leaf explorers

last week we learned about photosynthesis and chlorophyll.  as much as i like all of the other teachers at my school, really & truly like them, i still want to kick their tails in terms of Bringing the Educational Fun.  i wish i could’ve taken my crew to the wilds of vermont, or concord & lexington, to witness true explosions of color.  we witnessed half-hearted trees in the suburbs of the district but they enjoyed it all the same.  up next is trying not to gag over pumpkin guts for the sake of these lovely creatures, although it’s going to be tough:  i haven’t touched the soup of guts and sticky string in probably a decade.  i let others do the dirty work.  they can take those gritty pale seeds and make crafts out of them in geometric patterns.  halloween poetry.  don’t ask me i haven’t figured the plot out just yet!

boston is out of the playoffs and i am surprisingly nonchalant.  perhaps it’s because of how charmed we are on philadelphia, how we call it gritty & how that actually is a good thing.  the people have so much character, the girls are prettier because they don’t polish themselves too pristenely, all long and tangly hair and scruffy boots.  the bars all have old trivial pursuit genus editions and people care for one another.  i would like to live there, i think.  fingers crossed.  for now, we take advantage of all the free museums that DC has to offer.  we rubbed elbows with insistent geriatrics at the opening day of the pompeii & herculaneum exhibit – the national gallery had never had an ancient roman exhibit before.  i liked the shout out to epicurus but did they really need to use the word “hedonistic” in the placard just because homeboy was a glorious atheist?  i wish more of his tomes survived.  maybe someday they’ll excavate herculaneum properly and totally gut the digs of julius caesar’s father in law.  i’m sure they’d get some juicy stuff.

i need to get a life, because as i type i try to think of spelling words for my top group:  they spelled “bilingual” and “recitation” right without any warning or practice.  these are seven year olds.  i’m in over my head.

Things to do in/around D.C.: The National Arboretum

can i tell you how awesome the national arboretum is?  its best quality is certainly its solitude, which is code for the fact that the assholes who live in adams morgan don’t bother missing their mimosa brunches to check out this leafy happy enclave.  this is sincerely the only place in DC you can travel to and feel rejuvenated and vaguely naturey.  it is fantastic.

the arboretum has got this koi pond that has mutated into a freakshow over the past year.  they’ve allowed the fish to be fed way past their need/prime and now you’ve got true mutants literally falling over themselves for some pellets.  it’s a sick sick happening but i can’t resist snapping photos each and every time.

there’s a bonsai section, as well as a slow-growing conifers lair, but my heart happens to be committed to the particular section that we nearly died in just ten short weeks ago.  we wandered the azaleas section even as the thunder threathened and rumbled and, sure enough, we became trapped refugees beneath the hostile pine.  i don’t know exactly what impulse compelled me to seek shelter beneath a tree in a lightening storm but i survived even as i didn’t deserve to.  i’m glad i’m alive!  the national arboretum taught me a lesson.

here is a vaguely scary butterfly, in drier days.

they (admittedly) dye their water and the result is this eerie, reflective narcissistic trek.  not that matt’s bein’ narcissistic in that photo.  he is a very modest man.

there’s a pond in the azalea section full of finicky amphibians who take these really graceful dives into the murky water.  it is without a doubt our favorite part.  this particular amphibian was a victim of the fight/flight/freeze conundrum.  he was so spooked that we couldn’t get him to move for anything.

we love the arboretum!  and hope it stays its vaguely-lonely, koi-inhabiting, tree-happy self.  it’s sort of a pain to get to, but totally lovely to frolic in.  i think it’s probably our favorite dc place.  go.  but only if you’re great.

Beer and blueberries pt 4: a definitive finale?

I think part of the reason that I attempt to obsessively document and photograph the activities that I partake in is due to the fact that I’ve got a peanut memory.  I’m picturing my “memory” as a tangible, physical thing and the idea that it’s a little peanut in my noggin is making me laugh!  Alone, and not working, in my apartment.

