What's been going on lately

Memorial Day I finally went to the zoo. I thought that the zoo didn't open until 10 so that is when Pat and I got there. It doesn't officially open until 10 but they really let people in at 9 or so.

This was a free day, a later news report said this was the most attendance ever, so it would have been good to get their earlier. We went straight to the bird house followed by the children's zoo. Bird house was great, I saw more birds and they were very active at that time. Otters at the children's zoo were also active but toward the end it was becoming human high density packing. We saw the plants at the hospital entrance which might get a lot more traffic when the metro line starts up in a year. They have a good selection of plants.

It was getting toward noon and Pat was hungry and thirsty so we back to car seeing Okapi (rare short necked giraffe), giraffes, pygmy hippos, and wolves along the way. I decided to skip the prairie chickens and flamingos among other things this time. Temperature was still nice for Houston - maybe 90 and a little breezy.

Pat thought she had a Carrabba's gift certificate but as we got in Jim's car it was discovered it was for Carrabba's Italian Grille and it was expired. Jim suggest a Noodle House by Kim Son that Pat and I had never been to. It was closed,

We fell back on Mai's, one of our favorite Vietnamese places. We managed to get seated right next to the aquarium on the east wall. Jim and I had tofu - his fried with a great selection of vegetables, mine with a good lemon grass and chili sauce, Amy had rice cakes and bits of other people's tofu. Pat had some beef over thin vermicelli, they really hide the vegetables underneath the vermicelli. I had also ordered spring rolls for us all and then Jim told me he doesn't like them - "liked eating condoms." Pat loves peanut sauce (like me) but she isn't that fond of spring rolls. Final score on the spring rolls, which were bland, Me 2, Amy 1 1/2, Pat 1/2 and Jim 0. Jim and I also had their strong iced coffee with condensed milk. Pat and I picked up the bill.

Took Jim and Amy home and then went and watched Amelia on videotape after Pat didn't want to go to a movie. She hadn't seen it and liked it. It is one of my recent favorites, a subtext is the importance of hugging - thumbs up.

As in the past couple years, management here still haven't opened the pool yet but they are about to. I need to call Jim and find when he is seeing Dad. I could also see Charlene and Bill and check out their pool.

It looks like a lot of the book groups are going to Scarborough Faire and RenFest tomorrow but I think I need to check into the gaming group to make sure I am signed up to teach Risk 2310 and Sid's Civilization the Board Game the following weekend at the con.

The last meeting of the Inner Loop group was good but only 7 people. I dislike Fuddrucker's as a meeting place - too noisy.

I took Pat to the airport and then went to Fry's. Perfect store for Geeks. I am doing enough CDs from my computer I decided I needed to get some real software. I haven't been that happy with Winamp. The plugins don't seem to be working on creating CDs and I can't get it to read WMA music files. My windows media player is also broken and I don't want to reload it because then I'll have to redo all the file associations it will grab from other applications. I also picked up a CD of Angel Clare by Art Garfunkel. . Decided I am weird for liking his stuff, so what else is new. At least Amazon has other people liking it. Also picked up a $2 CD of chants.

I've been spending too much time on getting more info on politics. I can't believe how bad the GOP is and how subservient the media are. Then I read more history books or watch something on the history channel and see similar stuff. Maybe I really won't need to stock up on silver bullets. Sorry, politics are normally on my other blog.