Bronx Zoo

Continuing my weekend recap -- and I'd better hurry, before the week is over! Yesterday's field trip apparently drove me to napping -- I fell asleep on the couch for almost three hours in the evening. Yup, got a ::great:: night's sleep, complete with wacky dreams.

Luckily, my non-quilty sister had a better day plan, and she sent me some pics from our day trip on Sunday. We went to the Bronx Zoo. If you didn't know, we always try to visit a zoo on our summer vacation. Pictures from last summer's visit to the National Zoo are in my flickr album; we actually got some good panda pics if you like that sort of thing.

Anyway, getting to the zoo meant getting up early to catch a 7:45 NJTransit train New York Penn Station. Two hours later, after a transfer to the subway and a three-block walk, we were at the zoo. It was a horribly humid day, but we had fun. We saw some gorillas in the mist (literally), took a monorail ride through an Asian area, saw a giraffe family and generally enjoyed our visit. Too bad the new Madagascar exhibit wasn't open yet...

There are a LOT of peacocks at the Bronx Zoo. And it's mating season -- we did see some displays of their beautiful feathers, but we also saw a lot of males and females just wandering around. We were looking at something completely different, when Lisa looked down and noticed a female practically at our feet and really within touching distance. When we started talking about her, she got annoyed and got up to walk away -- and revealed...

Two little chicks! You can see she's walking away, and the chicks are right behind her! They hopped right up on the rock and toddled off. We were so surprised we just stood there and watched -- and got this picture ;)

For amusement, here's Lisa with a rather statuesque rhino. See more of her Bronx Zoo pictures here.

The zoo trip took much of the day... we had leftover pizza for supper and watched 27 Dresses. The funniest part is her trying on the dresses (including some interesting thematic numbers)... had they cut the movie to about 27 minutes, it might have been funny. Ah well... no rhinos were harmed in the making of the movie, so I guess I won't worry about it ;)

Paisley Toy for Zoe

Lisa sent me some pics today... most importantly, let's show off Zoe's new toy, which is this cute bone-shaped softie, complete with squeaker. Love the fabric!

Saturday...

Lisa and I had a great weekend... we went "down the shore" on Saturday (I don't understand why it's said that way, but it is!) by way of a Sonic Drive In (YUM!) and Quilting Possibilities. I swear I didn't know they were practically across the street from each other, but I also didn't turn down Lisa's invitation to visit the shop! Lovely store, too far away to be my LQS (although justified, surely, by proximity to Sonic)... and we did a little damage in a short amount of time!

Lisa picked out a pretty lime and purple and blue paisley, which, with the addition of a squeaker, became a new toy for Zoe. This one's shaped like a bone (hmm... should have taken a picture of that!), and hopefully it will last longer than 54 second! Lisa has a real knack for putting fabrics together -- I'm good, but she's better and faster with color. I knew I had to buy some things for the new birthday block swap on quilting.about.com, so we got the only things I could remember -- three ocean colors for Joy's New York Beauties, and some three hot batiks for Margaret's. I'll need a couple more things, but several of the blocks should come at least mostly from stash. Whew!

Now, I've spent FAR too much time writing this post (and getting distracted by other things while doing it!). I'm about dead on my feet, and tomorrow's a "field trip" day at work, so I need to get myself organized for a decent bedtime ;)

Delayed (aka Friday the 13th)

My sister is coming for a visit this weekend... maybe ;) I always love those flight plans that require one to fly west in order to fly east (or vice versa)... she went from a small airport in Michigan to Milwaukee, where they canceled her flight to Newark Liberty. It's the airline's fault, so they tried to find her a spot on another carrier, but there weren't any. She's on her way (in a few minutes, I hope!) to LaGuardia instead, where the airline will provide some kind of ground transportation to Newark.

Call me chicken, but there's no way I'm driving to LaGuardia! That's multiple bridges, plus going across or around Manhattan. In the dark. Without a legal auto registration. Yes, I'd have Jill, but no, I'm not going. The car service or bus or whatever will have to sufflice.

For the record, before we know the airline would do the ground transportation thing, I did offer to take the train in and meet her somewhere so she didn't have to deal with public transportation alone at night with luggage. I'd say I'm happy I don't have to do that, except that Lisa will probably read this, and that wouldn't be very nice ;)

A sad day...

Can you stand this sad face? Meet my sister's dog Zoe. Here she is, upon learning that her parents are taking away her stuffed butterfly toy. Wouldn't that look melt your heart?

Here's what Zoe wrote to me tonight:

I wanted to properly thank you for my butterfly toy. I love it dearly. Mom and Dad said it's time for it to go away though. I'm very sad about that. Because of this I made mommy take pictures of me with it for you. You are the best aunt ever for making me such a lovable toy.

Licks,
Zoe

PS. A blog about me would be extra cool. So cool that I think my tail would wag right off!

This particular toy was the softy I made for her for Christmas (remember the little quilts I made for my parents' cats?). Zoe LOVES soft toys, and even though this one doesn't squeak, it quickly became a favorite.

How quickly? You can't see it in this pic, but in about 98 seconds, she had already torn it! Yup, Zoe loves her softies. I didn't consider the stress that would be put on the center when she held one wing down with her paw while pulling the other with mouth.

I knew this toy wasn't "built to last" in Zoe's world, but I had hoped she could enjoy it for a little while. It's stuffed with little torn up batting scraps (I didn't have any fiberfill, and didn't have time to go buy any.) Zoe has made a game of pulling out the batting scraps and leaving a trail of them around the house, until Lisa or Jason rounds them up and stuffs them back into the butterfly. Lather, rinse and repeat, until her mom and dad tire of the game and decide the butterfly must fly away.

On Sunday, Zoe's going to ask her Grandma if there's any hope for repair. If she gave YOU that sad look, wouldn't you want to try to fix her toy?!

Back from the Mitten State

I'm back from vacation... had a nice week with my family (and a great lunch with Sophie), and now it's back to the grind :-( I was hoping to be in Michigan today, too, but George the cat had to be rescued from the kennel today. He's happy to be home, and I'm frankly pretty darned OK with it too! I've got some chores and errands tomorrow, but I'm planning to dedicate a nice chunk of time to our QuiltPink efforts. My sister helped me sort the bevy of blocks made by the gals at quilting.about.com, and it's looking right now like 4 quilts... maybe 3, just depending on how things work as I start assembly.

Hope you all had nice Christmases. Not to put the focus on the gifts I received, but I am rather excited to be writing this post completely WIRELESSLY. Before my sister and her husband gave me a wireless router for Christmas, I could only be online from the desk in the dining room or the chair in the living room... I couldn't even reach the couch with a 9' cable. Now I can talk to you from anywhere -- aren't you the lucky ducks?! Definitely a good gift from my list :-)

Now, I'm debating between reading a book and reading some of the 274 posts in my feed reader... Since the book is The New Year's Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini, I think it might win out.