Postcard.

We all went down to the Audubon Zoo, and they all asked for you.

Check out those palm trees.

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Posted at 10:40 am in Uncategorized |
 

37 responses to “Postcard.”

  1. basset said on February 17, 2014 at 10:45 am

    Keep your eyes open down there, street crime is always an issue in NO.

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  2. nancy said on February 17, 2014 at 10:50 am

    As the T-shirt says: Bitch, please. I’m from Detroit.

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  3. Deborah said on February 17, 2014 at 11:15 am

    It’s supposed to snow up to 6″ in Chicago today. I walked to my favorite Starbucks in it, not too bad yet. At least it’ll cover up all the dirty snow already on the ground when I got here.

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  4. basset said on February 17, 2014 at 11:21 am

    I just remember being told not to go alone into a cemetery that was across the street from a police station.

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  5. Deborah said on February 17, 2014 at 11:21 am

    Ok, now they’re saying 4-8″ with accumulations of 2-3″ per hour.

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  6. Minnie said on February 17, 2014 at 11:35 am

    There’s the possibility of street crime anywhere, even in little Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, etc. Keep your eyes peeled, don’t take a short cut down the alley, and enjoy your evening.

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  7. Peter said on February 17, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    I got the feeling that after this snowstorm I’m going to sound and look like one of the Russians that moved to Siberia during the purges and didn’t see another human for 50 years.

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  8. brian stouder said on February 17, 2014 at 12:24 pm

    I think that photograph is positively marvelous!!!

    With the unending (and soon to be augmented) mounds of ILF around here, the thought that people I “know” (sorta) having a pleasant day at the zoo is warming, altogether.

    Here’s a trivia question: How many zoos have you visited?

    My count = (not less than) 9 (Fort Wayne, Indy, St Louis, Chicago [X2], Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, San Diego…and not counting Sea World near Cleveland nor the veldt at WDW Orlando.

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  9. Scout said on February 17, 2014 at 12:36 pm

    Dorothy, I linked to your pictures from the last thread. Wonderful!!! I am so happy for you and your family.

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  10. Deborah said on February 17, 2014 at 12:44 pm

    One of the best zoos I’ve been to was in Barcelona. I went with Littlebird, usually when I travel with my husband we go to see architecture, museums and gardens. On this trip with LB when she was in her early 20s she suggested the zoo, I thought it would be a waste, but it was terrific. At the time they had a magnificent albino gorilla who has since died. I could have watched that animal for hours.

    When I lived in Dallas, years ago when LB was born, we lived a couple of blocks away from the zoo, on certain days when the wind was just right we could hear the lions roar from our house.

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  11. LAMary said on February 17, 2014 at 12:57 pm

    My sons used to go to Zoo Camp, a two week day camp at the zoo every summer. I live not too far from the LA Zoo so I’d drop them off early and walk around just before the zoo opened. I loved that time. Picking them up just before closing was great too. The big cats were very noisy, Iguess waiting for their supper. You could hear them from the other end of the zoo.

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  12. basset said on February 17, 2014 at 1:22 pm

    We did a family “panda tour” over a couple of summers a few years back, wanted to see all the pandas in the USA… went to DC, Atlanta, San Diego and Memphis. What other zoos have we been to, let’s see… Indy, Louisville, Columbus, Detroit, Wichita, New Orleans, Nashville, Sea World in San Diego, the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, the Atlanta aquarium, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, surely there are others I’m forgetting. Oh, and Evansville when I was little, Santa Claus Land was probably on the same trip.

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  13. coozledad said on February 17, 2014 at 1:25 pm

    Peter: We’ve only had two snowfalls this year, and when we had to drive to town Saturday, virtually everyone we encountered behaved like they’d just been let out of a Skinner box.

    I felt my old postal Service reflexes kicking in. Had to fight them.

    Hit the floor, motherfucker. Snakebelly until you get out the door! Run! Run! RUN!
    And that was just Food Lion.

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  14. Julie Robinson said on February 17, 2014 at 1:35 pm

    Coming home yesterday to the ILF was rough, and we weren’t gone nearly as long as you have been, Deborah. Right now I’m asking myself why we live here.

    Any place we traveled we hit up the zoo, so I’m not even gonna try to count. Our lil’ old zoo here in town compares favorably with any for its size, and we were especially disappointed with Indy, which was both smaller and more expensive than FW.

