At the zoo

For Field Trip Friday, we went to the zoo today. It was hot and the boys about fell out but there were a few highlights. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera were dead, so the only images I have are from my cell phone. Below is a video of Geoffrey and an orangutan. At one point, I was rooting around in my backpack looking for water and Geoffrey jumped up next to the glass. I looked up just in time to see one of the orangutans climbing toward him. By the time I got ready, they were checking each other out.

Here is a direct link to the video in case you are reading this from your email.

I'll post more about our week later, just thought I would share this while it was still fresh.

Rainbow pt. 2

Getting bigger.

rainbow

Nice rainbow on the indiana/illinois border.

Road trip

We are headed out shortly to drive to Arkansas. My Dad is getting married Saturday. You can follow our progress on Twitter. Have a good weekend and we will see some of you soon.

First week

Well, week one of our stay-at-home experiment is done. I need to get better at timing but over all, not too bad.

Tuesday (library day) we went to the Matthews branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. About six years ago several small suburbs of Louisville and most of Jefferson County merged with the old city to form Louisville Metro. The Matthews branch once served the city of Matthews and is in the former city hall. For the space available, it is a nice branch. I would call it cozy. The boys had a good time and we wound up taking a couple of books on dinosaurs and a Mo Willems book, There is a Bird on Your Head. Mo Willems rocks!

Wednesday it rained. We were supposed to go to a water park (water Wednesdays) but we had lunch with Mom instead.

It was also forecast to rain on Thursday, our day to visit a new park, so we switched it with field trip Friday. Thursday we went to the Frazier History Museum. As per the suggestion of the lady at the ticket desk, we started with the third floor and worked our way down. The museum has a pretty strong martial bent, focusing mostly on arms and armor. The third floor is lots of armor and medieval, European weapons. The lower two floors are pretty much guns (I lost the boys interest soon after about the 25th or 30th gun). The museum also has some interpretive shows. We got to see Arming the Knight: 1460-1480. This was a gentleman who donned, with the aid of his squire, a suit of armor while he explained a bit about each piece. We all enjoyed that a bit although the boys got a bit rattled when our knight whacked himself with a sword to demonstrate the effectiveness of the armor. He looked a good bit like this when he was done.

The picture for this post is the boys playing in the wet grass, in their socks, after nap on Thursday. They did this while I was making dinner. Oi!

Friday we got to see a tiny bit of Cherokee Park. The park is massive but we only went to one of the play grounds. It is a nice park with a lot of semi-wild space.

In other news, Kelly is taking to her new job like a fish to water. She is learning the specialized tools of her new job and is quickly developing a network of colleagues to help her grow in her position.

I check the various library related job sites just about daily. The financial crunch has hurt the sector that would employ someone like myself, governments and universities. Things are improving though and it wont be long. I'll keep you posted.

As always, you can click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.

My Kentucky book report

Well, we are nearly completely unpacked and becoming acclimatized to Louisville. Kentucky is, according to the lady at the Louisville tourist center, known for three things: beautiful horses, fast women, and bourbon whiskey. I've been researching the last one. A long and interesting history there. Bourbon has been distilled here since shortly after America won Independence and this area was considered the far western portion of Virginia. Over 95% of the world's bourbon is distilled and aged in Kentucky to this day. By the way, whiskey is any alcohol made from distilled grain mash. Bourbon whiskey is made of 51%+ of corn. Straight whiskey is aged in a new, charred, oak barrel for at least 2 years. You often see these two combined on labels. The photo that I included in this post is actually pretty typical of most of rural Kentucky. It looks like a Microsoft Windows desktop, all green and pristine. Kentucky grows beautiful grass without even trying. In Virginia, the soil is so hostile, that you have to expend a great deal of effort to get a mediocre lawn (it is no wonder that those poor suckers in Jamestown starved). Louisville is the 42 largest metropolitan area with just over 1.2 million people (Richmond was the 43 largest). I learned something new just today. It would seem that there is a deep rivalry between fans of the University of Louisville Cardinals and the University of Kentucky Wildcats.

The boys are out for summer and since I can not seem to get a job it looks like we will have more opportunities to get to know the area. I have put together a schedule that includes a field trip every Friday. This Friday we went to see where Col. Saunders is buried, Cave Hill Cemetery. I expect to upload lots of pictures of those excursions.

I finally finished the video of our trip. It changed from my original idea. Check it out.


Click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.