Issue #37: Baby Animals & Lucky Strawberries
…plus a genius dating app idea
Animals: The Berlin Zoo’s baby Pygmy Hippopotamus (and the naming contest) (read about it here and here)
There’s a bit of a series of dots to connect for how this section came together. When we moved a few weeks ago we stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights. We were eating breakfast one morning in the hotel’s breakfast room when Jamie pointed out a news story playing on the television about a hippo. It was muted and I was sitting with my back to it and totally exhausted, so I processed next to none of it. I made a mental note to look it up later and finally had a chance to this week. I was not disappointed! The reason Jamie made a point of letting me know is because I love hippos. There is a story my family loves to tell to this day about hippos and me. When I was about three years old my parents took me to visit some of my family in the Toronto area. We went to the Toronto Zoo, where one of the many animals we got to see were hippos. Some of my family members started commenting on how ugly the hippos were, when all of a sudden I started sobbing in the way that only a three year old can. When someone asked me what was wrong, I wailed “I think they’re beautiful!!!”. What can I say- I’ve always been an animal lover! Ever since I’ve been on a one-woman mission to try to make sure hippos get as much love and attention as the “conventionally attractive” animals.
That leads us back to the news story. The Berlin Zoo welcomed a baby Pygmy Hippopotamus in June. The baby went viral after the zoo posted a video of its first bath, which has been watched over 16 million times. The news story that I saw was a segment on the naming contest that the zoo held. I’ll be looking out for what the winning name is!
Humour: Jonathan Edward Durham (@thisone0verhere)’s dating app suggestion (linked here and shown below)
Jonathan Edward Durham’s tweet with his suggestion for a dating app made me both laugh and say “that’s GENIUS!”. It was a humourous suggestion, and yet also someone needs to get on that ASAP. Talk about getting to the heart of the matter! If I was still in the dating world those are the critical things I would want to know! Heck, there should also be some sort of an app like this but for making friends!
World event/social media round up: “32 Jokes About The Microsoft Outage That Are Way Funnier Than They Should Be” on Buzzfeed (read it here)
To be clear, the widespread computer outage this week was no joke, and I’m sorry if you were affected by it. Sometimes though humour helps us cope with stressful situations and there are some humourous takes and perspectives on the outage in this compilation of social media posts on Buzzfeed. I love all the shoutouts to the IT departments. They really are the unsung heroes of a lot of workplaces and they got their credit this week! I also loved the references to the Y2K worry and build up. I remember all the panic over the potential that all the computers and electronic systems would crash.
Food/good moment: Finding more strawberries
Yes, I know- more strawberry content. But I wouldn’t be writing about strawberries yet again if I didn’t have a new story to add! Earlier this week we stopped by the berry farm that we found shortly after we moved. We knew they had fresh raspberries and were keeping our fingers crossed that they still had strawberries this late in July. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the farm store and saw just one basket of strawberries remaining. I snatched it up before someone else could grab it! While we were at the checkout the cashier told us that it wasn’t just the last basket in the store but the last basket of the season! As in, no more strawberries are getting picked so we literally got the last berries of the season! This would be exciting anyways, but even more so because Jamie and I historically have terrible luck with things like this. We are far more likely to be the people standing in line directly behind the people who got the last basket, not the people who got the luck! So we definitely enjoyed our moment of victory! As a bonus, we were also told that the farm grows a late-summer strawberry variety that will start being picked in a few weeks and grow until September. Looks like I might get a chance to make some strawberry jam this year after all! Our chickens have also been enjoying the strawberries, so strawberry season has been somewhat salvaged for everyone.
Animals: “Vancouver Aquarium rescues weeks-old sea otter” by CBC Vancouver (watch here)
We opened with a cute animal story this week, and we’re going to end with one too! A very young sea otter pup was just rescued and sent to the Vancouver Aquarium. She is just the cutest. Don’t you just want to pick her up and cuddle?? I’ve been to the Vancouver Aquarium and they do amazing work. Here’s to wishing her a speedy and strong recovery, and a big thank you to everyone involved who brought this little girl to safety and are putting so much work and love into rehabilitating her.
Wishing you a wonderful week and I’ll be back in your inbox next Sunday!
Lauren