Monday, July 23, 2007
Zoo List, plus deeliebop Zach - Highlights of a Decent Weekend
Monday! Realm of unutterable delight! Era of good feelings! Hangnail of the working week! And welcome to it! Since today is the 23rd, I’m not quite ready for my full recap, so let me give you a mini-cap, or yarmulke, of a post.
Yesterday our plans were suddenly and precipitously changed by the illness of a dear friend, whom we intended to visit with her brother and parents, but who woke up hurling and feverish. Disinclined to partake in such party games, we wound up going to the zoo instead and having a SUPER DELIGHTFUL time with Jon, Lisa, Sophie and Aaron. (Aaron’s the pisher whose bris I helped facilitate. And is it just me or is this post sort of heavy on the jewtalk already? And why shouldn’t it be? Hamish mishagas, gevalt!) Anyway, we got to the SF Zoo at pre-noon and left post-four, for a nice long sojourn amidst the wildcrapping beasts and beastlets. Of particular note:
* The new bear exhibit totally rocks. One of the grizzlies kept wandering over to the window to check us checking her out. It’s not like I spend a lot of time 3 feet from a grizzly but it seemed like I could. Z was particularly entranced by how the area allowed him to run in a large circle. Which he did, much to the amusement of himself, pretty much alone.
* Pink popcorn! For some reason I thought I really wanted my very own brick of this questionable product; I’d actually held this desire close to my secret heart for several months now so when the opportunity presented itself I got some, and simultaneously Kel got me some too. So I had two bricks of this… um.... confection. The best part about it is how the kids on the package are riding a giant ear of corn like experimental teenagers with a vibrating massage chair. Which is to say, buy it for the packaging, but don’t bother much with the contents. Even the kids seemed more interested in smashing it flat on the pavement with their tiny pods. Never has pink tasted so bland, and I’ve had some damn bland pink. I think that came out wrong but you know what I mean. Right?
* Speaking of which: PANTHERA LEO BOINK! We strolled over to the large outdoor lion habitat and I pointed out to six-year-old Sophie where the male and female lions (one of each) were reclining in the shady cool of the afternoon. She asked many wise questions, including why they didn’t have any baby lions. I tried to make light of the question, to evade the obvious path it was taking, and then, considerately, the male lion got up and began to perform the dance of making baby lions with the female, hunching his majestic and fearsome self in a sort of comical way over and against her hindquarters. It was natural and true and pretty damn amusing to watch. Sophie wanted to know why everybody was laughing. We told her that they were hugging but she’s smart enough to know that we only told her half the story.
* I got my lunch at a little stand that sells Asian rice bowls, and grabbed some disposable chopstix wherewith to consume my repast. The stix came in a red paper sleeve that reads: “Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and cultural.” While this seems self-explanatory, I think they went too far with the following explanation, on the obverse, of how to use the enclosed morsel-pickers: “Learn how to use your chopsticks // Tuk under tnurnb and held firmly // Add second chopstick hold it as you hold a pencil // Hold tirst chopstick in original position move the second one up and down Now you can pick up anything:” Let me tell you, this is, like so many things, a baldfaced lie. I tried picking up a mandrill, a strong wi-fi signal, and a cocktail waitress, and all I have to show for it is my used and empty wrapper. Story of my freaking life.
Regardless, overall, an excellent day at the zoo. The weekend also included us getting Z a little CD player for his room, in a futile attempt to persuade him to stop climbing out of his crib at night. I watched Ghost Rider and Hell’s Kitchen, and had an excellent jog in the park pushing the boy in the sport-stroller. Things were good. However, it’s hard to top the following photo, taken by my cousin’s cell phone when we visited her for movies a few weekends ago and Z got tired watching Matthew Broderick bugging out his eyes:
bopping with the global thermonuclear war
I think that’s all for now. Until next time, everything is super-great and normal - catch you tomorrow with the big list!