I hope the html works
An exciting, fun, photogenic, busy, and exhausting weekend was had by yours truly, silver05! This was not helped at all by the fact that she stayed up until 1:30 this morning reading. Anyway, the pictures!
You all may remember Snowmaggedeon, which buried the East Coast under, like, four feet of snow? I chose to cancel my February 12 birthday and reschedule it for May -- not a good plan, as it seems like everyone is busy all the time in May. But whatever, yesterday I went to the zoo for my Belated Birthday, and James and Brittany went with!
I never really understood the purpose of taking pictures of people's shoes. It always struck me as being pseudo-artsy in the worse way. But I actually find this picture of our feet charming.
In a burst of stupidity defiance, Brittany and I decided to run up the broken escalator temporary stairs at Cleveland Park Metro. This seemed like a good idea at the bottom. Here, halfway up the stairs, I am so exhausted that I stopped and took a picture of Brittany almost at the top.
"Oh my god, Kelsey, you're such a tourist! You stopped in the middle of the street to take a picture!" "What? There wasn't any traffic coming, and technically I didn't stop walking."
Oh boy it's a panda. Yippee. And it's eating bamboo. Yay. And millions and millions of dollars are wasted in keeping these animals alive. Yay.
On to an animal I actually love: Elephants!
Last time I was here, the elephants were trapped in a (relatively) small indoor enclosure. This is going to be (part of) their new home -- it's almost done!
OLYPHAUNTS! IT'S OLYPHANTS! OH MY GOODNESS I WANT TO STROKE THEIR TRUNKS AND RIDE ON THEIR BACKS AND FEED THEM AND LOVE THEM FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER.
Brittany and James. I actually think this is a cuter picture than the one of James and I, despite Brittany's attempts to "ruin" the picture by making a face.
Now on to the aviary.
A lot of the bird cages had wire caging rather than clear windows. My camera had a tendency to focus on the caging rather than the bird, which was very frustrating.
This is a cool picture. James sat in exactly the right place.
This bird was just an attention whore:
It helped that James was making clicking noises and snapping his fingers to get the bird's attention. In the last picture, the bird was bored with that and turned to look at some kids on the other side of the cage. Nice back feathers, parrot!
It wasn't until after I took this picture that we noticed the owl was standing on one leg.
The Toucan was also quite the attention whore:
He shared a cage with an iguana, of all things. He kept trying to get the iguana's attention, but the iguana just stared blankly at him from beneath his basking lamp.
I was very disappointed to learn that this isn't a flamingo. Otherwise I would have gotten this picture framed and given it to my mother.
ISN'T THIS THE CUTEST FALCON YOU'VE EVER SEEN?!? Brittany and I went gaga for it. Is so floofy! I wanna take it home and pet it and feed it small mammals and love it forever and ever and ever. Look at those feather! It's, like, five inches tall. So cute!
While we were distracted with other birds, these two birds decided to make some more birds. Sadly I was only able to grab the aftermath. I'm sure some children were scarred in the viewing of nature in action, though.
IT'S A BABY OLYPHAUNT! It's like Mowgli's friend in the Jungle Book!
Next came the Tigers! Tiger #1:
This brings begging to be let in to a whole new level. Can you imagine being the one who has to open that door?
After getting bored and deciding he didn't actually want to go inside your stupid doors anyway, the tiger decided to pace menacingly around his compound.
Then we encountered Tiger #2, who was like Darcey to Tiger #1's Marty McFly.
Obviously a SophistiCat.
Two lionesses basking and grooming each other. I told James, "The dominant one does the grooming," which James found hilarious and kept bringing up in other conversations, sometimes completely out of context.
Yeah, I know. Life is so rough for innocent kitties. Nobody loves you, or feeds you, or takes care of you, or cleans your box. No, nobody loves you. Life is so rough.
OMG KOMODO DRAGON.
OMG KOMODO DRAON CLOSE-UP.
Yaaay obvious picture. Isn't James a cutie, though?
Brittany found the giant lobster hilarious. "He's like a supervillain emerging from his lair! Arise, my minions! Arise!"
