4th of July, Major League Baseball and more animals

Dear City of San Diego

You don't know me, but I heard your 4th of July fireworks weren't so great. If you want a few pointers, feel free to drop by on November 5 and I'll show you how its done.

Yours sincerely

Rolleston

PS If you want set up a sister city agreement, now is the time. After all, I am the town of the future.

Yeah, the much heralded 4th of July fireworks were a bit of a fizzer, so we'll leave it at that.

On to more pictures of animals, this time at the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park, which is about 20 minutes north of the city. Think Orana Park, only good.


Click the picture to see lots of giraffes.


This is the only living male Northern white rhino in the world. At least I think he's still living.


A couple of strange looking birds




This gorilla is angry because I had just beaten him at arm wrestling.


Man + Segway = The ultimate predator on the Savannah


Obligatory meerkat photo




On Tuesday night we went to Petco Park to watch the San Diego Padres (losers of 10 straight home games going into the fixture) play the Florida Marlins. It was the always crucial 91st game of the 162 game regular season. The Padres are not having a good season and the Marlins are not a big draw, but still there were 25,000 people there for a midweek game, which shows you how much Americans love their baseball . We went with an Australian guy, his Italian wife and their little boy. The park is near the middle of downtown and is only a couple of years old, so its very nice. The stadium was built around a historic building which is quite cool. Other items of interest are a park that's open to the public when there's no game on and a sandpit area for the kiddies behind the center field fence. Tickets were only $14 each and you could get very good hotdogs for $1, although they make it back on beer and ubiquitous advertising. There was a very artificial atmosphere - people would only really cheer when prompted to by the big screen or one of the wandering people who were paid to fire the crowd up, then they would immediately quiet down again. All told, it was a good way to spend the evening and very interesting, although we won't be rushing out to buy season tickets.



The aforementioned historic building


Fortunately for fans of the Padres, this Marlins pitcher sucks and San Diego won 10-1



The Padres mascot chases a small child (out of shot).

We gave back the (t)rusty Aspire at last, as we bought a nice little Ford Focus on Monday.

Finally and most importantly, Tamsin got a job at San Diego State University, which will be the topic of its own post very soon.