There are some tech that this computer geek isn’t into. The biggest one is the cell phone. I have one to use as a phone. I don’t text, take pictures, play games, download songs or read my email on my cell phone. I don’t want one with a full keyboard. I don’t want a touch screen model. If I had my way, my phone would only be a phone.

I had an PDA for a while, but after a time I just quit using it. I had calendars and note taking software on my computers. I did not replace it with a blackberry or i-phone.

The cell phone is even pushing it for me. The only reason I picked it up was to have a way for my girls to get in touch with me. Being a single dad, this was important. The latest phone I have does include a ‘camera’. It takes lousy pictures, so I’m better off with my digital camera.

What brought all this up today? Well, last night I got a text message from a number that I did not recognize. The area code placed it in Akron, but I guess it could from there, or it could have been a ‘kept’ cell phone number. I was considering calling it to tell the person I don’t text. I didn’t. It didn’t seem worth it. I keep meaning to go to my provider to see if I can remove the texting. I wouldn’t miss it at all, and I think I would stop wondering about the strange text messages I get. Would I then get phone calls?

Whenever I take a road trip, I find myself wondering about random things.  Since I don’t have access to the internet while I’m on vacation to look up these random things, I make a list to look up when I return home.  Here is some of my look-up list from the trip to New York we just took:

– Are there bears in Pennsylvania?  YES!  I was wondering this as we were driving through their beautiful wooded hills, but I was still surprised to learn that there are black bears (who aren’t always black) in PA.  In fact, bears can be found in 50 of PA’s 67 counties!

– Where did the airplane land in the Hudson River a few months ago?  As I was looking at the Hudson from our hotel room, I was wondering if we were viewing the very spot (or crossing it on the ferry) where the plane landed.  I found that it was just north of where we were.  We probably would have seen it happen from our room; definitely from the boardwalk behind the hotel, and definitely if we had been on the ferry.

– What was that story about the chicken who lived for many years without his head?  I don’t know how this one came up in conversation, but it did, so here are the details as printed in wikipedia.com:   On Monday, September 10, 1945 at 6:45AM PST, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, had his mother-in-law around for supper and was sent out to the yard by his wife to bring back a chicken. Olsen failed to completely decapitate the five-and-a-half month old bird named Mike. The axe missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.  On the first night after the decapitation Mike slept with his severed head under his wing.  Despite Olsen’s botched handiwork, Mike was still able to balance on a perch and walk clumsily; he even attempted to preen and crow, although he could do neither. After the bird did not die, a surprised Mr. Olsen decided to continue to care permanently for Mike, feeding him a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper; he was also fed small grains of corn. Mike occasionally choked on his own mucus, which the Olsen family would clear using a syringe.  When used to his new and unusual center of mass, Mike could easily get himself to the highest perches without falling. His crowing, though, was less impressive and consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat, leaving him unable to crow at dawn. Mike also spent his time preening and attempting to peck for food with his neck.  Being headless did not keep Mike from putting on weight; at the time of his partial beheading he weighed two and a half pounds, but at the time of his death this had increased to nearly eight pounds.  In March 1947, at a motel in Phoenix on a stopover while traveling back home from tour, Mike started choking in the middle of the night. As the Olsens had inadvertently left their feeding and cleaning syringes at the sideshow the day before, they were unable to save Mike. Lloyd Olsen claimed that he had sold the bird off, resulting in stories of Mike still touring the country as late as 1949.  Post mortem, it was determined that the axe blade had missed the carotid artery and a clot had prevented Mike from bleeding to death. Although most of his head was severed, most of his brain stem and one ear was left on his body. Since basic functions (breathing, heart-rate, etc) as well as most of a chicken’s reflex actions are controlled by the brain stem, Mike was able to remain quite healthy. Other sources, including the Guinness Book of World Records, say that the chicken’s severed esophagus passage could not take in enough air properly to be able to breathe; and therefore choked to death in the motel. So Mike the headless chicken lived for about 18 months without a head.

