Toronto Zoo

Will and I took an overnight trip to the Toronto Zoo this past weekend. We weren't sure if it was even going to be a good trip since the weather was so awful here on Sunday when we left. It was raining so hard Will had to pull over while he was trying to get to my house. The weather was decent all the way to Toronto - our only slow down was (of course) customs. Naturally, we got into the slow lane and it took almost an hour to cross the bridge. Anyways, we get into the city (thanks to my dad's GPS system, which kept pronouncing the Q.E.W as "the queue") and find our hotel, The Metropolitan. After checking in and getting our stuff situated we headed out into the city to get some dinner. The city was still pretty lively for it being a Sunday night - there was an outdoor festival celebrating the Indian Independance Day and generally just lots of people. We ate at this pub called Elephant & Castle. The food was decent although our waitress was bit of a space cadet.

Walking back to the hotel the streets were a little less crowded - mostly because nothing was really open past 6pm. We did, on a whim, stop by this garden that was in between 2 office buildings which turned out to be really cool. Apparently, Toronto has all these "Discovery Gardens" that you can walk to (they connect in a big circle throughout the city) and this was one of them. It had a really neat monument to construction workers and all these walkways and big waterfall. We took some pics and hung out in there for a little and then took some other night shots of some of the buildings.

Once back at the hotel we watched a little TV- we had gotten a one room suite (part of a package) which was awesome because it had 2 bathrooms and 2 TVs. Not that we really needed 2 TVs, but it was still fun. Will and were going to go swimming but the pool was a little too crowded for my taste so we settled on having drinks in the bar. ($9.00 for a White Russian!).

The next morning we had the breakfast buffett at thehotel which was also really good - they had grilled tomato slices! After we checked out we headed for the zoo. It actually turned out to be a really nice day - it only rained for about a half hour during the afternoon.

The Toronto Zoo is really neat but its super big and a lot of times the animals stay far away in their enclosures so most of them are hard to see. We did see a large number of Canadian Geese. I also saw a lot of women wearing inappropriate footwear. Overall, we had a good time and we did see a lot of different animals. There was this one sort of funny incident that happened, which really we should not have found as funny as we did - The Zoo has a new Coral Reef exhibit and they have a jelly fish tank. Will and I were standing behind this lady who had all these little kids lined up in front of the jelly tank and one little girl that she was holding. The little girl keeps saying how see wants to see them better and so she starts leaning, leaning, leaning, closer, closer, closer to the tank and "THUNK!" - she whacks her head on the glass. Like I said, Will and I should not have found this as humorous as we did - we did manage to not laugh out loud about it until we had left the exhibit - that's gotta count for something.

The ride home took us a while - mainly because we were dumb and left the zoo in the middle of rush hour. Getting back into the US took maybe 20 minutes - the border guard looked in our trunk. And we were home by 7:30pm. On Wednesday, Will, Dan and I went to the Erie County Fair - nothing spectacular there- we just ate ourselves silly as usual. Tomorrow Will's band is playing a show at Neitzsche's, which should be a good time.



Cloud Gardens - with part of the monument


Some of the walkways in the Cloud Gardens


Neat night shot



Meerkat


Elephant


Rhino


Jellies - beware of glass tank

Tomatoes! (it's plural this time)

Well, now I have more than one tomato on my plant, which is good. I also had a large number of Japanese beetles on my basil, which is not good. The beetles did a good number on the basil - I picked off the worst of the leaves already but they still look a little sad.


Tomatoes!


Sad basil


Its actually growing!

Tomato!

My tomato plant has a tomato! Ok, so its tiny and green...but its a tomato!


Tiny green tomato



The whole thing...


Tiny tomato, one more time

Busy Sunday

The first part of my weekend was fairly uninteresting. Friday night I cleaned my room and did laundry and Saturday I really didn't have anything to do at all so I spent most of the day lying in bed reading and watching TV. I didn't go to Will's like usual because he was going to come out here Sunday morning so we could geocache and then we had his Grandma's 80th birthday party. Sunday morning we started out with breakfast at Niko's (at least my chocolate chip pancakes actually had chocolate chips in them this time) and we headed out to the first cache...which we could not find. Very disappointing when you cannot find one. We headed over to one hidden in some wetlands across the street from NTHS and we got attacked by mosquitos - so bad that after about 5 minutes we gave up and turned around and were followed by the mosquitos. Strike two.

