Happy New Year.

Wow. I remember as a kid thinking that one day it would be the year 2000 and I'd be a whopping 35 years old. Seemed like it would take forever to get to that time - and now it's nine years PAST that time. Ugh.

Well, I'm starting out the new year with either a cold or mild case of the flu. Not sure which. Last weekend we decided to go to the Georgia Aquarium (bad idea it turns out on a holiday weekend). Yeah, so thinking it would be slow, we get there to find oh, I dunno, maybe 25,000 OTHER people who thought it would be slow, too. Took about half an hour to get in (which is actually considered good). Once in though, it was shoulder-to-shoulder people, many of whom had kids in strollers with whooping cough, hacking, mouth uncovered, for all the masses to catch. Yippie. Fun day! Three days later - poof - I start to get sick. Dammit.

We were going to try to go to the World of Coke museum across the way from the Aquarium when we left, but after we got out, the line stretched for blocks and we were told it was "at least" a 2.5 hour wait to get in. Yippie. We passed.

Anyway - the photo (above - left, click it for larger view) shows one of the "baby" Whale Sharks as it swims past watchers in the 6 million gallon water tank. Whale Sharks can get up to 50 feet long, so at 14 feet, this is a very young one. An interesting fact: While Whale Sharks can open their mouths very wide, they can only swallow things no larger than the sized of a quarter and have no real teeth, so on top of being very docile, they're not a threat to people or normal-sized fish that swim too close.

A video you can watch below: Is inside the underwater "tube" where toward the end, you can see two of the Whale Sharks actually swimming above our heads (as well as see the crowds).



Happy New Year.