Toy Killer

I woke up this morning to this:

That girl sure knows how to destroy a toy. She owned that one for almost 48 hours!

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So I found this link while popping around in other blogs (it started at Jamie's and it just moved on and on and on until I found this).

Sounds fun. I think I'll give it a shot. Especially since I'm obsessed with my new camera and it gives me a good excuse to post random photos. :)

Zoo Fun

This weekend was my annual trip to Lincoln Park Zoo with my nephew and my mom. This year, Sister & Brother-in-Law came along as well since my baby nephew, Ben, was going as well. Quite a group!

I go back and forth on whether or not the zoo is a horrible place where the animals are taken out of their natural habitat, la la la, but once a year I enjoy the fun that is seeing my nephew (now nephews!) enjoy the zoo.

For the first time in the three years we've been going (Jack's only 4 1/2!), we saw almost the whole zoo. He usually gets tired are just a few exhibits, but this year we went through just about the whole thing and even made it to the farm. Monkeys, zebras, penguins, polar bears, giraffes. Good stuff. It's kind of strange to think that these animals all live in the middle of the city next to a big lake, but they seem to be...ok.

There were two animals that were a little worrisome. One was a zebra that has seizures (we didn't see any seizures but it was laying down on it's side which was a little odd) and a gibbon monkey that lost one of it's arm because a visitor to the zoo threw something and he tried to grab it. That was sad but he was swinging around and seemed to adapt pretty well to only having one arm!

The monkeys and apes were pretty fun. I never really liked monkeys before, but this year they were neat! They were all playing and jumping around and having a good time so it made them a little more interesting than the lions that just lay in the sun all day.

It was a fun day! It makes you realize that you need to play tourist in your own town more often.

(I need to update these photos. I had a chance to edit them but I haven't posted them here yet. Check my flickr site if you wanna see more and better pics. :)

New Camera!

I got a new camera for my birthday and I'm in love with it. It's so fun. It's small and fits in my pocket and has a great zoom and image stabilization and it's pretty and shiny. :)

There's also a fun option that allows you to take pictures where they're all black and white except for one color of your choosing.

This may be something that exists on all other cameras, but I find this totally fun. Not practical for site-seeing, necessarily, but it creates some fun stuff. I took about 50 pictures of Sadie last night trying it out.

Unfortunately the battery has already died (??) so I'll have to play more later. That and I'm at work. Hee.

Scary Sadie

During our morning walk this morning, Sadie saw someone leaving his apartment and stopped to watch them (as she does). Now, she normally just watches them go by and nothing more happens. Today was different.

As the guy walks by, she jumps at him, pulling the leash and making me pull back on her. She never touched the guy, but got really close. The bad part? He was totally freaked out. If we was just pissed, I'd get it (random jumping dog is probably scary to non-dog owners) but the look that he gave me was so...sad. Like "why did you do that?" It's like I hurt his feelings.

So of course I feel guilty and horrible because my dog scared the bejeezus out of someone.

Sorry random man. I'll keep Sadie away from you in the future.

Happy Father's Day!

Another weekend, another weekend out in the burbs. I love my family, but I don't have a car! Luckily my mom's nice enough to pick me up a lot, but it's still hard to travel to the burbs all the time. And I'm going out again this weekend.

A pretty quiet weekend overall. I watched a couple of movies, Nacho Libre (Seriously? Who greenlit this?) and You, Me, and Dupree. I also cleaned out my tivo--woohoo!

Sadie and I took a few walks this weekend and it was so hot out that she had to take a few breaks to rest in the shade. The poor thing, she just can't handle 90 degree heat with her dark fur! We'd go about a block and a half and she'd find some grass and just plop down and not move. I had to bribe her with promises of treats to get her home, and once we got home, she would lay down and not move for a few hours. By the end of the day on Saturday she was hiding under my bed trying to keep cool (I had the air on!) and had no interest in doing anything outside.



On Sunday I went out the burbs for a Father's Day BBQ at my sister's house (aka cicada central). Sadie went with me this time and really enjoyed chasing and eating the bugs. So gross. Dinner was nice as well--it good to spend time with my dad and my sister outside of the big family events that go on.

Drama in the Middle of the Night

Last night around 12:15am a loud car woke me up with incessant honking. Annoying.

I tried to ignore it, but it continued and continued for at least 10 minutes. Then I heard yelling outside my bedroom window. Since the voices were so close, I decided to peek out of my curtains to see what was going on.

Two women around 25 years old were yelling and swearing at the guy who lives in the basement of my building. He wasn't coming out and acknowledging them and they were getting more and more angry. They were swearing up a storm and screaming things at him and at one point grabbed some crates to try to make steps so they could climb the fence (they were both fairly large so this would have been an interesting show had they accomplished it. Yes, that's rude, but seriously...)

The downstairs neighbor came out to talk to them for a while (she's the basement neighbor's mother? I think?) and eventually basement guy came out. That didn't make things much better because now the main girl was screaming and crying and swearing and he was getting pissed off. She kept asking for her stuff back and he wouldn't open the gate for her to come in and get it. It quieted down a bit and I lied down to go back to sleep, but then the screaming picked up again so I peeked out again. And I saw a TV on the front lawn. I'm sorry, what? I'm so confused. She wanted her DVD player so how did a 32" TV get on the lawn? Did basement guy bring it up? Was it the women's? The gate was still locked so I'm totally confused.

But at that point, I didn't care as much. They stopped yelling and I went to sleep. I kinda want to know what was going on, but at 1am, I was over it. As long as the honking stopped, I could stop being a peeping tom and go to sleep. :)

Oh, and I saw the women on the bus that wears shorts around her neck like a sweater again this morning. A new pair of shorts.

That's so weird.