Nikki Post: Colorado Wildfires

I usually try to keep this blog light-hearted and funny, full of silly pictures of my stuffed armadillo going on adventures, but today I want to break character for a minute and talk about a very serious subject.

Even though Colorado governor John Hickenlooper has said otherwise, Colorado is burning. This is no exaggeration. Pictures are popping up all over Google, national media outlets, local news organizations, and social media (especially Twitter). People are desperate to find ways to help the victims, whether it's to donate money, necessities, or even their homes to evacuees. I'll be posting links to these organizations at the bottom of this post. First though, I'd like to share with you some pictures of the various wildfires so everyone who isn't in Colorado can appreciate the desperation our citizens are in. Imagine that these are your homes, or the homes of your loved ones. Can you even fathom how terrifying this is for people who don't know if their homes have burned? Who don't know if their mementos, important documents, clothes, and even animals are safe? Who have nowhere to stay except maybe a high school gymnasium, a YMCA, or the shelter of a stranger's house? Again, please scroll all the way down to find ways to help Colorado's citizens.

EDIT:

This comment was posted on a Reddit forum conversation about the fires:

"I'm a firefighter. Sadly, I'm not there, I'm out for this season with an ankle injury and paperwork fuck-ups. But yes, the weather can and will take a fire and turn it into a monster in a mater of minutes. I saw it happen in Northern California in '08, I saw it happen in LA in '09, and I saw it happen in Northern Nevada in '10. Despite all logic to the contrary, fire is a ravenous creature that will devour anything and everything in it's path. If you are even remotely in an area that can burn, GET THE F*CK OUT NOW. I'm deadly serious, get you, your family, and what bits of precious you can't bear to part with, and leave. Right now, if that's possible. I have watched fire run across the ground at 40 mph, torching old-growth trees to kindling in a matter of seconds. Don't stay. Leave. A home can be rebuilt, a life cannot be remade.
If you have time, prep your house. Cover any and all openings, this means windows, doors, vents, eaves, crawl spaces, any hole you can find needs to be covered with plywood or some other dense, semi-flame resistant material. Pull EVERYTHING away from the sides of your house, from wood piles to that lawn mower you keep meaning to fix to that Rhododendron your wife planted to that empty (or God help you, full) tank of propane. Pull flammable stuff away from windows and doors if it's in the house. And when evac time comes, leave a note on your door with contact info, number of people in your household, and your destination.
I'm so sorry I'm not there to help. I feel like I've let you all down. All I can do is sit here at home, feeling useless, and pass on what info I can. Stay safe, my thoughts are with all of you."

 

Photo posted by @donmoen

In Colorado Springs. Fire is threatening Air Force Academy. Photo posted by @KevinOzebek.

Colorado Springs fire. Note the houses on fire in the background. Photo courtesy of Fox 31 News in Denver.

Photo courtesy of @scottseibold. From what I can tell, he lives in Colorado Springs.

I find this picture particularly upsetting. This is a picture of the High Park fire, one of the worst in the state right now. Photo courtesy of RV Vagabonds. Read their blog, especially about how the Colorado Wolf Sanctuary has had to be evacuated because of the flames.

Map of all the wildfires currently burning in Colorado, as of June 23rd. Several more have cropped up in the past few days. Photo courtesy of Wildfire Today.

 

Citizens of High Park wait at a Red Cross station to see if they can return to their homes. Look at how many people have been displaced by just ONE fire.

Rocky Mountain Health Care services are in desperate need of toiletries, specifically towels, shampoo, soap, and food.

The Red Cross is collecting supplies and monetary donations. The link takes you to the local Colorado branches of the organization. I think almost all of them need donations. You can also donate $10 per text message by messaging REDCROSS to 90999.

SO MANY animals (wild and domestic) have been displaced by the fires. Here's two organizations that especially need your help:

• Pikes Peak Humane Society needs animal kennels and bottled water for staff and volunteers.
• Larimer Human Society needs monetary donations, dry dog and cat food, and dog and cat treats.

If you live in Colorado and can help people displaced and homeless by the fires near Fort Collins, please visit this website: http://cohighparkfirehousing.org.

