Saturday, November 14, 2009

Kibibi

I returned home late last night from a whirlwind three days in Washington DC (aka my most favorite city in the US.) Although I could go into great detail about my trip, it can all be summed up by my visit to the National Zoo, where I spent more than an hour viewing Kibibi, the newest gorilla family member to the zoo. The best part was there were only a few of us there, so we had the Ape house all to ourselves. It is simply amazing to watch mammals, who we are so closely related, interact--especially with a wee one. Mum was very protective of Kibibi and Kibibi, being 10 months old, was active and curious and playful. It was the highlight of my trip. Even though I loved watching Obama's helicopter fly right overhead as I was walking near the White House, and even though I loved spending time at the Lincoln and FDR memorials, and even though I loved walking through some of my favorite DC neighborhoods, nothing, and I mean nothing, comes close to that hour with the gorillas and orangutans





Kibibi 1 of 3
Originally uploaded by Nikographer [Jon]

Monday, November 2, 2009

Mono

I was starting to wonder if I had mono, but realized today that my lethargy and low-grade yuck was most likely due to the sun not having made much of an appearance for more than a week. That wonderful orb in the sky is greatly missed when not around. Of course, it could have been a total coincidence that the day I started to feel back to normal is also the day that it was balmy, sunny and warm. Who knows, but I am sure happy to have my energy back. There have been so many people out with H1N1, in addition to the normal colds, that trying to stay healthy seems like a Herculean event. I’ve seen more than a few people walking around with full-blown gas masks. Not exactly a fashion statement, but if that keeps the nasty germs away, then hey, more power to you.

Jim and I finally got on a run today, which also helped. We haven’t run in a week, and that also throws the system out of whack. We have been so consistent with our training schedule the past month as we are planning to run a half-marathon next month, and taking a week off at this point isn’t really a good idea. Although it felt good to be back in motion today, I’m sure I’ll be sore tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be a stiff zombie for Halloween. Or not. Really, it has been so many years since I’ve dressed up, why start now, other than it’s a great excuse to wear big hair and trashy clothes. I keep trying to talk Jim into dressing up as Amy Winehouse. They are really opposite sex versions of the other. If Jim put on a wig and loads of eye makeup he could totally pull it off. Conversely, if Amy Winehouse were to shave her head and take off her eye-liner, then she could easily pass for Jim. I’m afraid that we’ll miss our opportunity for that get-up, unfortunately. By the time we actually get around to remember to have Jim dress as Amy, she’ll be a forgotten singer and people would think that Jim was just a really bad cross-dresser.

As for Quinn & Logan, they are going to be vampires, yet again. I think this is the sixth or seventh year in a row that they’ll don the same cape and plastic teeth. Quinn did surprise us all by saying he wanted to dress as Dobby, the character from Harry Potter, but no preparation actually went into that idea, and so we’ll go by our costume stand-by. While there is still fun to be had with dressing up, it really just boils down to scoring loads of candy. This year, they’ve invited a few friends over for pizza and then prowling the streets. They were briefly concerned that trick-or-treating as a large group yields less candy per house and so they decided to break up into two groups. It must be the hunter-gatherer in us that makes trick-or-treating such fun. I think I’ll put together a photo collage of all their years of being vampires and we can play “guess the year.”

Happy All-Hallows-Eve y Dia de la Muerta.