Since we have a lot of travel coming up in the next few months (Andy especially) we decided to keep our Labor Day weekend relatively low-key (and inexpensive). So on Saturday morning we headed up to Columbus to check out all the cute animals at the #1 zoo in the country!
Yes, that is me PETTING A FLAMINGO. It’s okay to be jealous.
This red panda is demonstrating Law #1 of the Animal Kingdom: Animals sleep A LOT. At first it seemed like every animal in the zoo was doing their best Riley impression. Fortunately they started to wake up as the day went on.
That frog is just cute.
This is Colo, the first ever gorilla born in captivity. She’s a bit of an old girl now, but her expression is still so alert.
That orangutan was EMO. And I don’t know that woman, I just thought she made the picture more interesting.
Andy loves feeding lorikeets, even though they are the same at every zoo and almost always pee on him. This time no pee, but they did flick the nectar juice on his shirt.
The otter gang was adorable, as was the sleeping koala. I totally would have cuddled them if cuddling them wouldn’t have gotten me kicked out of the zoo.
I cuddled these guys instead.
After (FOUR HOURS AT) the zoo, we were hungry but not in the mood for park food. So we let our handy dandy Garmin (GPS) tell us what was nearby and edible. The closest options were Wendy’s or “Morganhouse.” We had no idea what Morganhouse was, but hey, it was a holiday, we were going to be adventurous goshdarnit!
Well, it turns out that The Morgan House is pretty freaking awesome. Located in a beautiful (but not pretentious) suburb called Dublin, The Morgan House is like Cracker Barrel meets Pier 1 Imports meets delicousness. 75% is a split-level store, currently filled with Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas decorations, cooking spices and supplies, vintage clothing, jewelry, furniture, and more. The other 25% is the restaurant, but of course we went in the store entrance and were walking through thinking “WTF Garmin?”
When we finally did find the restaurant part, we decided this place was too quirky not to try, and BOY was that the right decision. I got a chicken pot pie SERVED IN A FLOWER POT, and Andy got a roast beef melt served on a croissant. They also gave us complimentary banana nut muffins to start, so I was all, You had me at banana nut!
Afterwards I got a massive throbbing headache so we went home (skipping the Chihuly exhibit at the Columubus Conservatory, but we’ve seen his stuff at Phipps in Pittsburgh so I don’t feel that bad about it).
Sunday night we went to a friend’s house for dinner and several rounds of Trivial Pursuit for the Wii. That is an AWESOME game, let me tell you. But you have to play the Hardcore Battle Mode (which is totally not what it’s called). My main contributions for the night were answers relating to Dooce and LOLcats.
Last but not least, today we made niu rou mian (and by we, I mean Andy) and then went to another friend’s house for a BBQ, cornhole, and croquet. Yes, CROQUET. I didn’t play, but I don’t think anyone else really did either. I’m pretty sure one of the dudes just made up rules off the top of his head and everyone went along with it.
So that was our labor day. A whole lotta days, but almost no labor!
Hello to everyone who is coming here from Dooce’s hit post about her bathroom makeover/catastrophe!
For the record, I adore Heather, but I think the tile looks like poo. And I think someday she’ll come to that realization as well. For now, she and Jon are too busy being defensive. That’s okay, I do it all the time.
Anyway, I really just wanted to say that people can disagree with someone — even an internet rock star — and still be 100% decent human beings. Take me, for example. I love dogs, I recycle, and I brush my teeth twice a day! What more could you ask for?
And yeah, I could have kept my opinion to myself, but (a) she blogged about it, posted pictures, and opened it up to discussion, so what does that suggest? And (b) I actually can’t keep my opinions to myself. It’s a like a disease or something.
Note: This is a thinly veiled link dump. :P
I’ll be honest, I have no idea who Polly Frost is, but her tongue-in-cheek piece at the Atlantic made me laugh. From “Reblock Yourself the Polly Frost Way!”:
Everywhere on the web I found writers expressing themselves.
I was swept up in the exhilaration. I ran multiple WordPress blogs. I dashed off rants about the New York City book publishing world, sharing them on Scribd as downloadable PDFs. My “What I Ate for Lunch” Tumblr photoblog earned consistently high rankings on Technorati. Fame came to me as well as one of the most prolific photo commenters at Flickr.
But after a year of madness and intoxication I took an honest look at myself. I took an honest look around me. And I didn’t like what I saw.
There was too much writing. And it was everywhere.
Exactly. And this is why I always shoot myself down when I get the idea for some great new domain name that I could launch into the next Dooce!
Next, for those of us in the throes of revision, writer Karen Outen has some useful insight via her engineer friend. From “How I learned to love revision”:
He told me that in any project, once he hits the thing that won’t work as he imagined, the question then becomes, how will he get what he wants anyway?
His answer clicked with me immediately, and I said, “That’s revision!”
She makes it sound so fun, no?
Later, when I’m not in the throes of revision, I may have to give some of Bruce McAllister’s writing exercises a try. From “About Writing” (which is a terrible title for a good little piece about things writers can do to strengthen their writing):
Hemingway’s favorite exercise—which was to take a favorite scene from another writer’s novel, try to recreate it in words as close as possible to the original, and compare the two versions. Every writer I’ve ever known who’s tried this has been blown away by it. You learn instantly, among many other things, whether you’re an underwriter or overwriter, a visual writer or an audial one, and have an ear for dialogue or prefer summarizing speech.
I also love how McAllister lambastes the idea of writers avoiding reading because they don’t want to “corrupt” their own original voices. Um, it’s called apprenticeship, and it’s the best way to learn anything.
Finally, 10 “easy” steps to becoming a better writer, via copyblogger. It’s a short, funny post, so no quoting.
Alright, he’s not exactly Chuck caliber yet, but considering the way he torpedoes into everything and everyone, I’m surprised I can even get him to do this.
Partnership
It’s not a fairytale, exactly, but maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s the real thing.