I had to assure Mom that yes, this was a fake elephant. But that's totes a real duck.
There's Waldo!
The Emo Emu. He's paced that fence so often, there's a dirt path right by the fence instead of grass.
Brittany really likes Cheetahs, so we had to stop and see the Cheetah. At first the cheetah dazzled us by laying in the shade and not moving. It was exciting, let me tell you.
There was some inherent drama, though, in the fact that there was a zebra right over the fence. After a few minutes, the cheetah started getting quite interested.
Then, suddenly, the cheetah turned around and looked at us!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah sat up!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah sat up!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah stopped.
He looked confused. As were we, until Brittany used her mad art skillz to observe that a volunteer had used a clicker to lure the cheetah to the other side of his area, so that we, the tourists, could have more exciting pictures than "a cheetah lying in the shade not moving." It was a vaguely meta moment.
The lions at the gates to the zoo, as we waved goodbye and walked back to the Cleveland Park metro, singing Avenue Q, discussing the pros and cons of Sesame Street, and wondering why there were half-eaten chicken wings all over the street.
James helped me entertain Marty. By "helped me entertain" I mean "he entertained Marty and I took pictures."
I <3 that picture.
No time for reminiscing, though! Sunday was Mother's Day, and Lacey and I had planned a special treat for Mom!
Just a weird reminder of Snowmaggedeon. Firefighters put metal poles by all the hydrants, just to mark where they were. The red paint on the top is all the pole that was above the snow.
It was 8:30 in the morning, any my task was to turn all this stuff into food people would actually want to eat. And I didn't expect Lacey to be downstairs for at least an hour and a half; she'd been up until 4:00 in the morning driving straight from work to here. She had to be plumb exhausted. She surprised me, though; she came down at 9:30, drank the coffee I'd bought her, ate the bagel I'd bought her, and then went straight to work.
And in four hours' time, we had this.
Grampa and his girlfriend Donna were the first to arrive. Dad referred to them as "the Duke and Duchess."
The Guest of Honor powerwalks to the tea party.
It seems weird to think that Lacey and I threw a party that people dressed up for. Still, that was part of the fun.
Mom had absolutely no idea what was going on. She knew something was up; there were all these Significant Looks and Dad was blantantly having coded conversations in front of her. She knew something was definitely up when Katie picked her up from church and said, "Where do you want to go? We have to kill two hours." Still, when she saw exactly what we set up, she shrieked in surprise and her eyes got red with happy tears.
The plan was to have High Tea, but it turned into Low Tea/Afternoon tea, which is really just a tea party.
Mom loved the hat. She listed it as one of the things she was excited about. "I get this wonderful tea party, and I get this wonderful hat! I can wear it all sort of places, again and again and again!"
"Mom, that's not your hat, that's my office manager's hat," I said.
"I get to borrow this wonderful hat!"
This is my attempt at looking like a classy lady.
We had planned on there being ten people at the party altogether, but we had imagined the tenth person to be someone like James, or the parents' old friend Robert. We didn't think the tenth party-goer would be the four-year-old next-door neighbor, who I'll call "Jane."
Katie the SophistiSister.
Lacey: Arty and Awesome.
Donna and Jane.
I think Katie looks like a Mafiosa in this picture for some reason.
(future roomie) Beth and her mother arrive, fashionably late as expected.
The goal was to act all High Class, and Classy People play lawn games, so we broke out the croquet mallets started whacking away. Because, you know, Grampa needs so much coaxing.
You can tell this is a good story, because Lacey is using Hand Gestures.
Barbara close-up.
Just to show how classy we are, we all tried to put spoons on our noses.
Then, croquet!
After taking this picture, Jane was curious about the camera, so I let her take a few pictures.
She also took one of Katie, but something's wrong with my camera. I'm concerned about it.
We eventually got the camera back from her.
Beth and Lacey alternate mothers.
In the second game of croquet, Katie and Jane played as the orange ball. Lacey deemed them "Chemical Orange."
THIS is what it think of your TAXES.
Playin' croquet.
YYYAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY.
While we were doing that, Dad decided to get all arty on us.