– Kent State Massacre – We saw lots of signs for Kent Stae on the trip, and we decided there must be a few campuses.  We were wondering where the massacre happened, what year, how many people were killed, and what happened to the murderer.  Kent State happened in Kent, Ohio (a little bit outside of Cleveland and Akron – so that was the same Kent State University we saw signs for).  4 students were killed and 9 wounded, some paralyzed for life.  But what makes this massacre significant is that the students were shot by the Ohio National Guard – not a lone gunman gone crazy.  The 3 adults in the car decided that if Kent State would have happened in more recent times, it would not be nearly as historically significant because sadly, there are many more of these types of massacres nowadays.  However, I don’t think any of us realized that it was the National Guard doing the shooting – which I should have; I remember studying this is Sociology class, but apparently the knowledge didn’t stick…

– Murder in Small Town X – Do you remember this reality show?  It was basically like a reality show of a murder mystery; there were actors, witnesses and victims.  I thought it sounded cool, but I didn’t watch it when it aired even though I wanted to.  I was in the middle of moving out of the state I grew up in for the first time and busy with my first 2-year-old.  The show was cancelled, but what was significant about it was this:  The final episode aired on September 4, 2001 – exactly one week before the infamous terroist attack on the US – 9/11.  And the last contestant standing, the guy who won the jeep and the $250,000 prize, Angel Juarbe, was a firefighter from New York who perished in the attacks one week after the final episode of the show aired.

– What the heck does “poppy” mean?  In a bizarre episode I  forgot to put in my trip diary, my husband pulled up to a full serve gas pump in  New Jersey without realizing it.  The attendant came out and tried to take the nozzle away from my husband, who said, “I already swiped my card.” – he had no  idea what this guy was doing since he didn’t know he was in full serve.  The attendant snapped, “Stop asking so many questions!” and proceeded to pump the gas and kept calling my bewildered (and very tired) husband “poppy” and “boss”.  As we pulled away from the gas station, we noticed we had in fact been in the full serve area, but that still didn’t clear up the mystery of all the alleged questions my husband asked and what the heck poppy means.  I remembered an episode of Cops I had seen where a perp kept calling the cop “poppy”, and the cop was getting extremely irritated.  “Stop calling me Poppy!”, he said, to which the perp replied, “I’m sorry poppy”  and it kept going on and on like that until the cop finally charged the guy with something and hauled him off to jail, probably because they guy really just couldn’t help himself from saying “Poppy”.  So what does it mean?  When I looked it up, all I found was stuff about flowers and something about a nickname for a grandpa (sorry Hon!).  But I tried changing the spelling, because it seemed like the guy was speaking spanish, so I tried to spell it in Spanish, and I came up with Papi.  When I looked that up, I was scared about the results – it was one of those wiki-answers places, so here is a direct quote:  “To me, papi means: Daddy, Baby, My Love….you say it to the boyfriends, husbands, and sons…if you are in a committed relationship. If you are single, then to a man you have an interest in getting to know alot better.”  Giggling, I read this quote to my husband, and his eyes got really wide and he insisted that I do further research on the subject.  I don’t have a lot of time on my hands for this kind of stuff, so I found the fact that different cultures have different meaning for Hispanic terms, and apparently it’s common for Dominicans to call other males “papi”.  But it seemed to be condescending when the attendant was saying it, and I’m not sure I even have the correct spelling of papi.  Anyone want to offer any help on this?  Any spanish-speakers out there?  Mary, you love a good mystery, I hear 😉

Well, anyway, that’s about everything on the list, or all I have time to put into a blog post, anyway.  I hope you learned something, least of all the randomness 3 adults talk about on a very long road trip when the kids are asleep!  Some day, I will probably have internet right there in the car with me to look up these things.  In fact, I will probably be blogging on the road trip – let’s just hope I’m not the one driving!

I’m going to take a break  from my New York Trip Diary to write up a few movies.  All I have left is the World Trade Center site post anyway, so that’s just one thing on a trip of hundreds!  Besides, writing up these 2 movies should be easy, since I don’t have much to say about either one…

Last week for date night, we saw Knowing, a movie we had been looking forward to.  Not that we’re Nicolas Cage fans (quite the opposite actually); the movie just looked intriguing.  It’s about a guy whose son gets a piece of paper with hundreds of numbers on it which was buried in a time capsule for fifty years.  After some investigation (and A LOT of liquor!), Nicholas Cage discovers that the numbers correspond to the dates, places, and the number of fatalities that would occur during certain calamities – they have all occurred already; except for the 3 left on the list.  And that’s about it.  Cage’s acting was no better than usual (why did I think this would be one of his better movies?  Can you tell he is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew?), and I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but I found it cheesy and actually kind of dumb.  I was entertained, but barely, and I did doze a tad during this one, although the action sequences awoke me with a start.  Feeling unsatisfied after this movie, we decided to make it a double feature and sneaked into I Love You Man – no, I’m kidding, we went back to the cashier and paid for the movie legitimately – besides, we needed a refill on our pop and popcorn, though the latter was quite regretful.