    Does Kate have spring break already? Around here it’s usually the first week of April.

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  15. LAMary said on February 17, 2014 at 2:04 pm

    Maybe Kate had a three day weekend because it’s Presidents’ Day? Or maybe she’s just cutting school.

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  16. LAMary said on February 17, 2014 at 2:05 pm

    As someone who lives among palm trees, I will tell you that rats live in those things. At night you hear them rustling around.

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  17. brian stouder said on February 17, 2014 at 2:15 pm

    Mary – if I was any good with cameras, and if I had a FaceBook page, I could have posted an interesting photo from our front yard today.

    This winter we’ve been noting bunny tracks in our snow, all around the house…and today at lunch I saw lots of tracks at the front of the house, and lots of poopy ‘pellets’.

    Upon closer examination, I noticed that they’re concentrated near one of our dormant (and essentially leave-less) bushes; and upon one further look, the bush itself has been chewed upon extensively, all around the bottom third of it.

    It’s hard out there, for a bunny

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN0xK6bgQkQ&feature=kp

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  18. coozledad said on February 17, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    I knew Montana was a good ol’ boy shithole, but Jesus!
    http://wonkette.com/542107/missoula-montana-prosecutors-have-a-way-of-shutting-rape-victims-down

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  19. Dexter said on February 17, 2014 at 2:25 pm

    My friend Jack was in New Orleans a while back, I remember it was about the time the “Open Table” restaurant reservations website took off. He read a couple reviews and decided on the place for dinner. Leaving the hotel, he hailed a hack, and the cabbie said “Uh uh, no way. I will not take you there.” Jack “got the picture” and asked the cabbie, “…so, but would you take me there if this was noon and I was heading there for lunch?” “Nope. I would never take a tourist to that street.”
    It was odd, because in polite conversation, I asked Jack what was the area, What was the restaurant? And he had forgotten all of it.

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  20. Deborah said on February 17, 2014 at 2:53 pm

    Palm trees harbor roaches too. In Miami they were called palmetto bugs and they were huge, as big as a grown man’s thumb, and they fly right into your hair too. *shudder*. When my dad would trim the fronds from the palm trees in our yard, millions (well anyway it seemed like millions) of palmetto bugs would fly and crawl out and inevitably some of them would be white. It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen in my life. Whenever we saw my dad with the trimmer in tow we would run back in the house and stay there for a long while. We had mainly coconut palms in our yard, but had some royal palms too.

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  21. Dexter said on February 17, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    Deborah, just south of The Sunshine Skyway and just north of Bradenton lies Palmetto, the town. On a vacation we were constantly running back and forth with our daughter so she could visit with a girl from our town who was staying with her grandparents in a trailer home in Palmetto. Plenty palm trees, plenty Palmetto bugs. OMG were they disarmingly creepy until we got used to them. They were all over that trailer park.

    I see Krewe du Vieux was Saturday. Here’s some photos:
    http://photos.nola.com/4500/gallery/krewe_du_vieux_2014/index.html#/0

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  22. LAMary said on February 17, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    We don’t have palmetto bugs here but we have giant Oriental cockroaches. They don’t live inside the house, but they come inside at times, usually in either wet or extremely hot weather. They’re honkin huge. We also have Jerusalem Crickets. Those things are really creepy.

    http://insects.about.com/od/grasshoppersandcrickets/p/Jerusalem-Crickets-Family-Stenopelmatidae.htm

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  23. Judybusy said on February 17, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    Isn’t it lovely you don’t have to spend 10 minutes just getting dressed? Looking forward to hearing all the details, if you care to share.

    Deborah, those palmetto bugs sound too creepy!

    I had the day off and planned to ski, but we got 4 or 6 inches of snow, and driving around was a hassle this morning, so I stayed home and made a baked pasta dish for tonight. We’ll hunker in and continue working our way through House of Cards, first season. Monuments Men is on the list, but don’t think we’ll venture out tonight. At least the dog and I got to the dog park!

    Does anyone get Cook’s Illustrated? We made Italian mild-braised pork last night, a recipe from the current issue. Wow, what a dish. It’s great with polenta and vegetables on the side.

