Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Meg and I went to Portland a few weeks ago. I’ve been incredibly lazy about posting about it, but now I am doing so, so there you go.
We arrived Saturday night and basically went straight to bed once we got into the hotel, although not until discovering that there is nowhere open to eat in Portland after 10pm.
Sunday morning we got up and went to the zoo. I took pictures at the zoo. They are in a Flickr set.
Some amusing zoo anecdotes — in the petting zoo area there was a goat who I guess was having a bad day — he kept going around to all the other goats, rearing up on his hind legs, and then bapping them with his head. He did it over and over again and eventually the other goats got tired of it and started turning around when he got near to them. Eventually he gave up on the head-banging game and jumped up onto a barrel and started bleating. It was cute.
A little bit before that, we were over by the elephants, where two older female elephants were hanging around together. One of them was sniffing around on the ground for food and came across a pile of elephant poop. Everybody was yelling at her not to sniff the poop (because poop smells bad), but she didn’t listen, and not only did she sniff the poop, she jammed her trunk right into it. She immediately stepped back and tried to shake the poop off of her trunk, but to no avail. Then, she turned and wiped the poop on the other elephant’s leg, then she walked away. The other elephant didn’t seem to notice, but everybody else thought it was pretty funny.
Anyways, after the zoo we went to Powell’s and I spent quite a bit too much money on books. I actually wasn’t super-impressed with Powell’s — it’s ok, it’s certainly big, but it doesn’t really have any kind of transcendentally spectacular selection, and the prices weren’t anything to write home about. I think the kind of bookstore I like are big rambling shops like The Strand or the late, great Avenue Victor Hugo, full of wonderfully musty old book smell and books double- and triple-stacked on shelves with barely enough room to stand between them. Powell’s was just like a big Border’s with some used books in it.
The next day we looked around the Pearl District, a kind of bohemian neighborhood in northern downtown, with lots of ultra-modern furniture galleries, some cool cooking shops and other stuff like that. Afterward we walked around the Pioneer Square area in the middle of downtown, almost saw a movie, and then decided we were tired from too much walking.
The next morning we drove home and chilled out. It was a good vacation.
My meeting yesterday afternoon was precisely analagous to this.
I think that’s a mandrill, which is basically a baboon without a tail.
Or, uh, since I can’t see its butt, maybe it’s a baboon.
Were you the goat?
I get to be the goat next time.
I am just now getting around to looking at these.
Great pictures! I want to go to the zoo.