I Love You Man looked like kind of a dumb comedy, but we’ve been appreciating the actor Paul Rudd lately (he is SO funny in Role Models and Friends reruns), so we decided to check it out.  What we got was kind of a dumb comedy, but actually not as bad as I thought.  It wasn’t entirely predictable, and there were some funny moments that they actually hadn’t spoiled in the movie’s trailers.  If you like silly comedies and Paul Rudd, check it out.  It’s not nearly as funny as Role Models, but it is much less crude.

So, what to post today?  I have spent a wholly unexciting week at home not getting the things done thet I need to, such as attempting to secure a post-school-year job.  There is also the basement and garage over here that need some attention.  And of course the blogging that I’ve ignored- sorry readers and fellow bloggers.  Instead, I have just watched some movies and a lot of recorded TV shows that have built up over the weeks.  There wasn’t even 4th/5th grade ministry at my church this weekend as it’s the last weekend of the month, when they go to service with their parents.  And what a message, by the way- the first of many.  I may just have to comment on the series when my pastor is done with it.  I’ll tell you though it isn’t a very happy topic.  Drama is also on hiatus for a few weeks.

I suppose I could ask for assistance for my brother’s sake.  He is trying to learn more about a painting he just bought.  It’s undoubtedly not worth anything, but he would still like to learn more.  We tried to dig up some information online but failed for the most part.   If there is anything in what we read we didn’t recognize it as pertinent.  In any event, the painting is of a woman over a worn sheet of music.  He tells me his girlfriend’s son tried to play what was visible, but no one recognized it.  It is signed at the bottom Gor 1963.  Is Gor his name?  His initials?  If one of my readers, lurkers even, can help here that would be great.  Here are a couple of photos of the painting.  Ignore the frame- he added that himself.  Thanks.

And for very good reason.  Who would have though that a high school in small, rural Northwest Ohio could stage a production of Les Miserables and for a lot of it make you forget that you were indeed watching a high school production in small, rural Northwest Ohio.  I have previously seen two professional productions of the show  and I can say with certainty that the young men and women involved in this did not miss the mark by much.  I cannot even begin to state who was the best performer on stage.

At the end of Val Jean’s signature piece (“Bring Him Home”), the actor was positively shaking from the emotion of the song.  Megan and I were in the back of the balcony and I could see his hands trembling as he knelt beside Marius in prayer.  GOOD STUFF!

Poor Eponine playing the part of the best friend who longs to be with the handsome Marius.  I always thought that she got a raw deal.  Her duet with Marius (“A Little Fall of Rain”) always sends chills down my spine.  Cosette (the character) is not all that much… kind of plain Jane and boring if you ask me.

I always find it difficult who to root for in this show.  I can see and understand the frustration Inspector Javert goes through as he tries again and again over 27 years to capture Jean Val Jean and bring him to justice.  Another amazing performance.

Fantine’s on stage time may be brief but her role within the show as a whole is vital.  One could see the anguish she felt as she struck out at her would-be “customer” and sold her locket and hair to make money for her daughter.

BUT… the real stars of the show… the reason I told Megan that I would sit through another performance… THE THENARDIER’S…WHOOO HOOOO. Forget Val Jean.  Javert take a hike.  Cosette, Marius, and Eponine…eh.  The owners of the inn are comedic villains at their finest and the high school students who gave life to them were remarkable.  “Master of the House” is bar none the best all-out, give it everything you got number in any musical I can think of.  Les Miserables with all its high drama, teary eye moments would fall flat if these characters were not performed well.  The accent of M. Thenardier was sleaze from the first line.  His sneaky, weasly, movements across the stage were stupendous.  The couple’s waltz at the end of the show  also was a highlight.

As I said, I could not put a finger on any one performance in the show.  There were different levels of brilliance displayed by all of the young stars on the stage tonight.  It really took the concept of a “high school musical” to a whole new dimension.

