In May Eric and I went on a cruise for two weeks to Alaska. (Wanna talk about awesome?) While on the ship, we had several days at sea...which meant we could sleep as late as we wanted; drink as much as we wanted; do whatever we wanted. The first two days at sea were awesome...but, after like, a week, I was getting bored doing the 'typical' activities.
So one day while walking the ship, we found the library! We found out they have daily trivia questions, daily sudoku...oh, and books.
First day I was excited at showing up my mad skills on trivia questions to Eric. Surely I could answer some of these questions. Sadly, I was so wrong. My favorite question was, "Which of the Marx brothers played the piano?"...I was so excited because I knew this one. Richard Marx, duh! (Remember the 90s singer?) I couldn't have been more wrong.
Apparently the 'right' answer was Harpo Marx. Whatever. That was the one and only day that I did trivia. Then I took a stab at sudoku. My brain hurt so badly...I kept cheating, looking at Eric's sheet...and then finally gave up and just wrote in the answers from the answer sheet.
Now I'm sure your wondering "what does any of this have to do with Owen the hippo?"
As I said, the library also had books. Since trivia wasn't my thing, nor was sudoku, I'll just skip over the fiction section and look at kids books. Kids speak my language (and don't make my head hurt...)
I came across a really cute book about a hippo who got separated from its pod during the tsunami in 2004...Owen, the hippo, was moved to a zoo that had an OLD tortoise, Mzee (we're talking like 100+ years). The two bonded right away and are now inseparable! I kept showing Eric the photos from the book, because it was such a cute, touching story and of course making the "awww" noises (I'm not really good at being quiet in a library...seriously- my voice travels on its own...I can't help that.)
This morning I was on msnbc.com reading about the elections and stuff and clicked on one headline that said, "Unlikely friends: Why we love odd animals" It was the story of Owen and Mzee!
The slideshow that followed a bunch of unlikely friends made me smile, and I thought it would be fun to share...
See, I told you my stories all tie in together, some how...
