(Note: photos for this entry begin here.)

Mom and I did a lot of stuff yesterday. Did some Christmas present shopping in town, then went to Folsom. I wanted Mom to go see Old Town after I went there last week. She had a great time at Dorothea's (the Christmas store) buying Jim Shore products on sale for people, and ornaments for me. (As per usual, we end up buying each other gifts in person.) I showed her the cool stuff in the area.

Then at night, we went to the Folsom Zoo. They're having a "Wild Nights and Holiday Lights" nighttime show going on right now. It was interesting because...

On the one hand, the lights are genuinely spectacular. There's Christmas trees all over, lit up normal trees, carolers, a Santa, snacks, a train, a guy in a bear suit. It's gorgeously blingy. I love that amount of lights on anything.

On the other hand, well... since most of the animals can't tolerate having lights anywhere near their cages, you really can't actually ah, see about 90% of the animals. Or it at least takes a lot of eye strain, luck, and some doing. So...I dunno. It probably didn't help that this was our first time going there and we hadn't seen what the place was like and what the animals were like under normal circumstances. So it was pretty weird to be trying to look into dark cages and seeing little or nothing. And taking pictures--and having to avoid using the flash most of the time--really didn't happen.

The only animals that had lights anywhere near their enclosures were the wolves, mountain lions, tigers, and bears (oh my). The wolves ran around, as did the mountain lions, which were pretty playful and leaping. The bears were all asleep until the zoo employee came by with food, at which point they perked right up. As for the tigers, one of them was sleeping on its back in a corner, rather adorably. Mom kept bugging me to turn on the flash just once, and I was all, "Much as I really wish I could get a good shot of this," (see what I did get?) "I do NOT want to be the asshole who has a flash go off in a tiger's face." Later, a docent came by and started telling everyone stories about how when some kids were taunting the tiger, it totally jumped on the cage and roared at them. And also..."when you annoy a tiger, they can...spray... up to 15 feet in the air." At this point I was all to Mom, "Now aren't you glad I didn't do that?" This shot was about as close as I wanted to get to a tiger with a flash.

At one point my cousin Bill called to ask Mom a weird question--"Did I drive the boat on the duck tour?" (Um, no, we don't know why he thought this, he did not)--and Mom was all, "We're in the dark at the zoo." Bill was all, "You're having a blackout?" Hah.

And after that, we did more Christmas shopping at the outlets, and then we went home and I frantically uploaded photos. I will most likely be offline for doing anything hardcore like pic posting for most of the week (goddamn, I hate how old Mom's computer system has gotten, it doesn't even really work any more), so I'll have to post catchup entries to Holidailies when I can. God, will I ever be busy doing that.

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