall and interior is being worked on probably right as I type this. The exterior stucco has alread been put on, and the construction manager tells me that my walk-in date should be July 13. That means that the house will probably be ready for me to move into towards the end of July! Unfortunately, my lease doesn't end until the end of September, and my apartment manager won't let me get out of it early. On top of that, for some reason mortgage rates have skyrocketed over half a percent this past month alone! There's piracy everywhere!

Check out the photos of my house's progress here: House Building Photos

Amazing Upper Body Strength

Some exciting news! It's been a few days now, but I just got un-lazy enough to post about it. I've been accepted to the Outreach Engineering Management program at UF! I'm now a Gator student again! Basically, it is a part-time Master's degree program that meets once a month for classes and awards an M.S. in Engineering Management through the Industrial Engineering and Business Administration departments after the first 20 months of study. Additionally, if the student is so inclined, he or she can continue coursework for another 12 months and acquire his MBA from UF as well! It is a lot of work though - I just received my acceptance package this past weekend and in it was a big diagnostic homework package full of Linear Algebra and Statistics problems... and I thought I was done with all that stuff...

On to the namesake of the post. I saw this video some time back before on a website and thought to myself, "Wow, this would make an awesome YouTube cop-out on Grant's Pad!" It's got all the ingredients - awesome strength and athletic ability, and uh, ... actually that's about it. But it's enough!



In other news, I apologize to all that have tried to use the new radio station lately. It hasn't been working well at all. Believe me, no one is more disappointed than I am - nothing makes a day go by much smoother than some good ol' tunes from your favorite blog!

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The radio station seems to be working fine now. Enjoy it while it's good!
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Last bit for the day - these storms have got to stop coming right when we have football games scheduled. We've been rained out two weeks in a row due to lightning. Last week, it even hailed! Come on, nature, let us play!

Return of the Radio Station!

It's incredible. I haven't written in almost a week - in fact, I haven't written so far in this entire month of June - and yet, Grant's Pad has had a steady influx of visitors for the past seven days! I imagine part of the high traffic is due to the exposure of Grant's Pad on the Travian game that I have been playing with Karn. Our alliance, the Super Alliance (Karn has an inclination to refer to everything as "super" - very retro, very cool) has been at war for the past few weeks with the Wolves Empire, who outnumber us by some four to one. However, we have held our own against the mass attacks and Grant's Pad even garnered the attention of one of the generals of Wolves Empire! See the comment Havokk posted in the post "Life of a Mentee". Nice, but a little creepy...

In other news, the sharp-eyed reader will notice that there is now a new gadget in the sidebar, under the awesome analog clock. That's right! The Grant's Pad Radio Station has made a valiant comeback! This time, it's courtesy of Hit FM, a Taiwanese radio station that streams using Hitoradio.com. I'm guessing that this station won't be pulled off the air by the new government taxes that forced Mandarin Radio to go "premium" and thus deprive Grant's Pad of its tunes, since the station is not based in the U.S. In any case, Hit FM is probably a better station anyway - it features songs in Mandarin, Cantonese, as well as English - I heard some R&B, Beyonce, and even the parody song Pop Goes My Heart from the movie Music and Lyrics that I saw a few months ago! Hopefully, that will make the station a little more accessible for my non-Chinese readers. Plus, the new embedded player is Windows Media Player, which is included on most everyone's PC, so that will make it more accessible to people that don't feel like downloading additional software! The only downside to Hit FM is that, since it is an actual radio station based out of Taipei, Taiwan, there are actual DJs that kind of go off on tangents for a while. On the other hand, it does make you feel kind of like you're actually in a cab somewhere in Asia! So, don't delay, hit Play, and listen to 91.7 Hit FM: 只想听音乐！

Before I sign off for the day, for kicks and giggles, enjoy the original music video of Pop Goes My Heart. It's quite fun, and actually, the song Way Back Into Love is also very nice. Check it out!