We headed to Memorial park next - Will's favorite NT park - and finally found one and left Mr.Monkey (we have 100 of him) and then took off to find another one that was across the street and in a field behind the high school/Sportsplex and left another Mr. Monkey. From Memorial Park we tried to find one in Wheatfield and were unsuccessful. But then headed over by the Wurlitzer building and found one. And then headed across Niagara Falls Blvd to find one in the wooded lot next to Bally's - that one was hard to get to - lots of downed tree branches and limbs. By that time we were hot and tired and itchy (all those bug bites) and headed to Wilson Farms so Will could get an iced coffee and then headed home. We watched the last half of Ghostbusters, had a snack, and then headed to Will's aunt's house for his Grandma's birthday party. The birthday party was the usual - Will's mom brought the new puppy - well, actually Will and I drove back to the house to pick up the puppy. Max is going to be a bad guard dog - we basically dognapped him and he didn't ebark once. We got back in pretty late and Will still had to stop at his store to do payroll. Anyways, today at work was insane - no lunch break for me and I still didn't get everything done. Oh yeah, and Laurie got an apartment - she's moving basically at the end of my street - that will be highly convienent if I go there for a drink. Now...its ST:TNG time on SciFi....


Mr. Monkey in Green


In the weeds


I am actually in some photos...

Mr. Bacon VS Monsieur Tofu

I found the most awesome action figures at this site - naturally, I ordered them.

Long Weekend and some Geocaching

I decided on Thursday to take Monday off - especially since we kind of hijacked our morning meeting and all but demanded a meeting with our associate manager and then had that meeting on Friday morning (minus our direct supervisors). I went out Friday night with Laurie and KT and then did some errands on Saturday. Saturday night I went to Will's as usual and we went to Target and Borders and got caught in a huge thunderstorm. Sunday was very nice and we decided to do some geocaching close to home. We went to Cazenovia Park, which is about a 5 minute drive from Will's place. I had 3 caches in Cazenovia Park and then 2 in South Park. The first cache took us to a part of the park we didn't know existed and we did find it after a little searching. The second one we found fairly easily too. The third one however, we could not find. The area it was supposed to be in looked like a heavy party area (lots of condom wrappers and beer bottles/cans) so we think it may have been moved. We did set off on this other cache that showed nearby but as we kept walking we realized it was taking us into a part of town we really didnt necessarily want to be in so we abandoned that one. By this time I was getting a little tired and we knew there was a lawn fete going on nearby so we stopped there and had a blooming onion, some lemonade, and picked up some pastries to take home.

The rest of the day was nice - I watched Pride and Prejudice (the new one) and Hairspray when the other had commericals while Will did some training online for work. We ended up going out to get some pizza, went grocery shopping, and then watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoneix on HBO. I pretty much fell asleep right after the movie was over and woke up around 6:30am. I did some dishes (I know, I'm weird) and then got ready to go. Should be a nice day off - I really dont have much to do but hang out and relax.


Cache #1


Inside of Cache #1


Cache #2 (it was a micro cache - just a log book)

Adventures in Geocaching

Every summer Will and I usually take several trips to locate state parks for picnics and hiking, etc. Will LOVES being in the woods and walking around and generally just exploring - I, on the other hand, do not enjoy the woods as much as he does. I don't dislike being in the woods - I just get somewhat bored after a while ("oh look another stream with another dead tree lying across it") so I did a little research on geocaching. For those of you who don't know what geocaching is - check out this website. Basically, its using a GPS system to find stuff that people have placed at specific coordinates. The cache is usually a weather-proof box of some sort and inside is a log book and various items. When you find the cache you sign the book and you can take an item as long as you leave one too (the items are usually of little to no real value).

Anyways, I purchased a small GPS system and Will got me a compass as one of my anniversary gifts (along with a wonderful wood cutting board and a groovy spice rack - yay cooking!) so that we had the equipment we needed. Originally, we were going to start cache hunting around North Tonawanda but since Will is hardly ever at my house anymore and since we had plans to go to Chestnut Ridge park this weekend I found a cache there. There are several caches in the park but with this being our first attempt I only brought information for one.

We got to the park and used the GPS to drive as close to the cache as we could and then parked the car and got out and started hiking. Using the GPS is really fun and we had a good time trying to figure o the best way to go and how to get across certain obstacles. We did find the cache although sort of by accident. Will had gone up this very steep hill to see how low the miles/feet away number dropped and as he was coming back down he stopped by this tree and was like "ummm...whats that?" and it was the cache - cleverly hidden as it should be. We opened it up - signed the log and left our item (a Spongebob Squarepants action figure) - we opted not to take any of the items that were in the cache this time. Once we found it we realized the camera was still in the car so we hiked back to the car and then we back to the cache site, "found" it again, took pics, and then re-hid it again. We spent maybe another hour or so hiking around, had out picnic lunch, and then headed home. Overall, we had a good time and I wished I had brought info for the other caches in the park.