 Sorry. Well, no, I'm not. :-) We had a pretty good time yesterday, despite a rather rough start. The tiger cub viewing was supposed to start at 8, and since we were driving to the zoo, we left at 6:30 to take into account D.C. rush hour. This was a good thing, as we got stuck in several backups on the interstate (even driving in the HOV lane), and when we got into D.C., we discovered that Rock Creek Parkway is one-way only during rush hour. So BassPlayer had to drive around downtown for a bit trying to find a way to get onto Connecticut Avenue, while I was freaking out trying to read the D.C. map and saying helpful things like, "We should have turned back there." It would have helped if we could have pulled off somewhere to plot our course. Of course, there aren't any free parking lots in that area of D.C., and street parking was next to non-existent. Ugh. In any case, we finally got to the zoo at 8. After all the excitement, I had to use the restroom. The closest one to the parking lot - the second biggest one in the whole zoo - wasn't open yet. At this point I'm pretty ticked because this tiger cub viewing is for the Friends of the National Zoo - people who have paid money for the year to get some privileges. And they can't be bothered to open the bathrooms?? Anyway, I wasn't quite in emergency mode yet, so we just trekked to the tiger cubs. Fortunately, even though we were late, the cubs didn't come out until right when we got there. Unfortunately, the day was really overcast with clouds from the remnants of Ernesto, and the cubs are still shy enough to run into the bushes when they see so many people staring at them, so we couldn't get sharp photos because we couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed in the dim light, even when we raised the ISO. We're going to try again either Sunday or next weekend, when the cubs will be on exhibit to the general public. After running to the other big restroom (which was open, thank God), we went to see the giant anteater. Of course, he was more interested in sleeping than in posing for photos, and while it's interesting to see that he sleeps by curling himself into a ball and hiding his nose under that huge, bushy tail of his, it doesn't really make for a compelling picture. So we'll save him for another day, too. We did get a few photos of the three meerkat pups. I kept telling BassPlayer, "We need to get this for SWAM." Needless to say, the pups were skittish, and they preferred curling up under a few adults to wandering around their enclosure. But there are a couple of cute shots that I'll be cropping and adjusting a bit in Photoshop. Hopefully I'll have a sample up here later today. We took some other photos in the small mammal, reptile & amphibian, and invertebrate houses, and BassPlayer got a great shot of an orangutan. A number of these will find their way to our Photos gallery - I'll let everyone know when they're posted. After the zoo, we went home, crawling in traffic again when it was only 3 PM. I was ready to scream. How do people DO this every day?? So we got to the apartment building, and the maintenance guy pulls up. Mind you, this is four days after our initial call. But what was even more headshake-worthy was that I had cancelled the shower head call on Wednesday, and the manager hadn't bothered to tell him not to come by. (She also basically told me that no, they're not hiring any more maintenance people since the complex was now half its size thanks to the condo conversion, and I basically just had to be patient because the one guy had "a lot" to do. No comment.) When we got inside the apartment, Dad and my sister had both left messages. K, of course, apologized for not getting a birthday card. Again. This is about three years in a row. Put it on your calendar or something, dearie. Dad called again while we were there, and he and I had a conversation that was all about him. Of course. After that, I opened my birthday present from BassPlayer (a graphics tablet so that I can do some more precise work in Photoshop - yay!), and then we went to dinner at Uno's. We attempted to walk off that meal a bit in the mall, then we came home and ate half of a very small birthday cake I'd bought myself the day before. A couple of friends in Florida had sent me some ritzy chocolates, but I guess the post office had left them out in the heat at one point, because they'd all melted and rehardened into shapeless lumps. They were still good - we just had to guess which particular candies they were based on the taste. So now, here I sit, bloated and happy. 42 ain't bad at all. :-)
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Okay, I've cropped and resized these photos so they won't take up a lot of bandwidth here. Most of these photos were taken by BassPlayer, in part because my flash was dying at the time that I was taking pictures, and by the time I got around to changing the batteries, the pups had disappeared into a hollowed out tube. BassPlayer got the cuter poses, too. The three pups were hiding under three adult meerkats when we got there. Another adult either picked a fight or told everyone to get up, which succeeded in getting the pups to start poking out their heads:  The mother apparently decided that she either wanted a break or wanted to keep an eye out on these weirdos taking photos:  The others were still kind of sleepy (yes, this is a yawn, not a snarl):  The pups were sleepy, too:  Much rearranging of positions took place:  Of course, we have to strike a cute pose for the paparazzi:  Once the zookeepers stuck out some new food, though, all thought of protecting the pups was gone. The adults dashed back into their house to grab a bite to eat, while the pups scampered about wondering where everyone had gone to:  As mentioned earlier, they finally hid in a hollowed out tube. When the adults came back out, they were the ones scampering about, presumably looking for the young ones. That's when we stepped away to take care of the batteries in my flash. So there you go. Does that give you your meerkat pup fix, SWAM? :-)
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