melanoman

I saw the new Oakland Zoo and switched my membership over from the SFZoo. The new children's zoo is finished and it is wonderful. They have: a new lemur area; a much improved display for the alligators including underwater and elevated viewing; a much safer petting area for the goats and sheep; and all new insect room; a new restroom; new facilities for the otters; and it felt big and open and had a great traffic flow.

The only nostalgia break for me is a small one. A zillion years ago I did some volunteer work for the zoo. My task was painting. I painted the bridge that let into the old goat pen. That bridge is gone. I can no longer say that if you go enough coats deep you'll probably find some of the paint I put there. Now I'm sure it is gone.

The side note aside where it belongs, the new zoo section is wonderfully designed and was executed fantastically. Kudos all around.

I dropped Moi off for Lego Camp yesterday, and there was an Ultimate game in the park, so I grabbed my gear out of the trunk and went out to play. I got re-sunburned (doh!) and was a wreck for bowling, but it was way cool to play with the youngins. The skill level was low, which was lucky since my althleticism/conditioning wouldn't have held for a higher level game. We played 6 on 6 for a while, then dropped to 6 on 5. I was on the team with 5 and we won anyway by using a 2-2-1 zone.

Today I will pay for that in pain. I'm happy to pay.

It's been a hectic few weeks and I haven't done a lot of journaling lately. But tonight is the night. So going backwards in time more or less free association...

Today I had the kids. We just watched "Joey" an Australian movie about a kid who foils an underground Kangaroo boxing ring with the help of an ambassador's daughter. The main kid has no father and she has no mother, so at the end of movie the predictable romance gets hinted at.

The movie ended just as time was up. I was afraid I was going to have to ask their uncle to wait five minute for the movie to finish before taking them. The last thing I want to do there is give him an excuse to be more obnoxious than usual. He has this habit of trying to drop little half-threats whenever we are alone, like "watch both ways when you cross the street" or just standing too close and trying to stare me down. He looks ridiculous when he does this. Of course he is about 6'2' 250lbs to my 5'6" 160 lbs. so I can't afford to be careless.

Before that Richard had a go at Dinner Dash, which has sat unused for a while. He cleared several levels that had previously eluded him. Moira's choice was Wesnoth and lot of progress was made there also. (These are both video games, and I have multiple computers so they can play simultaneously, but often they watch each other and play one at a time anyway)

Before that I got them out into the sun to play mini-golf. I shot a 44, which is pretty good for me. If I could have avoid one disaster 6 on an anthill hole I'd have been near my record of 39. Richard was inconsistent with his concentration and his result showed it. His normal 50 became a 68. The more important thing was that the kids were well behaved throughout. Moira had one almost-incident when Richard grabbed all the balls from the hole before she could, but was able to regain her composure fairly quickly. Everything went smoothly and the kids enjoyed it.

At the trip to blockbuster afterwards. Moira got to pick out Joey. I made the case for Stand by Me but the kids weren't moved. Is shouldn't have admitted the fact that it was about friendship and stuck to the get-in-trouble angles. Baby marsupials...sigh. The Blockbuster people were trying to make a hard sell for me to switch from in-person rentals to online. Kinda weird given that the people making the pitch are the ones who will lose their jobs if I do.

This morning I found that I had actually caught up on errands and such, so I watched Wes Craven's Red Eye. Scary stuff and a lot less annoying gaping plot flaws than most suspense films.

That was today. I think I'll end this entry as "A day in the life" and not wander backwards to the last few days right now. There are some other places my attention would be better used right now.

Mel

I had a great visit with the kids this weekend. Both kids were very cooperative at getting things ready for gaming with the grownups, a big treat they hadn't had in quite a while due to awkward custody arrangements, now partially fixed. Our read-in-the-car book (Seventh Son) is really taking off, and both Richard and Moira are excited about it (just reached chapter 8). We played Caylus, Bohnanza, Oh Hell, and Apples to Apples. Getting the kids calmed down enough to get them in bed was a bit of a challenge, but we eventually managed it.

I played a game of Einstein and hit 3:15, so something clicked since I last played it over a week ago. Richard made some progress on his Wesnoth adventure, and we all went Xmas shopping, then drove over to Granny and Papa's house for Sunday dinner, and to watch the Sharks' massive winning streak get broken with a 5-4 loss to Anaheim.