Zoo

L and I took some time away from the conference in Columbia last month to visit the zoo. (Not that we couldn't have seen just as much wild behaviour among our fellow conference-goers, but the animals at the zoo were considerably cuter.)

Why is it that goats are such photogenic creatures? I'm not terribly fond of them as a general rule, but they do know how to pose.


We also saw the biggest gator I have ever seen, along with a cooperative grizzly who walked veeerrryyy slowly closer so that I could get his best side.

And of course, no trip to the zoo is complete without several minutes spent trying to figure out how to smuggle a koala home. No luck this trip, but one of these days...

Merry Whatever

Never mind how horrifying I think it is that half the county had its Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving - as it is now after Thanksgiving, the library has joined the trend and is sticking red and gold ornaments on everything that will hold still long enough. After much discussion, we determined that the ancient and now rather bedraggled tree for the reading area wasn't big enough, so D and J headed out on a tree-finding mission and returned with a nine-foot one, complete with fake pinecones. So I spent an hour this afternoon sticking little hooks on more ornaments than you would think a tree could hold, including (appropriately enough) little tiny books.

Why is it that the one person who doesn't celebrate the holiday is the one who has to make the decisions like "how big a tree should we get," and "should it be pre-lit," and "should we add the garland, or does that just make it look tacky"? Surely there must be someone else around here better qualified for this job than I am...