Then came clean-up time, and then nap-time, and eventually I went home and fed my cats and read Twilight Children, before finally collapsing for good.
You all may remember Snowmaggedeon, which buried the East Coast under, like, four feet of snow? I chose to cancel my February 12 birthday and reschedule it for May -- not a good plan, as it seems like everyone is busy all the time in May. But whatever, yesterday I went to the zoo for my Belated Birthday, and James and Brittany went with!
I never really understood the purpose of taking pictures of people's shoes. It always struck me as being pseudo-artsy in the worse way. But I actually find this picture of our feet charming.
In a burst of stupidity defiance, Brittany and I decided to run up the broken escalator temporary stairs at Cleveland Park Metro. This seemed like a good idea at the bottom. Here, halfway up the stairs, I am so exhausted that I stopped and took a picture of Brittany almost at the top.
"Oh my god, Kelsey, you're such a tourist! You stopped in the middle of the street to take a picture!" "What? There wasn't any traffic coming, and technically I didn't stop walking."
Oh boy it's a panda. Yippee. And it's eating bamboo. Yay. And millions and millions of dollars are wasted in keeping these animals alive. Yay.
On to an animal I actually love: Elephants!
Last time I was here, the elephants were trapped in a (relatively) small indoor enclosure. This is going to be (part of) their new home -- it's almost done!
OLYPHAUNTS! IT'S OLYPHANTS! OH MY GOODNESS I WANT TO STROKE THEIR TRUNKS AND RIDE ON THEIR BACKS AND FEED THEM AND LOVE THEM FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER.
Brittany and James. I actually think this is a cuter picture than the one of James and I, despite Brittany's attempts to "ruin" the picture by making a face.
Now on to the aviary.
A lot of the bird cages had wire caging rather than clear windows. My camera had a tendency to focus on the caging rather than the bird, which was very frustrating.
This is a cool picture. James sat in exactly the right place.
This bird was just an attention whore:
It helped that James was making clicking noises and snapping his fingers to get the bird's attention. In the last picture, the bird was bored with that and turned to look at some kids on the other side of the cage. Nice back feathers, parrot!
It wasn't until after I took this picture that we noticed the owl was standing on one leg.
The Toucan was also quite the attention whore:
He shared a cage with an iguana, of all things. He kept trying to get the iguana's attention, but the iguana just stared blankly at him from beneath his basking lamp.
I was very disappointed to learn that this isn't a flamingo. Otherwise I would have gotten this picture framed and given it to my mother.
ISN'T THIS THE CUTEST FALCON YOU'VE EVER SEEN?!? Brittany and I went gaga for it. Is so floofy! I wanna take it home and pet it and feed it small mammals and love it forever and ever and ever. Look at those feather! It's, like, five inches tall. So cute!
While we were distracted with other birds, these two birds decided to make some more birds. Sadly I was only able to grab the aftermath. I'm sure some children were scarred in the viewing of nature in action, though.
IT'S A BABY OLYPHAUNT! It's like Mowgli's friend in the Jungle Book!
Next came the Tigers! Tiger #1:
This brings begging to be let in to a whole new level. Can you imagine being the one who has to open that door?
After getting bored and deciding he didn't actually want to go inside your stupid doors anyway, the tiger decided to pace menacingly around his compound.
Then we encountered Tiger #2, who was like Darcey to Tiger #1's Marty McFly.
Obviously a SophistiCat.
Two lionesses basking and grooming each other. I told James, "The dominant one does the grooming," which James found hilarious and kept bringing up in other conversations, sometimes completely out of context.
Yeah, I know. Life is so rough for innocent kitties. Nobody loves you, or feeds you, or takes care of you, or cleans your box. No, nobody loves you. Life is so rough.
OMG KOMODO DRAGON.
OMG KOMODO DRAON CLOSE-UP.
Yaaay obvious picture. Isn't James a cutie, though?
Brittany found the giant lobster hilarious. "He's like a supervillain emerging from his lair! Arise, my minions! Arise!"
I had to assure Mom that yes, this was a fake elephant. But that's totes a real duck.
There's Waldo!
The Emo Emu. He's paced that fence so often, there's a dirt path right by the fence instead of grass.