Bits of our Maine trip are beginning to seep out of my cranium.  I do like to be as much of a mental packrat as I possibly can be.  I’m very vigiliant in remembering bizarre tidbit trivia and every single slight people have ever lobbed against me, so why can’t I remember the fun times?  Maybe I’m just not remembering them wholly.  Maybe I should be content with the fleeting moments that line up like messy but humorous post-it notes in my brain.

When all else fails, I’ve got my stuffed animal Maine moose to keep the memory alive.

On another morning of fog we decided to postpone the mountains and go to this garden in Northeast Harbor.  We mingled with some geriatric botanists and spooked a deer.  I guess one of the botantists put these fresh flowers in this water trough.  It was a nice touch.

They had bee condos built all around this place!  The “condos” were for a type of bee that is very selective about habitat and apparently looks like a small fly.  They referred to the type of bee living in the condo as “Bob” so that was all the anthropomorphization that I needed to love this bee into infinity.  A bee named Bob, living in a condo!!

One morning we decided to hike the full 7.5 mile loop up to Cadillac Mountain and back.  This was around the point at which we finally climbed higher than the fog and met the sun.  We had such an early start that we really had the trail to ourselves, except for these rogue French Canadians who scrambled out of their cars and badgered a fake trail down to take photos.  I hope those photos don’t develop!  They didn’t earn those views.  This morning was so beautiful, even as the fog below was so intense that it obscured the ocean.  The songbirds on that mountain had whistles and chirps that I’d never heard before.  We got massive glorious sunburns, too, due to all the reflection from the rock.

After the 7.5 mi hike we ate pizza and gyros, respectively!  I love earning my food, even if I probably consumed more than I really did “earn”.  I broke my camera on the way down the Cadillac ridge trail because I was so confident in my new mountain goat abilities.  I fell so many times on this Maine trip but none made me cry other than this camera-breaking fall.  My poor little LCD screen looked like it was on LSD as it tried to flash some semblance of an image.  I was so worried that these little “jewels” wouldn’t be preserved on my camera card as I was convinced that the camera had somehow bitterly erased them in its death throes.  But no, they were preserved for possible inclusion into the National Record at some point in the future.

The last night was full of madly trying to shop for kitschy items for relatives and misc. crap for ourselves.  We spent the night at the pub full of locals who were so oddly kind to us.  (I say “oddly” because if tourists like Matt and I tried to encroach upon any of our local bars, I don’t think I’d like it so much.)  But we’re pretty meek and unassuming as tourists so maybe we didn’t bother them.  We had lots of conversations about Australia and New England and the Sox.  We befriended a lobsterman who talked about how great the winter actually was.  It made me wish that I had his love of colder climates.  This bar made me wish we lived in Maine, or could transport it, including the people in it, wherever we wanted to.  DC is a great place, but this pub made me miss how people in the north interact with one another.  It was nice to have fast friends.  And eat grilled cheeses!

I miss Maine something awful, but I take solace in the fact that we shall return to Vermont in two short months.  I need to invest in an electric blanket, and probably lots of beer, to keep me warm at night.  I can’t wait.

Beer and blueberries pt 3

So on another day we decided to rent these bikes, and the Bike People gave Matt a bike that was fully orange.  My favorite color!  And they decided to give me a yellow masochist bike.  My seat had 95% less padding than Matt’s.  I wonder if the bike people were just trying to mess with me or if I have a warped body image and am in fact 300 pounds heavier than I think I am.  I don’t know anything about bikes, so the answer will never be found and that’s probably for the best.

We decided to load the bikes into the boat/Suburban and take them to the Carriage Roads that extended through Acadia.  It took me about 3 hours to figure out that it was possible to change gears, so for the most part I was huffing and puffing like Cartman trying to always catch up to his friends and wondering why every single person was apparently more fit than I.  It was because I was using the third gear to get up ridiculous hills.  My legs were SCREAMING at me from lack of oxygen.  Once I figured out the gears thing, I was slightly more in the clear.

