First, a little bit about myself. My name is Tiffany, but you can feel free to call me either Tiffy or Vanilla. I am currently 19 years old and I work in the concession business part time. Animals are my passion and I hope to someday have a career that is animal related. Graduated from high school in 2007 and I am trying to get accepted to a local community college in the Animal Care Specialist Course. I'm also hoping to find a part time job having to do with animals within the next year or so.
I love Anime and attend my local convention every year. I haven't missed it since I started going in 2005. I like to cosplay all though I am not the best seamstress, my costumes are at least accurate and passable. I play video games and my amazing boyfriend bought me an XBox 360, along with a game (Left 4 Dead), and a $120 GameStop gift card for Christmas. Yeah, he's a keeper (<3 Love you Honey.)
I like to cook, although very rarely get to cook anything from scratch because of limited funds, equipment, and time. When I do though, my entire household is treated to exotic fares they might never have tried elsewise.
I believe in peace and that everyone should be treated with a certain amount of respect unless they do not deserve it. Racism is stupid and so is any sort of prejudice. I may joke about hating those damn antarticans, but that doesn't mean I really hate them, so keep that in mind.
Born and raised in New England, I am a Sox fan and sometimes talk with a Boston accent. I also hate snow, cold, and rotaries. But I really wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
I have 4 cats, 3 fish tanks, and I just recently purchased a Russian Tortoise.
Now for a bit of an introduction to the blog. I hope to turn The Vanilla Bean into a place people can come to for entertainment and information. I'll be posting articles, rants, pictures, links, recipes and more. Many of my posts will probably be about animals, and things that I learn from day to day. My posts might have a political bias (liberal, duh) so please do not be offended. I am not trying to cause any trouble here, just adding to the wonderful resource that the internet is.
Okay, so. Since November, I've been wanting a Russian Tortoise. As soon as christmas was over, I started saving up. I was going to buy one from my local PetSmart, but he got sold before I could get my funds up. I then decided to go the smart route and get one from a breeder. I don't want to help support poachers who get these guys from the wild, and I would much rather have a baby tortoise that I can raise and "train" to be a loving little pet. So, I saved up even more money and thanks to the people on the forum at http://www.russiantortoise.org, I was refered to a pet store in California that had some captive raised baby Russians (http://petacularexotics.com I HIGHLY recommend them. From what I gather it is run by a husband/wife team and with them, the animals come first. If you need a reptile, check them out!) and was an experienced shipper. After a few e-mails back and forth with the owner, I paid for my tortoise and the wait began. Being winter, it's just been way too cold on my end to risk shipping. Luckily this week there was a break in the weather and it was 55 for two days straight. They shipped him (or her) out yesterday and I got him this morning.
Of course after all these months of waiting, it wasn't that easy. I woke up early enough yesterday morning to make sure I did not miss the Fedex guy. The pet store told me that my tortoise would be delivered next day by 10:30 AM. So when 12 rolled around and there was still no knock, I started getting frantic. I have no patience and I had to wait a few months as it was.
I decided to check my doors and lo and behold, on my front door there was a 'sorry we missed you' tag from fedex, telling me they would try delivering it again tomorrow, or that I could pick up my package at their location a few towns over after six. On the phone with my boyfriend, I started freaking out and my hero, he said he would start getting ready and drive over to my house (a 30 min drive) so he could take me to Fedex and we could demand some sort of them giving me my tortoise now action. But I decided to call them first and tell them the situation. Once the lady realized that it was a time sensitive, weather sensitive live shipment, she got right on calling the driver and sending him back to my house asap.
So finally, after months of waiting, I got my tortoise. And I sure am happy I did everything the way I did. For a mere 3 months of waiting and $225, I got myself a beautiful, healthy, baby Russian Tortoise. It was love at first blink. When I opened the box, tore off the top layer of styrofoam, threw the heat pack, and frantically pushed away all of the packing paper, I saw my little tortoise for the first time. It opened it's little eyes and gave me a look that said "Hey! I was sleeping! What gives?"
That look made everything worth it.