Brittany really likes Cheetahs, so we had to stop and see the Cheetah. At first the cheetah dazzled us by laying in the shade and not moving. It was exciting, let me tell you.
There was some inherent drama, though, in the fact that there was a zebra right over the fence. After a few minutes, the cheetah started getting quite interested.
Then, suddenly, the cheetah turned around and looked at us!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah sat up!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah sat up!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah started walking!
Then, suddenly, the cheetah stopped.
He looked confused. As were we, until Brittany used her mad art skillz to observe that a volunteer had used a clicker to lure the cheetah to the other side of his area, so that we, the tourists, could have more exciting pictures than "a cheetah lying in the shade not moving." It was a vaguely meta moment.
The lions at the gates to the zoo, as we waved goodbye and walked back to the Cleveland Park metro, singing Avenue Q, discussing the pros and cons of Sesame Street, and wondering why there were half-eaten chicken wings all over the street.
James helped me entertain Marty. By "helped me entertain" I mean "he entertained Marty and I took pictures."
I <3 that picture.
No time for reminiscing, though! Sunday was Mother's Day, and Lacey and I had planned a special treat for Mom!
Just a weird reminder of Snowmaggedeon. Firefighters put metal poles by all the hydrants, just to mark where they were. The red paint on the top is all the pole that was above the snow.
It was 8:30 in the morning, any my task was to turn all this stuff into food people would actually want to eat. And I didn't expect Lacey to be downstairs for at least an hour and a half; she'd been up until 4:00 in the morning driving straight from work to here. She had to be plumb exhausted. She surprised me, though; she came down at 9:30, drank the coffee I'd bought her, ate the bagel I'd bought her, and then went straight to work.
And in four hours' time, we had this.
Grampa and his girlfriend Donna were the first to arrive. Dad referred to them as "the Duke and Duchess."
The Guest of Honor powerwalks to the tea party.
It seems weird to think that Lacey and I threw a party that people dressed up for. Still, that was part of the fun.
Mom had absolutely no idea what was going on. She knew something was up; there were all these Significant Looks and Dad was blantantly having coded conversations in front of her. She knew something was definitely up when Katie picked her up from church and said, "Where do you want to go? We have to kill two hours." Still, when she saw exactly what we set up, she shrieked in surprise and her eyes got red with happy tears.
The plan was to have High Tea, but it turned into Low Tea/Afternoon tea, which is really just a tea party.
Mom loved the hat. She listed it as one of the things she was excited about. "I get this wonderful tea party, and I get this wonderful hat! I can wear it all sort of places, again and again and again!"
"Mom, that's not your hat, that's my office manager's hat," I said.
"I get to borrow this wonderful hat!"
This is my attempt at looking like a classy lady.
We had planned on there being ten people at the party altogether, but we had imagined the tenth person to be someone like James, or the parents' old friend Robert. We didn't think the tenth party-goer would be the four-year-old next-door neighbor, who I'll call "Jane."
Katie the SophistiSister.
Lacey: Arty and Awesome.
Donna and Jane.
I think Katie looks like a Mafiosa in this picture for some reason.
(future roomie) Beth and her mother arrive, fashionably late as expected.
The goal was to act all High Class, and Classy People play lawn games, so we broke out the croquet mallets started whacking away. Because, you know, Grampa needs so much coaxing.
You can tell this is a good story, because Lacey is using Hand Gestures.
Barbara close-up.
Just to show how classy we are, we all tried to put spoons on our noses.
Then, croquet!
After taking this picture, Jane was curious about the camera, so I let her take a few pictures.
She also took one of Katie, but something's wrong with my camera. I'm concerned about it.
We eventually got the camera back from her.
Beth and Lacey alternate mothers.
In the second game of croquet, Katie and Jane played as the orange ball. Lacey deemed them "Chemical Orange."
THIS is what it think of your TAXES.
Playin' croquet.
YYYAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY.
While we were doing that, Dad decided to get all arty on us.
Then came clean-up time, and then nap-time, and eventually I went home and fed my cats and read Twilight Children, before finally collapsing for good.