But everything was foggy!  Matt sort of shamed me into biking up this huge mountain called Day Mountain.  He shamed me by telling me it’d be too hard and we didn’t have to do it.  He knew that even though I was obesely panting and sweating, there was no way that I’d pass on the mountain.  I biked that g-damn mountain.  Later I found out that this part of the trail that we biked was labeled “difficult”.  My little heart sang with praise for my slovenly self.  I’d biked a Difficult trail!  Disregard that I took probably 5-6 breaks on the trail to throw my bicycle to the wayside and angrily pick blueberries.

Matt had never seen fog in the summer before and could not get over it.  WELCOME TO NEW ENGLAND.  This was at the top of Day Mountain, where I’m sure the views were epic, but the fog prevented it.  Still, it felt really nice on my flushed face.

So then we biked to Jordan Pond House for tea and popovers.  I wish I took a video of us desperately trying to swat the wasps away!  They had these low-lying traps for them, but the wasps were too clever for that.  We had the best seat in the house, though!  I think that was because 99% of the tourists stayed away due to fog.  At this point, I was plugging my ears and rocking/humming at the prospect of getting atop my bike again, to ride 10 or so miles back to the car.

Matt doesn’t share my desperation, content with his English Breakfast tea.

These little natural moments SAVED me, as I could pretend that I wanted to snap a photo but really I needed an oxygen tank.  This was a nice temporary waterfall due to all the storms the park had experienced.

Me, at the end of the hike, still desperately foraging for wild fruit.  you can’t tell but my bike handles contain the helmet that I INSISTED Matt rent for me.  It made me sweat and was discarded within 6 minutes of use.  Great foresight.

As I spent my day pedaling 20 miles, no end in sight, up ridiculous hills and Matt about half a mile ahead of me, the ONLY thing that kept me going was the promise of a lobster dinner at the end of the night.  However we when got there, I lost my nerve after ordering and spent the whole time before the meal got there jittery and trying to drink as fast as possible so that I’d somehow be able to deal with the fact that a crustacean was just boiled, for me.  Matt INSISTED we wear those bibs but they were g-damn useless.  However the slogan is obviously priceless.

My lobster’s tentacle’s were so hideously long!  I kept trying to hide the inevitable but the tentacles would not stay inside the pot.  it was like a horror movie.  A delicious horro movie.  The family next to us was in awe that we got lobsters, I felt like a celebrity.  Thanks to Matt for basically dismantling a creature for my consumption.  I tried, but the nut cracker thing hurt my hand.

Ye olde lobster pound.  A little token kitschy Maine for you.  I miss our boozy nights that we earned and we had to wear sweatshirts during.  There was even lobster ice cream!  I did not imbibe.

Beer and blueberries pt 2

Oh god I just lost the 7 sentences that I typed!  My heart is broken.  BASICALLY it said nevermind about that sleep, the Internet needs me.  I tried to go back to bed and the sweet sweet body of the man who somehow inexplicably loves me, but the Internet whispered in my ear and said that It was more important.  It also told me that It found my irrational sleep cycle really sexy.  Sorry Matt (but you still have a sweet body).

Seriously if my words ever get deleted from this again, I’m burning this down to the ground.

ANYWAY basically I had to hike for my health in Maine, and it was all due to the breakfast buffet.  Normally I am hypocritcally disdainful of buffet set-ups, equating them to pigs at a trough, but all of this goes out the window at a BREAKFAST buffet.  I merrily load my plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, home fries and a literal pyramid of apple cranberry drink.  Then I eat so fast that there’s no room to speak or breathe.  Then I look up, horrified, from my plate that’s now only housing crumbs.  To the mountains, I wheeze.

On this day we first went on this little nature cruise:

The lady behind us kept sort of vaguely warning her family that she was feeling seasick, even as the boat we were on was traveling three miles an hour or whatever the nautical equivalent is.  Pleeeease do not throw up in my hair, I kept thinking, as I politely listened to the naturalist guy tell us about all the rich people from Bar Harbor and bald eagles.  Above is an action shot!

Those little brown sausages you see upon the rocks are actually seals!  Pardon the blurriness, my cheap little digital camera can only be obsessively zoomed in so many times before you’re left with a piece of crap photo.  I promise you, I PROMISE they are seals.