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  24. Deborah said on February 17, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    What am I doing here??!! I had to go out in it again, earlier today I forgot to buy heavy whipping cream for a sauce for pasta for dinner tonight. It is snowing like crazy, I only had a half block to go to get to the store and it started lightning and thundering. On top of that, the store charged me $6.12 for a small carton of the cream! This store is in the basement of one of the neighboring high rises, the one in my building was out of heavy cream. I’m really not liking Chicago right now. Can’t wait until Saturday when I head back to Santa Fe, where it will be in the mid-50s, dry and sunny.

    The cream sauce for pasta tonight will have parmesan, peas and prosciutto, and I have fresh basil for on top, and good wine, so at least there’s that to look forward to.

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  25. Hattie said on February 17, 2014 at 5:26 pm

    Lovely girl.

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  26. brian stouder said on February 17, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    Mary, I confess, if I was sitting in the living room watching Rachel Maddow, and that Jerusalem Cricket came walking (or HOPPING!! Good God!) into my sight – I’d stumble screaming from the room!!

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  27. LAMary said on February 17, 2014 at 5:49 pm

    Brian, one night I heard a clicking sound in my kitchen. I was not in the kitchen at the time. I was in the next room. It was a Jerusalem cricket walking across the tile. They are large and they have big creepy looking eyes on big heads. I fetched my cat, Edith, who had a record of scoring rats nearly her size. She did not want to deal with that bug. I swept it outside with a broom.

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  28. Joe K said on February 17, 2014 at 6:14 pm

    If Rachel Maddow walked in I would go screaming and stumbling out of the room also.
    Yikes,
    Pilot Joe

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  29. Kevin said on February 17, 2014 at 6:16 pm

    Welcome to town, Nancy. If you have any questions or need any recommendations, feel free to email.

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  30. Minnie said on February 17, 2014 at 6:37 pm

    Judybusy, I get Cook’s Illustrated. Friday I made the cauliflower and bacon pasta dish and it was toothsome. ‘Course I changed it all around (roasted the cauliflower, etc.), so I don’t know whether the recipe was good as written. Will try the braised pork on your recommendation.

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  31. Kim said on February 17, 2014 at 7:39 pm

    It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who would buy my teen-age daughter a T-shirt that says “Bitch, please. I’m from Detroit.” (God, I hope it really says that!)

    Deborah @10, I’m not generally a fan of zoos or any place that trades on captivity, but I did enjoy the Barcelona zoo. My kids loved the St. Louis Zoo and were awestruck at the primate tightrope over the National Zoo. I used to rely on a secret parking spot near the Lincoln Park Zoo over by Mel Markon’s and sometimes really late at night (aka right before dawn) you could hear the lions roaring as they woke up. I was always rooting for the lions to find a way out of that place.

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  32. brian stouder said on February 17, 2014 at 8:32 pm

    Kim – I love love love our zoo. The trick we use is to go late in the afternoon; say, 4:30 or so. The gates close, but you can still wander for another hour, and it’s supper time, and all the animals are up and about (even including the binturong, who is otherwise almost always asleep)

    The lions, Bill and Ina, have given us some great photos the past couple of summers, as they roar and jump at the glass (we think they’re saying “let’s eat out tonight!”

    Joe – I love ol’ Rachel; if she came in the room, it would make my day/month/year/decade!

    I will confess, though, that Michelle Malkin scares me a little bit…but the only guy I’d run from is Oxy-Rush.

    I figure he’s one step ahead of the Narcs, and I wouldn’t want to be the scapegoat when he gets arrested again…or the owner of the place where his drug-addled fat-ass finally keels over and dies.

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  33. susan said on February 17, 2014 at 8:35 pm

    Ha! Joe is scared of a smart girl.

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  34. Joe K said on February 17, 2014 at 9:24 pm

    No more than your scared of a smart man, mr O Riely. 🙂
    Pilot Joe

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  35. Sherri said on February 17, 2014 at 10:57 pm

    NBC has a secret Starbucks at the Olympics!

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  36. MarkH said on February 18, 2014 at 3:21 am

    Really, Brian? The only way the rest of us know what’s going on with Rush is, you listen to him an report here.

    Deborah @24, in all seriousness, every time you talk about leaving NM for Chicago, I wonder the same thing. I understand your husband still works, but…

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  37. Deb said on February 18, 2014 at 9:26 pm

    Deborah, hubs and I have been talking semi-seriously about becoming New Mexico snowbirds. (We’re 90 minutes from Chicago, so I’m sure you understand.) Any thoughts on places to consider? Or avoid?

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