At the zoo

I haven't been to the Philadelphia Zoo in over a decade. It was long enough ago that I don't have any clear memory of it. The last zoo that I went to was in China, slightly over half a decade ago. I believe we were primarily there just to get a glimpse of some pandas -- touristy, I know. Overall it was slightly depressing. The whole establishment had a grimy, unloved feel to it. The souvenir shops sold Pokémon figurines, adding a double underline to the "we're just doing this for the money" mentality of the place. I'm glad I went, but I wish it could have been more pleasant. The Philadelphia Zoo is something else entirely.

Here's how it happened. I was in the city with Rachel, and we had been walking around, trying to think of something to do. We had wandered down by the waterfront, where you can see across the river to Camden. Also visible is the Adventure Aquarium. Only half-seriously, I suggested we patronize it. Rachel thought it was a good idea, but since it was gone six o'clock, it was too late. We left, got some food, had a picnic, and resolved to stop in the next day.

The next day came and it was simply beautiful outside. Warm and sunny, it felt curiously like the first day of summer. Someone mentioned that we had two options -- the aquarium or the zoo. I thought about it. For whatever reason, I've been to many more aquariums (aquaria?) than I have zoos over the years. Maybe they're just more prevalent, I don't know. Based on that, and that it was just too nice outside to be inside, I decided that we should go to the zoo instead. It was one of those rare occasions where not only was I decisive, but I made the right decision.

The Philadelphia Zoo is an amazing place. It certainly helped that the day was gorgeous, the heat and sunniness in perfect moderation, the skies cloudless, the humidity uncommonly low. The lines to get in were long, but moved quickly enough, and were miles ahead better than anything I've seen at a theme park, for instance. Once we got inside, it was surprisingly uncrowded, spotless, and clean-smelling. Right away we were engaged by an exhibit of primates. The whole place seems to be ingeniously designed, so that no matter where you are, or where you just came from, there's something nearby, sometimes already in sight, that you want to see. All the exhibits are tastefully done. There's not the over-abundance of hot dog and cotton candy and crummy souvenir vendors that you normally get every five feet.

I'm not going to list everything that we saw there. Suffice it to say that even though we spent a few hours there, there was plenty more still to see by the time I had to leave. My attention span never exhausted, a very rare thing for me in really any situation. I took a few photos, but sadly all I had with me was my cameraphone. It's good, as cameraphones go, about on par with the first digital camera I ever owned, but still a poor substitute for a dedicated device. Rachel took a number of photos with her real camera, and here is a link to them.

Go to the zoo, because it's awesome. It seems really clichéd, but it really is fun no matter what age you are. If you can't enjoy it, there's something really wrong with you.

Spring broken

I realize it’s actually been closer to two weeks since my last post. No worries, not a whole lot has actually happened since then. Nothing happened the rest of that week or over the weekend. Easter was pretty tame. The only things to differentiate it from any other day is that I ate a lot of chocolate and candy, and was thus more disgusted with myself than usual, and dinner was a more formal affair. My sister and I also had lunch with my dad at one of the few places that was open. It was nice place, more so for not being as crowded as usual.

Wednesday was my dad’s birthday. I don’t even get home until eleven on Wednesdays, so I wasn’t able to see him. I called him up of course. So a shout-out to him, I guess.

On Friday I went into Philly after school. I hung out with Rachel. We were going to maybe check out something showing at the Film Festival but either there wasn’t anything particularly captivating or what was started too late before I had to leave. Instead I introduced her to the magic of Transmetropolitan, the best comic book I’ve ever read, with some of the best art I’ve seen, and just plain one of the best books I’ve read. As a Friday the Thirteenth it wasn’t any more unlucky than any other day in my life. I missed my van in the morning so I had to walk an extra mile. But then I almost missed my train out of Philly because I screwed up the times, and it was pretty damned lucky I was there in time.

