Sharks, Dinosaurs, and Traumatic Llamas
I’m back! I’m refreshed, rejuvenated, rewound, rekindled, regurgitated, and resplendent. Or something.
Before I tell you about my fabulous trip into the unknown, I have a confession of sorts. The lovely Anya Breton runs a segment on her blog called Trauma Llama. It’s brilliant. It’s hilarious. It’s mortifying if you’re the subject. Authors send in their most traumatizing, embarrassing stories, and she posts them, along with info about the author and their books. So, it’s an exchange. They’re all funny, and I took the bait.
I jumped into my Wayback machine and sought out my most awkward story. It’s been fifteen years since this happened, and I still can’t tell it without laughing myself into tears. And now it can be yours. Head on over to “Trauma Llama – R.L. Naquin explains why you should always lock up your stuff” for my thrilling story of danger, children, and grownup toys.
Sharing this story with the world proves that I will do anything to market my books.
And now back to vacation stuff.
We get these urges for short getaways from time to time, and we’re always trying to find somewhere new to do it. From Kansas City, you can go any direction. We’ve tried most of them. We’ve done Denver, Wichita, Chicago, Lake of the Ozarks, St. Louis, Tulsa. Most of those places we’ve managed to hit a zoo. There was one direction we hadn’t gone yet: North. And the Omaha Zoo was supposed to be something special.
We spent a couple of nights at the Ameristar in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is about two minutes from Omaha, Nebraska. Very nice room. Spectacular customer service. Food that was incredible in both restaurants we tried. Slot machines that were quite accommodating in accepting the money we put in them and keeping it there. (Confession–I’m horrible at gambling. It makes me nervous and twitchy, and I called a halt to it long before the money we’d set aside was used up.)
The Omaha zoo was really nice. They have some unique habitats encased in domes. One was for the desert and another was filled with rainforests from around the world.
The aquarium in particular was gorgeous. I took a video of sharks for my editor, Alison, but it turns out I have no software to convert it. Anything free I’ve found to do the trick kindly puts their logo across the screen so you can’t see the footage very well. I’ll keep working on it, Alison.
The whole place was impressive, and we dragged our out-of-shape bodies through the 100 degree heat to see most of it.
But my favorite part? Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure in IMax 3D. You guys. You guys! You know how much I love dinosaurs. These were ocean dinosaurs! On an IMax screen! In 3D!
I live a charmed life. See you on Wednesday!
Oh, I want to see that but the 3d would freak me out. 😀
Glad your trip was good!
And thanks again for the Trauma Llama post!
It. Was. Awesome!
Glad I could make some of your readers laugh at my expense. 🙂