This little lighthouse (Egg Rock Island) was abandoned and taken over by seagulls and other sea birds.

Matt could’ve had a job on board that ship because he was like bald eagle spotter man, I think he found 4.  This is really like Where’s Waldo, but bear with me:  the tree farthest left and at the very top – an eagle!

This was our Pemetic Mountain trail hike, an elevation of something like 1250 feet over the course of 1.2 miles.  Surprisingly, I kept the complaints to a minimum, because even when you’re struggling to breathe up there, look at the view.

This was my favorite strenuous hike, but I think that was partly due to how lucky we got with the weather.  The ocean sort of blends with the sky, but it’s there!

Matt the Yak was in fine form.  I actually had to force him to take breaks.  I’m so glad I waited until the last day of the trip to completely break my camera as I held it in my hand walking down a trail and of course falling on it.  If I hadn’t waited, I wouldn’t have little gems like this!

The night before the start of our trip, I tried to scare Matt (a favorite pasttime) and managed instead to likely chip the bone in my little toe.  I rested it enough for the first day to be able to walk without much pain, but these hikes really brought it out in me.  Every step up this mountain, I had to be reminded that I was a clod and maybe scaring my husband was not a very nice or good idea.  I hated that lesson!  Matt poses nicely while I am dutifully chastened by my injury.  Fortunately, I managed to work through the pain with a little morning drug cocktail of 3 Aleve.

We descended Pemetic and scaled South Bubble, and here’s Matt leaving me.  He never told me that the descent was marked as strenuous (yep, with iron rungs) because he was afraid I wouldn’t do it.  HE WAS RIGHT!!

Me, before being aware of the iron rungs and narrow switchbacks.

YEP THAT WAS FUN, as fun as it looks!  There were so many times I thought I’d die or have to be left on the edge of that mountain.  But this day was one of my favorites, due to the weather and trails.  Now I’m Seriously going back to sleep.

Beer and blueberries part 1

I don’t know how to write a vacation post without self deprecation or boring somebody to tears.  Really, when people tell me about their vacations, do I listen?  Of course I don’t.  I do what I always do:  sing, in my head, as many songs from the Thriller album as it takes for the person to finish talking while smiling and nodding at them.  Yet here I am, hasty and eager to record mundane utterances from our honeymoon for your silent eyes.  I’m hoping that you don’t steal my Thriller sing-a-long idea, that’s sort of trademarked, but I’m also hoping that you won’t have to.  I’m fully prepared to make fun of myself and Matt in every shared image.  Also please note that I’m writing this at 4:22am.  Stressing so much about things that you rouse yourself out of a red wine coma, hear hear!!

So we drove seven hours due east from Vermont, through backwoods New Hampshire and rural Maine, in order to get to our little Mecca by-the-sea.  After a day of no CDs brought us a grand radio fuck-you of John Mellencamp medlies, I was feeling a little woozy.  Was it love?  Not for the radio, but certainly for Matt, who made me laugh and bought me a Happy Meal in this strange Maine land where people heard his accent and looked at him as if he were like half-moose half-man.  Nope, just Australian, folks.

We kept wanting to see a moose in our travels and would get so excited (well, just Matt actually) when the highway signs would say “Moose crossing next 10 miles”.  Those signs were a lie.  I was glad, because I pictured our mangled bodies with a moose standing triumphantly over the ruins of our vehicle.  Welcome to Maine, southerners.

We made it to Acadia in one piece!  Oh god, it’s so hard to be self deprecating here.  The air smells like saltwater and pine.  I would live in a cave upon those mountains.  The vegetation is gnarled and pine-y and full of exposed rocks due to the glacier that mowed across the landscape so very long ago.  Those forces of nature left a little slice of heaven on the Atlantic.  I hope I get reincarnated as a peregrine falcon.  Or just like a rich coastal Maine landowner.

Whenever I even minimally exert myself, I sweat my hair into curling this unfortunate way behind my ears.  I’m glad that no-one reads my blog so that strangers don’t have to worry about pointing out my obvious flaws.  Haha, joke’s on you as I already know.  Anyway this was our first hike, the Gorham Mtn/Beehive area.