NEW YORK TRIP – MARCH 20-23, 2009 – TAYLOR: 9 yrs, SAMMIE: 4 yrs, DISNEY: 2½ yrs, CHRISTOPHER: 8 mos

(continued from previous posts)

Monday, March 23 – We left the hotel for the Pittsburgh Zoo and promptly got lost.  Many cities are situated on just one river, but some bank alongside 2 or 3 rivers, and that’s where Pittsburgh lost me and we, in turn, got lost.  Multiple rivers and all those hills – I have lots of trouble navigating my way through hills and mountains for some reason – probably because if you miss a turn, you can’t just go a block and correct yourself because there’s hills in the way.  And Pittsburgh was also not lacking in what had become our nemesis (besides the ever-elusive Waterways bus) on this trip – construction zones.  And we already talked about how Jill the GPS doesn’t do detours.  Lost as we were, we again got lucky and didn’t wind up in any bad neighborhoods, but we did have to go without breakfast and almost without lunch.  We stopped at a random police station for directions, and they were very nice (though they have some of the funkiest accents I’ve ever heard there in Pittsburgh – what IS that?), but the directions were very complicated, probably because of the rivers and hills to drive around, and we got lost again.  Finally we found the zoo, and we picked up lunch at a little food stand on the river across from the zoo, and we refrained from making good on our threats to throw Jill the GPS in the river.  Except now we were down to only getting to spend 2 hours at the zoo before they closed.

The Pittsburgh Zoo is nestled within some steep hills – like all the zoos we visited on this trip – and you had to take an elevator to get up the main hill and into the zoo.  Once inside, we were very impressed.  I’m having trouble deciding which zoo I like better between Pittsburgh and Akron – Cleveland is not even on the same level as the other two.  Pittsburgh has a thriving elephant herd – 2 calves born just weeks apart last July!  Baby elephants are somewhat rare and difficult to come by in zoos – if a zoo can actually get elephants to breed (and I know the baby in Toledo was conceived via artificial insemination, so breeding might be somewhat difficult), they still have to  wait through an extremely long gestation period (almost 2 years!) before seeing if they have a healthy calf.  So the fact that Pittsburgh has 2 elephant calves that were born in the same month last year (also the same month as our baby boy!) is nothing short of amazing.

The Pittsburgh Zoo has an awesome aquarium with 3 types of penguin and a huge seahorse tank – next to manatees, seahorses are my favorite animal, and I have never before seen such a nice habitat for them or such huge seahorses!  Also in the aquarium is an area where you can pet stingrays, and there’s even a tunnel that runs underneath their pool that kids can crawl through and come up in the middle of the pool.  Here is a picture of my daughter after she crawled through the tunnel:

And speaking of tunnels, Pittsburgh Zoo has a tunnel that goes under their polar bear pool!  How cool is that?  We didn’t actually see it because we were there near closing time, and the bears were pacing by the door to go in for the night – we knew they wouldn’t be swimming any more that day, so we skipped the tunnel.  But I must go back some day to see that, and also to spend more time in this awesome zoo – ok, I guess I just decided that I like Pittsburgh just a little bit more than Akron, but it was a tough call!  Too bad Pittsburgh is almost 5 hours away, or I’d return in a heartbeat!  And I forgot to mention how many fun things they have to kids to do, even beyond seeing the animals.  They had a totally awesome looking playground, but we didn’t go on that one because we weren’t sure we’d have enough time.  When we got to the end of the zoo, there was another playground, so we let them play on that until closing time.  Our 2-year-old got “stuck” at the top of the playground – she was too scared to go down the slide and refused to come back out through the tunnels.  I was worried that we’d get locked in the zoo like a couple of college kids I read about in Jack Hanna’s hilarious book, My Wild Life – they got locked in the dark reptile house, where they could hear things splashing around all night!  After we got my daughter to come down off the playground (thanks to her big sister who lured her away), the sea lions were putting on a little show right in the front of the underwater viewing window – which reminds me, we had also gotten to see an impromptu sea lion show earlier in the day – the zookeepers were training them and rewarding them with fish, it was really  cool to watch!

On the way home, we stopped in Elyria, Ohio for dinner at a Golden Corral (always delicious) where my husband was a victim of racial discrimination by the steak griller, and we found what must be the last non-Super Walmart left in the world.  Trying to save room in the car, we had neglected to pack enough diapers for our two children who still wear them, and we had to break into the new packs of diapers right there in the Walmart to change a double poopie from the baby and his big sister!  It was interesting to be in a Walmart without groceries where the employees were actually preparing to close the store for the night – almost like time travel, but if I  traveled in time, the last place I’d go is Walmart!