Here are three links to more organizations that need your help and donations:

• HelpColoradoNow.org has a comprehensive list of ways to donate time, money, and supplies.
• This article on The Denver Channel also has several other animal shelters, firefighter organizations, and donation centers that you can contact.
• The Denver Post has a really great list of resources about the wildfires.

Please share this entry. I don't care about "spreading the word about the blog." I just want to help people and make sure that others know how to help people too.

Random Post

Nikki still needs to edit the pictures from our camping trip last weekend for me to post up here. She ended up taking more fancy-pants pictures that she'll post to her Facebook fan page than she took of pictures of me, but that's ok. At least she took pictures. :p In the meantime, I thought I'd share some pics and a video and a random armadillo fact I've got laying around. So this is a filler entry, but hopefully it's at least a little interesting.

First up, my interesting armadillo fact, brought to you by @FunFactFriday and @drew_eckman on Twitter.

Armadillos, opossums, Nolins, and sloths
spend about 80% of their lives sleeping.

Here's my fun fact: I have no idea what a Nolin is, nor could I find anything about them by Google searching.

The next two parts of this entry come from our friend Jared M. Gordon, who not only posts horror stories about people's bad dates, AND writes about random topics, AND keeps a travel blog too (why he'd bother writing one without an armadillo is beyond me), but is also a decent guy who enjoys Mexican food and witty banter. (PS: Jared, if you don't link more prominently to this blog in at least one of your many social networking sites, I'll send a cousin of mine after you; he has leprosy. Hard to make movies when your nose is falling off!!)

Jared is on his yearly cross-country road trip, and he stopped by Denver to say hi and crash on our couch. So far, he's amazed at how nice everyone in Denver is. Nikki has a theory that the air in Colorado is so thin that no one can maintain rage for very long. However, she proves that theory wrong every time she gets cut off in traffic. :p

Today, he's visiting the Denver Zoo and sent Nikki this video of a monkey (it could be an ape; hard to tell) swinging from a trapeze line at the zoo:

Jared also sent her this picture of him being besties with some hippos:

Finally, we have a new addition to our family, a new permanent resident in our household. Her name is Eva, and she's a spastic three-year-old pointer-mutt mix. Nikki & Steve had spent about a month looking for dogs on Petfinder.com (Nikki can now tell you the breed of any dog she sees) and visiting the Dumb Friends League, looking for the perfect pooch to bring home. They weren't even going to visit with Eva, as her former family had given her up for being "too hyper," but the volunteer at the check-in counter said, "One person's hyper is another person's normal," so they met Eva, fell in love, and brought her home.

Eva isn't "hyper" so much as she's paranoid that we'll stop loving her at some point. She's SUPER eager to please and LOVES having her belly rubbed. She knows very well who the "alpha dogs" are in the house and just wants to be around us all the time. (Tasha, as you can imagine, is horrified, although she's not mad at Nikki and Steve like she was when we had Stella the cat.) Eva's family neglected her when they had her, and probably just tied her up in the yard and left her there. We think this is why Eva's such a spazz. (Nikki and Steve are signing her up for obedience training classes today.)

I suggested that we take Eva camping with us last weekend, as it'd be nice for her to get out of the apartment and have new places to sniff and explore. Here are a few pics from that adventure.

On the way up the mountain. She was remarkably calm in the car.

On the way down the mountain. She loved sticking her head out the window!

That's all for now, folks! Hopefully I'll get to update the blog soon. :)

Nikki Post: What's a Tweet-up?

I follow a local Twitter feed that tells people about special events going on in the Denver area. (I Know Denver, by the way.) Last week, they posted a notice that the Denver Museum of Natural Science (DenverMuseumNS on Twitter) was having a "tweet-up," which is a group get-together that you learn about on Twitter. (That's my definition anyway. The Urban Dictionary definition is much cruder.) All they asked was that we a) enjoy ourselves and b) tweet about our experiences and use the hashtag "#dmnstweetup."