Matt sometimes tries to fix his already beautiful hair when I attempt to snap a photo, so I try to get him unaware.  This was the point where he was climbing onto perilous rocks for a better view and the 40 year old mother inside of me wanted to scream about his safety and then wonder when I was to get my lobster dinner.

It was around this time that I realized we had arrived in the height of wild blueberry season and I proceeded to go directly into hunter gatherer mode and forage about 6 pounds of these berries and feverishly eat them.  Matt had never picked berries as that’s I guess a death sentence in Oz.  But I got him to try one after showing that I had not died upon eating.  Also there was a six year old girl eating them… this convinced him, but later he would tell me that he thought we would all die from berry poisoning upon the mountain.

I liked to reward myself any chance I got.  Those are in fact blueberries, not little rocks or something lame.  I hate how I have like swine eyes in that photo, my eyes are pale & weak and I SQUINT outside, even when it’s not sunny.  There, now you know all my secrets.

It was a victorious first day that also included me splashing my poor red face with lake water while Matt warned me not to get “beaver fever”.  I think honestly that this is my favorite new phrase ever.  I also decided to be inspired by that rhyme and name Matthew “Matt the Yak” (insert expletives if you’re really upset by how fast he’s walking whie you weezily try to puff up the hill following him) for how damned fast he’s able to scale trails without stopping.

I have many more anecdotes to relay, however I shall save that for another post.

Things to do in/around D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks

Dumbarton Oaks is this amazing estate in the general Georgetown area.  Once owned by VP Calhoun and most famously by art collectors Robert and Mildred Bliss, it’s now controlled by trustees of Harvard University.  The hours are dumb (2-6pm) but a museum within this huge place houses medieval and Byzantine art, as well as neo Colombian stuff.  The Blisses had a keen eye for odd detail, not necessarily popular trends, and that’s why the museum is a delight.  I’ve read reviews saying that this museum is small – while it certainly isn’t sprawling, there’s many a good room with tons of information on every piece.  This art history minor spent a good 90 minutes peering through everything.  It’s beautiful and it’s free.

The main draw for most people are the sprawling estate gardens, which cost $8 to get into.  I went on a sweltering and hence very quiet week day and sparing a few geriatrics I had the place to myself.  A lady at the ticket booth gave me this little pamphlet that helped me find my way among the Orangerie and fountains and orchards and huge rose gardens.  The whole place is insanely impressive and even a bit of a pulse raiser with all the hills you’re allowed to tromp across.  I’d probably save another visit for a more temperate time like October, but I will definitely take the time to check it out again.

Things to do in/around D.C.: Great Falls, MD

(Also filed under: “I’m the best hiker in the world?“)

alright this post shall not be about great falls, md. sorry. it’s real pretty and i absolutely suggest going there! matt and i enjoyed our time there immensely, particularly on the rather strenuous trail we faced. and that’s what i would like to focus on here – the clueless and ill-dressed yet bull-headed hiker (that’s me) who faced down the billy goat trail with only one minor nervous breakdown.

as prep work for our upcoming trip to coastal maine, matt and i wanted to get a good hike in close to home. we’d read about the billy goat trail but as it exists in maryland i was ready to laughingly cavort over all of the difficult “obstacles” that the reviews warned us about. this is MARYLAND. home of old bay seasoning, not rugged mountain trails! these are the taunts against maryland that unceasingly exist within my skull. alas.

the first part of the hike was jovial, sweat-free and peaceful save for the spawned moths that sort’ve flew around drunkenly upon the forest floor. i don’t know if they were having issues or searching for some hot moth “action” and i don’t really want to know. i’m sick even writing that and recalling how they’d bumble around caring not if they smacked into me. a bug flew into matt’s mouth and i wish you could’ve heard the hilarious noise that resulted. if that happened to me, he just would’ve had to leave me on the mountain. forever. done with life.

so then pretty soon i’m starting to realize that maybe wearing a skirt and rip-off Keds sneakers (the kind that elementary school nurses wore in the 80s) with no traction. might not’ve been the best idea? especially the fact that i was also sockless.