So anyway, now we had only 2 hours left of the drive home, and it passed uneventfully – the kids slept.  We got home sweet home at about midnight, and the kids were really excited to see their pets and their room – they had trouble getting back to sleep.  The pets were happy to see us, and my thanks goes to our great friend Carol who kept the pets healthy and happy during our absence.  I was really surprised to see how big the rats got in just a few days though, Carol, what did you feed them?!?  🙂

So, I had an amazing adventure with wonderful people.  And this is the end of my diary.  Well, not really, I will have one more entry to go back to the World Trade Center site visit, but I’m waiting for the right time to blog about that – it was a very moving experience.  So thanks for reading, and I hope you had fun and maybe even learned a little something about places you may or may not want to visit some day!

Yesterday was quite an interesting day.  I worked from 2pm-9pm (my Friday to close up shop.  Around 8, my oldest brother and a surprise visitor (Mr. John Truitt) came in.  They informed me that my 3 year-old niece had been choking on a grape. 9-1-1 was called and I was assured that all was well.  I had no second thoughts about going to a loooong overdue game night.  Unfortunately, it seemed that I knew how to clear a room as everyone except some of my best friends departed 😀  Later, Megan and Carol arrived.  Megan and I were the last two remaining.  Does this seem to happen a lot?

This morning, I learned that Sydney’s grape mishap was more serious than Jeff led me to believe.  Mom was totally shaken even then.  Apparently, the little dear was sitting on grandma’s lap.  All of a sudden she started choking and gasping for air and eventually had her air supply totally cut off.  Grasping at her throat.  Somehow, Mom was able to calm down enough to get the grape out before the ambulance arrived.  My cousin’s husband was on call and it seems that he had to look after Mom more than little Sydney.

After hearing the entire story this morning, I began to consider whether  I should have not gone to game night.  But I was assured that everything was fine and there was nothing else to be done.  Praise God, Sydney was back to her normal 3 year-old self earlier this morning… even if grandma and the rest of us were a bit shaken.

It has been quite a long time since I took any of my telescopes out to gaze at the night sky. I’ve had many excuses, but they were just that, excuses. I think I’m really beginning to miss that hobby of mine.

The first thing I need to do is have a talk with my boss. Some of the best nights of the year are going to be happening in the near future. I need to be able to plan some time off on a quick basis if I know the sky will be clear.

I love early spring, because some of the wonderful winter constellations are visible just after sunset, and if you are up long enough, some of the summer constellations are there in the morning. On top of that, the spring time just starts to have some warmer nights. Not summery warm, but you don’t end up fighting the frost bite you do in the winter.

Right now, it doesn’t look like clear skies, but my favorite place to check this sort of thing, is forecasting favorable viewing tonight.

I hope it is clear when I get home tonight, I may take my little scope out to view the heavens above me.

I’ve written before about my signs of spring, but since it is spring again, I thought I would take another look at it.

Yes, the frogs are croaking their little hearts out, and the buzzards are finally circling in the skies. I was saying to someone not too long ago, that I hadn’t seen any buzzards and the very next day there were 15 or so circling in the sky. The geese and ducks made it back and find pleasant rest stops in the flooded fields. Farm implements are back on the road again getting ready for spring planting.

I failed to mention a few things last year about spring in NW Ohio. One very popular attraction, that I actually used to take part in, was annual spring walleye run. Anglers from all over the place would line up side by side hoping to catch their limit of walleye during the spring spawning season. The Maumee river between Maumee/Perrysburg and Grand Rapids Ohio was alway the place to go to catch these fish. My brother and I went fishing many times together. I don’t remember catching too many fish during the spawn, but we had fun anyway. I do miss those days. 🙁

The other sure sign of spring is the start of road construction season. I experienced this first hand today on my way to a work meeting. Since I left early in the morning, I just saw the early morning setup. But on the way back the construction was in full swing. I was stopped so long, I was able to chat with the Road sign holder, they were waiting for a load of stone to fill in the big hole they dug (30 minute road closure). Any way, a sure sign of spring is a Rob in a red vest… Oh wait it was orange…. Oops 😉 Sorry, it was a bad pun, but Rob the construction guy gave it to me, so I had to repeat it. He did have a point, his old safety construction vest was about the same color as the Robin’s signature plumage. If they are known as Robin redbreasts, I guess we can let Rob, the construction guy be known as “Rob in a red vest”.

Happy spring….

