My Little Bookworm

On Sunday, Jackie spent most of her morning reading her library books. Out of the blue she told me that she wants to get level 4 books. She explained to me that level 4 are chapter books. I suddenly remembered that I had bought a bunch of Junie B. Jones books from eBay. I was going to give them to her for her birthday last month, but postponed it because I thought they might be too advanced for her, and that she would not be interested in books with very few pictures. I guess the time had come sooner than I expected. I told Jackie that I had a surprise for her and lead her upstairs where the books are. I told her to only pick a couple from the lot of twenty books and that she was welcome to get more after she's done with the ones she picked.

After playing tennis and getting showered up, she asked if she could get more of the Junie B. books. I reminded her that only if she had finished the first five that she could get more. She was quick to answer that she had finished the others - LOL. It turned out that she brought couple of books to the tennis court and read them while resting from tennis.

Saturday Was Zoo Day

Every morning Jackie comes down with a great big smile and says good morning. Yesterday was different. When she woke up she did not do her standard greetings, but instead said "Let's go to the Zoo!" Don and I were a bit shocked by this out of the blue idea. I looked at Don who was already looking at me with a smile. Don responded happily to Jackie and said "Okay".

We left the house at noon. We had to walk to the community center a block down to get to our car that had been there since the night before because they were resurfacing our street. Don decided that it would be easier if we did not drive the SUV. Since the loaner car (my car needed warranty work to fix my recurring bluetooth problem) did not have a navigator, we had to borrow TomTom from the truck.

Mike (Don's son) wanted to come along so we picked him up from his condo at Arlington (near Ballston). When we arrived at Woodley Park National Zoo in DC our first stop was lunch at the Mane Restaurant. I had a half pound burger, eating only the meat (just started low carb diet) which was pretty decent. There were no straws and lids on the drinks for the benefit of the animals.

After lunch we went straight to the Big Cats exhibit - we took pictures of the lions and tigers.

Here's one of the two lions

It was crowded at the Great Apes house. We saw the gorillas who were pretty active. One of the gorillas was throwing itself against the glass window causing quite a reaction from the visitors. The orangutans looked funny with the white blanket over their heads. I never did find out why they had blankets over their heads.

We had a very nice visit at the zoo and the weather was perfect! I would have posted more pictures, but I had some technical difficulties with my uploads. There are couple of nice (not great quality) shots of the Orangs that I want to post at some point ;)

After the zoo, we visited with Mike for a while. We watched previously recorded Wimbledon match of Nadal and Federrer, and afterwards we watched a little bit of baseball. Through the game Don explained some of the rules of baseball. We had pizza for dinner, then after baseball got old Mike asked if he could show me his new game. We watched him play Metal Gear (sneaking game) on his PS3 which I was able to watch. Watching Halo or Gears of War makes me nauseous (motion sickness).

Girl's Night Out

It has become a tradition between me and my girlfriends (Beth, Mel, and whoever might be inclined to join us, but usually it's just the three of us) to celebrate birthdays over happy hour. Last night we celebrated Beth's birhtday! Glory Days in Lorton was the place of choosing as it's close to Mel's house. We have been meeting up in Lorton since Mel's recent battle with cancer. We want it to be convenient for her. I am happy to see her spirits up despite her illness. Last month she had a surgery, and few months before she completed her chemo and radiation therapies. I truly hope that her treatment works and the cancer never comes back. This Monday will be her first day back to work.

Anyway, as always, it was a very nice get together. It had been 3 months since we last saw each other. Beth and Mel had margaritas and I had the Glory Days cosmo. I found their margarita to be on the sweet side so I wanted something different. The cosmo was not that good - I had two servings (the last one I did order, it got included in the "another round before happy hour is over" order). So far, I have not found a really good drink at Glory Days, though the Pina Colada is pretty decent.

After being home for so many months Mel liked the idea of being at home with the kids. So, we discussed different business ideas for Mel. She wants to be able to stay home and at the same time continue to contributeto the family financially. I don't think we were able come up with an ultimate business idea for Mel, so we all decided that we should walk down to the grocery store and buy lottery tickets, and we did. We also ended up purchasing several children's DVDs - and we even got Beth to buy couple of cartoon DVD's even though she does not have kids. The power of "on sale". Hey, it was $1 per DVD... he he he.

We all bid each other goodbye and wished each other a wonderful weekend.