Starting the Adoption Process

Friday night, March 9, we attended our first San Diego Turtle and Tortoise Society meeting at Balboa Park.  The keynote speaker was Dr. Todd Cecil, the gentleman in the middle of the photo  with blue t-shirt and goatee.  Dr. Cecil is a DVM specializing in avian and reptile medicine.  He spoke mainly about the issues around post-hibernation.  Gail and I are planning to adopt at least one or two California Desert Tortoises.  Once they are illegally taken from the desert, they cannot be returned due to the possiblity of introducing disease and mixing up the gene pools with tortoises from different areas.

Pre-meeting activity, with tortoises being micro-chipped, and snacks for humans.

Gail and I cracked up at the name of the society's newsletter, "The Voice of the Turtle".  The only sound tortoises make is a little gasp of exhaled air.  



After the meeting, we went to the University Heights area of San Diego for dinner, and chose a Russian Restauraunt named, "Pomegranate Russian-Georgian Restaurant".  Gail was able to show off her Russian vocabulary, as she once was a student of Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.    

We shared an appetizer of ikra badrijannaya (poor man's caviar), and plates of pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings), and khinkali (peasant style meat dumplings).  All was delicious and the wine pour was generous.  The wall decor was customer graffiti, which was all in good taste and fun to read.

The piano was adorned in Russian dolls and nick-nacks.  This was a fun, reasonable restauraunt that we look forward to returning to.