Saturday night Gabrielle, Rachel, Mike, and I all went to see Anger Core and Meat Rainbow play. A few other bands were playing, too, but we weren’t there to see them. Anger Core was good but not great. It was their first performance and they hadn’t rehearsed much, but it’s clear enough that they’re headed for greatness. Meat Rainbow was on usual good form. Of the other bands, Space Jams blew, When Cars Ascend had good instrumentals but a terrible singer, and Univox was just all around good. I bought an exclusive, one-of-a-kind Anger Core shirt that I’m going to treasure for years. We also ran into Tucker which was pretty weird but for whatever reason not as awkward as what I would have imagined.

On Sunday my sister and I went out and had lunch with my dad. We wished him a happy birthday and distributed material goods and suchlike. It was good.

A pox upon me

The past week has not been very eventful. Last Tuesday (not yesterday) I woke up itchy, with what appeared to be bug-bites littered around my body. I looked at myself and thought, wow, I know the weather turned warmer recently but I didn't think bugs would have hatched that quickly. I didn't think much of it and just tried to avoid scratching. The next day at school, I overheard a kid mention how he'd been absent for chickenpox. And I thought, oh, damn.

Sure enough, I had contracted the 'pox. I had supposedly been immunized against it when I was younger, but it's evidently not a 100% thing. I was fortunate in that I got it very mildly. Benedryl helped a whole lot with the itchiness, Tylenol helped with the feverishness and headaches, so I really just had to deal with feeling really tired and generally kind of gross. Today will be the first time I've left the property in a week. Luckily it's spring break so I haven't missed much school.

I passed the majority of the time watching movies, playing video games (really just Soul Calibur III), and reading. So here's a few movie micro-reviews.

• Lethal Weapons 1 & 2 - Mediocre. Maybe I would have liked them better if I had watched less Law & Order as a lad and wasn't taking a law class in school. So little respect for protocol or due process, to such an unbelievable extent.
• Total Recall - The best, and only, movie I've watched with a main character named Doug. That made it kind of weird for me when I was watching it. I enjoyed it though, really decent sfx given when it came out.
• Office Space - A classic. The third time I've seen it, and it's just as good.
• Andy Barker, P.I. - Not actually a movie, but a new TV show. It's good though. I like Andy Richter and Tony Hale, the actors are good, and the writing is too.

I have also listened enough to the new Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, to pass judgment upon it. I don't like it as much as their last two albums, but it's still pretty good, and I think it's worth picking up if you like them. I don't find the melodies in it as compelling, and the vocal style is more often of the kind that I disliked in their older stuff, but that's really a taste thing. Of any song on it, I'd recommend "Missed the Boat" to listen to.

On Monday Rachel came by and dropped off some headphones I had left by accident at her house last time I was over. We walked around a bit before she had to go. Then yesterday she came over again for a little bit. We would have gone out, but there were circumstances preventing me (I wasn't feeling very good and it was part of my punishment from last week). It was a nice day so we sat outside on my balcony and talked. It was last week or the week before but she asked me to escort her to her prom this year and I agreed. So I've got that to look forward to.

Monday night my mom, sister, and I attempted to have a Passover Seder. It wasn't flawless, but we tried. We got the food more or less right, we did what of the readings we could, and although the whole thing was pretty jerry-rigged, it was a nice night. If any of us had taken it more seriously, there would have been some serious disappointment and/or offense taken. But we didn't, so it was good.

I've also spent a lot of time working on my iBook, which I finally had fixed and got back after it broke in whatever, December. I backed up the hard drive, properly this time, wiped it, and tried to reinstall Mac OS 10.4. Unfortunately, at some point my install DVD got scratched up and so I kept getting errors during install. I bought a disk repair kit, and used it repeatedly, but it didn't help. I eventually managed to get it to work by only choosing to install the absolute basics. I'm still working on getting all of my applications and settings and such on it. It's running really nicely, especially given it's going on six years old.

I've also been working on going through and adding labels to some posts. Given the 200+ posts on this blog, I can't imagine I'll finish that task for quite some time. I'm just waiting until I find myself with a hunk of time, nothing better to do, and I'm in a nice, OCD mood.