so here begins the first of the serious treks upward, on sheer rock that sort’ve juts and ends wherever it wants to. did i mention that you can start this trail from either end? you can start it from either end. and so, this fairly difficult part of the trail had bottlenecked with the worst humanity you could imagine. and so we were trying to ascend and all these mutants were trying to descend at the same time. the width of the trail was maybe two feet.

sweating now, petrified and desperate to climb the rock without humilating myself further, i gamely bit my lip and began to climb. a doughy man directly above me takes one look at your dubious heroine and says “you’re not wearing the right shoes!”

……………………………………………..

wait. really? thanks! THANKS SO MUCH, SIR. maybe your fucking astute comment will morph these badass keds into the appropriate sort you’re wearing? oh, no? well then!

“i realize that,” i meekly said. i grappled like a wounded gecko to the top where matthew was waiting, having abandoned me to those jackals.

yep, matt was just your regular sir edmund hillary out there. great job matt!!!!! leave me to the dogs!

anyway it was then that i decided to sit down at the top of the rocky mountain and have a minor nervous breakdown. i was suicidally perched on a rock probably THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of feet in the air. where falcons had nests lower than where i was planted. “i don’t know if i can doooo this,” i wailed quietly.

then Flip Flop Girl came around and casually passed us, and i knew i could make it. if FF Girl could do it, i could. she was my bette midler (wind beneath wings) for a good 15 minutes, when suddenly we saw her tromping back towards us dejectedly. no, FF Girl! and why did she retreat? oh, just that sheer cliff of rock without footholds, of course!!

basically i sold my soul to the ghosts of great falls md in order to get up that cliff. i wouldn’t let matthew help me or even LOOK at me. it was my darkest hour. but i MADE it. thank you.

here are some photos to help you see how differently matt and i were taking this hike:

to be fair I DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS TAKIN’ THAT PHOTO. i would’ve at least managed a dejected smile, maybe?

there was also a point where i couldn’t get down a hill without swinging from vines or jumping like 50 feet, so i have patented a new move to get down such a sheer rock hill: it’s called The Retarded Crab.

i totally recognize that this hill looks paltry and laughable, but WORK WITH ME, ok? it was serious business.

so then we saw a cardinal and i was briefly at peace in the world. we also saw a wild turkey and a leaf-eating deer. they were just happy because they didn’t have to sweat a gallon all over the billy goat trail. here’s me near the end, morale sucked away but alive:

the end! you win this round, maryland. but i’ll be back!

Things to do in/around D.C.: The National Zoo

you’ve got to own an untarnished sense of humor if you plan on visiting this zoo. to begin with, there are plenty of leash kids just waiting to tangle their harnesses all up in your feet. the leash kids aren’t the main problem – the free roamers are. these free roamers are basically abandoned by their disgruntled parents who’ve had too many children to mind if one gets caught on an electrical fence. so there are a lot of erratic runners and a lot of little tennis shoes madly pounding the pavement.

the best are the children who tire from the fairly moderate hills in this zoo and just brattily lose the will to walk/live: they lose control of their limbs and neck and just sort of undulate them from side to side in the tantrum. boy a sister can really relate: i felt that way, too, about fifteen minutes in but i had no jovial grandfather to pick me up and keep me going.

there will be many times when you wander to a seemingly beautiful enclosure only to find it empty without rhyme or reason. that’s the way this zoo gets its kicks and you just have to accept it. the best part of the national zoo is that, like many glorious things in DC, it is FREE. except for the popsicles – they’re not.

here are some grades that i will give to the animals along with some photos i took of them:

Asian otters: these animals were totally working the crowd. playful and energetic and damn cute. a fantastic duo of adorable little faces. i usually have to pity animals in this zoo for having a crap enclosure or being lonely but the otters faced neither of these challenges. A+

Cheetah: the best part about the cheetahs was how they stood inches from their fence and sized the little kids up like they were potential fresh meat. they ignored everybody over 4ft tall. in november, they were pacing and active yet last week we caught them and they were being all lazy and trying to blend in with the grass. no fun! plus they have this fence that pops electricity jolts every two seconds and the noise gives me the honest creeps. B+

Crazy emu: definitely one of the uglier and less interesting animals in the zoo, yet i was intrigued by this mutant. no-one payed it a lick of attention, so it busied itself by methodically pecking at the gap in the chainlink fence. this was legitimately a Special Needs creature, complete with blank yet crazy eyes. A++ all the way, even knowing it wanted to peck out our innards.