NEW YORK TRIP – MARCH 20-23, 2009 – TAYLOR: 9 yrs, SAMMIE: 4 yrs, DISNEY: 2½ yrs, CHRISTOPHER: 8 mos

(continued from previous posts)

Sunday, March 22 – Learning from our mistake the previous day, we decided to eat breakfast in the room, and it was much less expensive, we had plenty of room, and we didn’t have to worry about the kids disturbing anyone.  After breakfast, we headed to the city again, even though we were all kind of sick of it at that point.  But when I had heard that we’d be going to New York, the top site to see on my list was the World Trade Center site.  So even though we were sick of the commute to the city and searching for buses, we headed out to see Ground Zero.  We caught another bus tour, but this one was “hop on, hop off”, meaning you could get off at any of the stops, unlike the bus tour we had taken the night before.  But in New York city traffic, we still ended up being on the bus for about an hour, much to the kids’ dismay since they were starting to find the bus tours boring.  But 3/4 of the kids took a nap (and hubby too!), which left me and Jamy to listen (and giggle) at the tour guide – a very hyper Asian woman with a very thick accent.  She was very informative (when we could understand her, of course), but she would interject between her touring tidbits with concerns she had about the traffic – at one point she talked (nicely) to another bus, telling it we were there first and not to hit us.  Another time, a man boarded the bus who was selling water and popcorn, and she felt the need to tell us, “this is not a movie theater”.  Duh.

Anyway, we arrived at Ground Zero, but I think I’m going to do a separate post on that experience – it really was mind-blowing.

We left the Trade Center site and went into the World Financial Center – a beautiful building where people were very nice and gave us detailed directions about how to get to the ferry without using the famous New York grunt n’ gesture.  The best news is that we weren’t going to have to take a Waterways bus!  Seems the ferry came right over to the financial district – YAY!  On the way to the river, we found some gelato to buy in the financial center.  Gelato is a type of Italian ice cream handmade on the spot, and it is incredible.  I had trouble deciding on just 3 flavors, but I chose well: cookie dough, pistachio, and raspberry.  They were all delicious, but the raspberry was especially amazing.  For those of you who know me, you will be shocked to learn that I like gelato even more than I like Dippin’ Dots – that is how good it is!

So we made our way to the riverfront, and when we got to the ferry station, it was closed.  Honestly, you’d think that at least 1 of the 5 or more people who had given us directions would have known this, but I guess not.  And I don’t think they were playing a trick on us because unlike the grunt n’ gesture-ers, they were really nice – I think they just genuinely didn’t know.  So here we were again.  Stuck in New York with no Waterways bus to be found.  My husband was very smart when he read the fine print on the Waterways card we had that said Waterways buses would stop at any city bus stop on a Waterways route, so all we had to do was find one of those.  We asked some not-so-friendly construction workers, who  said that there were NO city bus stops on the entire street we were on.  So we used the map on the Waterways card, and we went a few blocks this way and a few blocks that way, and we found a city bus stop which we thought was on a Waterways route…  Unfortunately the only way to check if we were right was to sit and wait for a bus that might never come, but lo and behold, there was another Waterways bus, and my husband again jumped in front of it while we quickly scooped up all the kids before the driver changed his mind.  We were really getting the hang of this now, but that was our last Waterways bus, thank goodness!  Here is a picture of our 8-month-old’s ET impression – Manny Jamy was the lucky baby-wearer since my back never would have tolerated it all day and we wanted to leave my husband open for our clingy 2-year-old:

We got back to the hotel which is where we had left our car, and my husband used their Wi-Fi to find us a hotel in Pittsburgh.  We were having such a good time that we figured we’d extend the trip a little and make one more zoo stop.  The only problem is, we didn’t make it to our Pittsburgh hotel until 3 in the morning due to a 2 hour stop at Houlihan’s for dinner!  Why diid it take so long?  We were kind of a large party, and the place was mobbed.  Add in 2 poopie diapers and a bathroom full of drunks, and well, you do the math.  Some guy stopped on his way to the bar to gush over the baby, and while he was doing that, his girlfriend took a nasty spill up the bar stairs, glass (already empty, of course) flying out of her hand and everything.  Instead of trying to get up, she just lay there, probably because she was so drunk (she wasn’t hurt; I saw her later and she was fine), and her equally drunk boyfriend didn’t even notice all of this.  So I said, “Is she ok?” and when he turned to look, I fled with the baby.  Interesting experience, but one that makes me even more thankful for home sweet home  – we never have those kinds of crowds in our restaurants!  Like I said, we got to our Pittsburgh hotel about 3 in the morning, and we had kids who didn’t want to go back to sleep.  But we finally got them down, and we got a few hours of shut-eye before it was time to get up and add a new zoo to my list!