Lions and Jaguars and Giraffes, Oh My!

It's that time of the year folks, March Madness! I fully plan on spending the next few days parked in front of my tv watching my bracket fall apart (thanks Georgetown). It's a definite perk to being unemployed. Overall I've picked Kansas beating Kentucky in the Final with Baylor and Syracuse joining them in the Final Four. However, I have A&M beating Duke in the Sweet 16 with the game being in Houston, and I'd be perfectly happy to throw my bracket out the window if we beat Baylor and moved on to the Final Four!

It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks for us. My dear husband has been studying a ton lately and was rewarded yesterday when he passed his NATOPS qualification flight (I think that's the correct terminology, but I could be wrong). I also found out a couple of weeks ago that I passed the second section of the CPA exam, which is a huge relief! I've got two sections left and I take my next test on April 2nd.

Last week, my friend Sarah was in town for a couple of days and she and I went to the Jacksonville Zoo with our friend Heather. Back home, we had a great zoo in Fort Worth that had tons of animals. This one was quite a bit smaller, but allowed for a much closer view of the animals and had more opportunities for interaction. Here, you can get right up next to the giraffes, and even feed them.

They have an area where kids can go in and pet or brush the pygmy goats. This was less exciting for me since I actually had sheep and goats growing up. It was more like having to do chores all over again. I did enjoy the bird area where you can get a cup of nectar and they'll fly down and eat it from your arm. I even had one climb into my hair and start grooming it. (My hair must have looked pretty bad if even the birds are trying to fix it).

The only animal I wished they'd had was a hippo. My husband and I always say that he's a giraffe and I'm a hippo, so they're kind of our favorites. Now before you start thinking, "What a jerk, he calls his wife a hippo?" you should know that I came up with that one on my own. As anyone who knows either me or my sister can tell you, you don't come between us and food. One day I had gone a whole two hours or so without eating, so naturally I was starving and grouchy. I pretty much growled to him that I was a hungry hungry hippo and if he didn't get me food soon, there would be trouble. And since he's nearly a foot taller than me, I call him my giraffe. But back to my original point, the Jacksonville Zoo is great. I had a blast and would love to go back while we're here.

Last weekend, I ran the Gate River Run with my friend Kimber. This was a really fun 15k (9.3 miles) that ran through downtown Jacksonville. It's apparently the largest 15k in the country and had about 20,000 people running it. The scenery through downtown was really pretty, and at one point we ran down near the water which was gorgeous and had a really nice breeze. We also ran near a Maxwell House factory that smelled fantastic! The hard part was at the end when we ran over the Hart Bridge (known as "The Green Monster") starting at mile 7.5. This bridge was huge. I ran a couple of hills to try and prepare for it, but they didn't even come close. It was great having Kimber there because she helped me stay motivated and really kept me going. It was incredibly tempting to just stop and walk up the bridge like most of the people around us, especially since my "running" was barely faster than a walk, but she kept running, so I did too. I've run two half marathons but for some reason, this was by far harder than either of those. As I crossed the finish line, I couldn't imagine going another 4 miles which was a bit discouraging. All in all, it was a great race though. I loved the atmosphere and the expo, and of course, the beer truck afterwards :-) As of now, that's the last race I've got scheduled for the year, but I'm planning on signing up to be a running buddy for a Girls on The Run 5k sometime in May. This is an awesome program that I'll tell you more about later.