Birthday Tailgate

How many Michigan fans have an October 10th birthday? We had four to celebrate at the tailgate today: Jon, Curtis, Bobbi, and Tom and Carrie's baby, who is to be delivered on Monday! Cortney made some tasty peanut butter brownies, and planted maize and blue candles for each of the birthday folk in them. Of course, that wasn't the only food on the menu.  Judi's sweets are, of course, always the best.  Bobbi brought the tastiest taco dip ever (we've requested that again for next week), and someone else brought pretzel jello - never heard of it, but it was really good.  Cortney's mom's chili and Charlie's grilled hotdogs were the party food du jour, and were a welcome warm treat during the cold snap. This was the first football Saturday of the year to really feel like fall, at around 50 degrees. And to think that it was 80 degrees just a few days ago!

Notice that the only discussion here is of the tailgating menu.  We won't be discussing the game.  After all, Halloween isn't for another few weeks, so there's no sense in scaring everyone now. 

Honk if you love hooters

The Toledo Zoo had an Oktoberfest celebration like Detroit's, but Toledo was asking for $40 per person for their party. So we passed on that, and just plain went to the zoo for the animals. Jon had a great time as usual watching the hippo pool (they even climbed out of the water and trundled around for awhile!). In contrast, the meerkats were scampering about. We wonder if they are aware that their enclosure is right next to the white lions courtesy of Siegfriend and Roy? Being a Sunday in the fall, attendance in the Africa section was low, but they were still serving delicious flame-broiled burgers on demand.  Most unique about this visit? The penguins were honking. Listen for yourself:

Not captured on the video is when a couple of them would hide under rocks and make an entirely different, guttural sound. Were they having a good time, or just sneaking around?

Necessity is the mother of invention

When we first moved into our house last year, we really enjoyed the tiled floor in the kitchen. Over time, however, we have found it hard to keep clean, and the homemade job has shown its weaknesses at last, with a few tiles cracking, and others breaking loose from the blue grout altogether. So, it's time for a new floor! We got a great deal on a material that's a descendent of linoleum. It looks very classy, something like slate, and has a slight texture. We're still trying to decide whether it is more worth it to save money (tear out the floor ourselves) or save our backs from injury (and let the workers handle it all). This one change is inspiring a host of other customizations in the kitchen and laundry room, too--we'll spice things up with a new color of paint on the walls, get a better valance for the window, and spruce up the shelving system over the washer and dryer. Now if we can just manage to keep the pets from walking through the work area too much, we should be in good shape.

A visit from the west.

Cortney's Aunt Cookie and Uncle Michael flew in today from Washington, so we skipped choir in order to have dinner with them.  We always have a good time seeing them, which just doesn't happen often enough.  We had a great dinner with them, got to see some amazing pictures of Uncle Michael with an enormous fish (which he caught himself).  While here they also got some advice from Patty for their upcoming trip to Peru.  By the way, food is clearly a social event in our culture.  Tonight we tried multiple cheeses from around the world, had Cortney's dad's famous ribs, and topped it off with a Muscat (a dessert wine).

Oktoberfest is German for beer...

...according to Matt. We made a special trip to the Detroit Zoo with Matt and Kristin for their Oktoberfest event, featuring authentic German food and beer, a very loud polka band, and an enormous inflatable dude wearing Lederhosen. This day was special in more ways than one, however--it was also Adopt a Pet Day in the zoo's parking lot, the largest single gathering of dogs and cats in need of homes in Michigan. Honestly, we have no idea how we managed to escape without another mouth to feed. Matt and Kristin very nearly took a beautiful kitten home. Ah well, that just opens them up to the possibility of getting a puppy down the road.... :-) Jon wished he could have adopted one of the most oversized cats we'd ever seen, but couldn't because "Mr. Bigglesworth" didn't have a track record of living with dogs.

Meanwhile, back in the zoo, we enjoyed a good laugh at the prairie dogs. Last spring, they had had a litter of babies, and we remember how tiny they all were. Now, they are all fully grown and plumped up in readiness for the cold season. Our other favorite sighting of the day was the elusive aardvark. In the past, we have waited for hours to see him move and have never been rewarded until now, when he lifted his head momentarily. Just about the only hard-to-find zoo animal we have yet to see is an armadillo--maybe we'll get the chance at Toledo sometime soon.