The Magical Crawdad

These aren’t super awesome quality cause the light was kind of low but here is Nindiri and baby!  Born March 12th, still unnamed and un-sexed.  Mom was being super attentive with the cub, the cub nursed often, and mom had a fun play session with the cub too :] The cub is already showing signs of independence as they wanted to go and explore on their own. This is Nindiri’s third successful breeding I believe, so she is very comfortable with the whole routine :]  

Also, Nindiri and the cub are not being let out into the main enclosure yet and of course are separated from the male.  The display den she is in here has access to a back den away from the viewing area that she was free to enter with the cub at any time, and by 3pm they had locked her in the back entirely for some healthy, enforced privacy(and likely dinnertime for mom).

An Iceberg Flipped Over, and Its Underside Is Breathtaking ”In the case of this jewel-like iceberg, the ice is probably very old. In glaciers, years of compression force out air pockets and gradually make the ice denser, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “When glacier ice becomes extremely dense, the ice absorbs a small amount of red light, leaving a bluish tint in the reflected light, which is what we see.” In addition, minerals and organic matter may have seeped into the underwater part of the iceberg over time, creating its vivid green-blue color.”

There were 20-something of us in the classroom, all dying of sleep deprivation since it was the first day back to school, first class of the day. Mr. Moses was that teacher you weren’t sure how to deal with. I mean, the man’s name was Noah Eugene Moses, for starters. He drove a Harley to school, but also drove the bus. He had giant cokebottle glasses and a doofy mustache with shaggy ex-Beatles hair. He always wore suspenders and a grease-stained t-shirt because he had a potbelly and taught the shop/electrical classes. He wasn’t even really lecturing; he was throwing in tidbits of the syllabus in the midst of bad jokes and fun stories. We were all a bit nervous, because none of us had taken a class from him before, but his tests were legendary—nobody had ever made it out with an A (until I did, but that’s another story for another time and involves a really awesome bet and some hair cutting scissors).

Well, as we were fighting to stay awake, and attempting to take notes of whatever he was talking about, he was pacing around the room from here to there, straightening things and moving stuff. He was very scatterbrained, and it was easy to tell from how he kept forgetting where he put his coke. Turns out, that was just a ruse. He had the can filled with just a tiny bit of water, and the things he was moving around were stacks of papers and books hiding the hot plate and water basin. So he set his coke can down onto the hot plate, continued talking loudly enough so we wouldn’t hear the water boiling, and then knocked it over really fast into the water basin.

BANG!!!!!!!!

Three girls fell out of their seats, one dude swore so violently I’m pretty sure the devil himself cringed, everyone at least jumped and screamed, and I actually broke my pen in half.

See, with rapid decompression comes a vacuum, and with a vacuum comes a rushing of air that creates a massive sound. Think “thunder”. That’s the same principle behind it. His little tiny coke can of steam into a bucket of ice water, and we had a bang so loud the band teacher came in from across the hall to see “what was exploding today.” To which Mr. Moses responded, “Nothing, it imploded. Explosions are chapter 3.”

Images from the #50DollarsNot50Shades campaign on Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/50-Dollars-not-50-Shades/713262428793958

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So the thing about this is that it’s not every customer that walks in the door that gets this opportunity.   In fact, it’s a time-based selection.   We have these cards that tell us that the customer who orders at, say. 2:16:32 (yes, it’s even down to the second) can pay with Lovin’ to get their order for free!!

The employee themselves select what the customer has to do to get their free meal, chosen from a list given to us (from calling someone they love, to telling a joke, or even blowing a kiss) so we don’t at all feel as though we have to accept harassment from these customers as we choose what they do and they don’t at all have to be physically interactive with us.  

I actually really love this “pay with lovin’” idea, and it really excites crew and customers, so I hate all the negative press this is getting.  It was incredibly uplifting to see the smiles of customers getting their meal for free and the excitement of the customers around them, even if they themselves didn’t get a free meal.  One customer I had cried as she told me that she was going through a rough patch and this was just the sort of positivity she needed and I prompted another to call someone he loves and he excitedly phoned his wife, of whom he proudly told us just found out she was pregnant and the whole restaurant cheered for him; it was beautiful.