For those who aren't Twitter-knowledgeable, a hashtag is like a common link that people on Twitter use to talk about a certain topic. Someone could search for the term "DMNSTweetup" on Twitter and see all of the tweets that people at the tweet-up using that tag were making. Hashtags range from the practical, like the tweet-up hashtag, to the ridiculous like the recent "#thingslongerthankimkardashiansmarriage.")

The tweet-up met up after regular museum hours so we could have free access to the T-Rex Encounter. Animatronic dinosaurs that follow your every movement?! FOR FREE?! Sign me up!! AND we were being given this special access by the curator, Joe Sertich ("Curator Joe"). Check out the website for the details; it's a lot cooler than I could describe. While I'm fairly certain she'd freak out from fear, I'd love to be able to take Mia (my three-year-old niece) to the exhibit. I can see her roaring back at the T. Rex if surrounded by the right audience. ;)

Before I post screen-shots of my tweets, here's the "official" picture Steve and I took with Sue, the museum's famous dinosaur: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmns_photo_booth/6333575962. And here's pictures of other museum-goers having fun with the same green screen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmns_photo_booth.

WHOMP WHOMP for me. :(

 After spending an hour wandering around the exhibit, we were blessed with a special treat: we got to go "backstage" in "the Bone Room," where the museum houses the fossils and bones that are a part of the Snowmastodon Project. Up in Snowmass, CO, a ski town, construction workers were digging a reservoir when they kept unearthing mastodon and mammoth bones, along with the bones of other ancient animals large and small. They stopped their digging, and scientists and volunteers from DMNS swarmed into town. The sheer amount of bones they found is incredible. And these bones are considered "modern fossils," meaning that minerals from the earth haven't replaced the bone. (Thanks to Scientist Steve for helping me phrase that correctly!) So instead of having to brush away the dirt from the fossils gently so as not to destroy the bones, the excavators just had to wash the dirt away. Seriously, read about the project; it's insanely impressive and geek-out worthy.

Note to scientists: I asked Curator Joe if I could touch the tooth first, and I touched it EVER SO GENTLY. Steve, when I asked if he wanted me to take a picture of him touching a mastodon tooth: "I'm a scientist. I appreciate things with my eyes and my mind." His loss. :P

 

BONUS!!! Just found this video of the Saurornitholestes that another tweet-up visitor posted!

The Midwest Beckons...I Yawn

The second day of our journey was much better than the first. We spent a good amount of time in Ohio. I...don't really have much to say about Ohio. I spent a lot of the driving time in the backseat of the car, while Tasha (undrugged) wandered around between the front and back seats. 

Here are two things I remember about Ohio: seeing a sign for "Baltimore" and being told we couldn't stop there...and leaving Ohio.

 I guarantee you that Baltimore, OH is not NEARLY as big or as gangsta as Baltimore, MD.

You're welcome!

We ended up in Indiana after that. I was pretty stoked about this because Indiana is the home of the Colts, which is the team that runs around on the field while Peyton Manning wins football games. I'm a big football fan in general, a Ravens fan in particular (Nikki wouldn't let me be anything else), and I adore Peyton and his giant forehead. After much whining on my part, Steve got us to the stadium using the GPS.

 The Man, the Myth, the Forehead

 Tasha HATES being in big cities. I think it's because she finds the long, steady-speed highway drives to be soothing, whereas there's so much going on in a city that she quickly gets overstimulated. She grew up in the 'burbs; what do you expect?

 Didn't see Harold, Kumar, OR Neil Patrick Harris! Pity.

Finally!!! Lucas Oil Field - Colts Stadium!!

That was all we did in Indianapolis. We couldn't do lunch, since we had the cat, so we just kept on driving. Sadly, the city was the high point of Indiana. I can't even write a blog entry about Illinois; Nikki and I slept through it. Right before I passed out, I remember thinking, "DAMN! That's a lot of corn!"

A couple more pictures from Indiana:

 This terrifyingly large cross is bigger than the buildings around it. It's not an illusion brought about by depth of field or anything. People in Indiana apparently LOVE Jesus.

Man with INCREDIBLY unfortunate last name buys TEN billboards in succession, which will be seen immediately upon entering the state of Indiana. Nikki and Steve kept giggling about it and making references to them the entire rest of the day.