Male lion: totally beautiful, but he bored me. absolutely no roaring or frolicking. even though he had this amazing lair! i would absolutely rather fall into this lair than fall into the huge fish lake in amazonia (you’ll see what i mean soon enough). B-

Giant panda: what is up with this obsession with pandas, people? i get that they’re fairly cute. but they’re kind of bumbling and lazy. i’m holding them to such a high standard because of how the pandas are always the top draw at this zoo. they have the sweetest digs imaginable (courtesy of fujifilm, nice corporate link) yet they’re frankly too boring to live up to it. give me a retarded emu any day, at least they’re entertaining! D

Prarie dog: i communed with this prarie dog, even as he stood motionless behind glass. he looks kind of stuffed here, huh? he was an obese prarie dog, as were the meerkats (not pictured). still, he’s got soul in those eyes and that’s enough for me. B+

Tiger: i frankly don’t remember much about this tiger, but it was definitely being active. look at its cute pink tongue! it’s amazing how much their gait matches that of any run of the mill housecat – like my own dearly deceased butterscotch (RIP). A-

Nile hippo: grotesque in much the same way as the emu, this hippo was lonely and disenchanted and attempting to use its pea brain to figure out how to wrap its ridiculous jaws around that red rubber ball. i did not take this photo, but the hippo/ball are the same ones i saw. everyone stood around sickly fascinated by the bizarre movements of this hippo, who never could figure out this rubber ball. A+ for the saddest clown.

Red panda: oh god i’m getting tired. am i going to make it? i’ll make it for the red panda. this creature is likely the finest in existence. it looks like a little fox but with more character and stodginess. we saw the pair frolicking and jumping in trees and they were largely snubbed by the giant panda lovers. for shame! A++

amazonia: last but not least, amazonia. this structure is located at the damn rear of the zoo, takes forever to get to and thus doesn’t see a huge crowd of people. you enter on the ground floor where you’re able to view absolutely disgusting fish like the one pictured about. i alternated between fascination, horror and pity for the fish that didn’t even really move around. do you think they were depressed? then you went to a higher floor where you could view the fish from above. the railings weren’t nearly high enough and i felt like i would fall in at any minute. C

well i made it and i hope that i’ve convinced you to give our fair national zoo a chance. eat a popsicle in my honor when you’re there.

photography potluck

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i’m just gonna upload these in alphabetical order.  this is our next door neighbor’s house at chapman lake.  isn’t that house amazing?  everything about it – specifically the color and the porch.

 

these are the ducks that are nesting near our lawn and are (apparently) unperturbed by the lawnmover moving inches from them (says my dad) – the mom duck was so kind and coyly anticipating bread crumbs – i felt awful that i didn’t have any.  maybe tomorrow?

 

this is what the front porch looks like currently.  when it’s done it’ll be longer than ever before and ready to entertain our finest friends!  i can’t wait for weekend lake trips and grilling.

 

taking en route to the lake, at 45 mph.  very close to my driving range of choice!

 

yes indeed my unsavory little enemies from yesterday.  you talk a big game, fellas!  i’ll see you again.

 

 

nice mallards on our nice peaceful lake!  does anyone want to volunteer to rake the seaweed out of a 50 ft. diameter of the shore?  i can’t go in until then, no matter if there is a dock or what.

 

hey james!  that’s my dad, jim.  i don’t know what he’s surveying but his stance reminds me an awful lot of what i do.  he called his own sister evil tonight and i said “jim… you sound a lot like me” and he told me it was the other way around.  awesome genetically-inherited hilarity!