the doom song

I spent the day gallivanting around Yonkers and the Bronx while Georg was visiting his father in the hospital on Staten Island. Not my most selfless of deeds. But, there really wasn't anything I could do there. Georg's dad has pneumonia and they're hoping he'll be better tomorrow.

Anyway, my adventures in the northern part of metropolitan New York. I had a leisurely morning reading in bed (the Iron Chef book, which Kevin had thoughtfully left out for me), then we all got up late and went to a Chinese buffet they particularly like in the Bronx. I know, that makes Chinese two meals in a row. But this place was amazing. Usually "big buffet" means "lots of crummy food" but this place was not like that at all. They had all kinds of things, many of which I'd never even heard of before. Everything was good and much of it was spectacular. My friends warned me to pace myself and they were right. I only had one small portion of everything I tried, and I still ate a little too much without getting to everything I wanted. I would list everything I ate, except it's late and I can't remember. I do remember that they had steamed baby octopus (which I did not eat), sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves (which I did eat), three different kinds of dumpling (I had two), and tapioca pearl tea (I've been wanting to try this forever, but alas it was too sweet & I didn't really enjoy it).

Then off to the Bronx Zoo. Unfortunately the zoo was only open until 5:30, and we got there fairly late, so we only had a couple of hours. But it was so hot that we probably wouldn't have enjoyed a longer visit. I wish they stayed open later! It was actually pleasant by the time we were leaving. It would have been great to get there at 4 and stay until 8. But anyway. In two hours we visited the tigers, the children's zoo, the butterfly habitat, and the mouse house. Which actually contained all kinds of rodents, not just mice. I think the biggest were the "cloud rats," and the smallest were these teeny tiny little mice who looked like babies. Nellorat knew a lot about the various types of rodents: how they related to other more common species, whether they were ever sold as pets, etc. Also Nellorat said that the Norway rat display was wrong: the plaque claimed that Norway rats were responsible for spreading plague but according to Nellorat that was a different species of rat. I think she should write them a letter.

The most fun part of the children's zoo was the prairie dog habitat. Which had a tunnel that people could crawl into and stick their heads up inside a small plastic dome, to get an eye-level view of the prairie dogs. The tunnel was child sized but I barely managed to fit inside. I should have asked Nellorat to take my picture while I was in there, but I had the camera with me. I had to crawl out of the tunnel feet first, and kind of had a hard time getting out without my dress riding up around my waist. Good thing no one had a camera then!

The butterfly habitat was very nice, especially since it was air conditioned. There were butterflies everywhere, on the flowers and on butterfly feeders too. I followed this one black and yellow butterfly all around, but it was skittish so I don't think I ever got a decent photo of it.

After the zoo we had takeout Italian for dinner, watched a couple episodes of Invader Zim (including the famous "doom song"), then listened to a radio show that Kevin's fond of. Which had a hilarious incident where they went to dead air for a fair amount of time, it seemed like at least a minute. Then the dj suddenly came on and started babbling incoherently about how he had gone to the bathroom and gotten locked out, and what song had been playing when he had left, and how long had there been dead air, and could the other dj get in there and help him figure out what had happened. Community radio, how I love it!