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. 

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.

Dedicated to Matt

Go Blue!  Today's tailgate was topnotch, as usual.  We even celebrated the fifth birthday of a friend's daughter this morning, complete with a flying Barbie (yes, a flying Barbie) and cupcakes.  The game was wet and Eastern isn't much of an opponent (there was no wavering in Cortney's allegiences).  But even without the highly tense moments of a good football game, the afternoon at the stadium was highly worth the ode to Monty Python and the Holy Grail  performed by the marching band during halftime, complete with King Arthurs (read: band members) lopping legs off of Black Knights (read: mascots of other teams) and commentary in a thick British accent.  In other football news, a certain other green & white team pulled out a win in the first overtime against a certain blue and gold team, which can be construed as a positive thing, if it weren't so darned hard to root for MSU.

And tonight's entry is dedicated to Matt ("I don't make the blog enough") and his favorite heroic characters, Zooperboy and Moo, as pictured at right.  Thanks for making dinner tonight, even if we did have to assemble our own desserts, and even though Kristin and Cortney are not sorry about beating you  and Jon in Mario Party.

Please continue to pray for the vicitms of Hurricane Katrina and give if you can.

www.salvationarmyusa.org 

Just checking in.

Wow it's been a long week, and yet there really isn't a whole lot to say.  Yes, gone are the days of summer when being busy was accompanied by suntans and photographs.  That being said, we do have a couple of pictures to share from last week's tailgating party. A funny story, in fact, attested to by the pictures.  We had a lot of stove trouble this week, so yes, that second picture is all of us at someone else's party.  We did not go hungry, and the tailgating is by far a highlight of our fall weeks, thanks to the whole crew.  Go pink flamingo!  "Go Blue," however, was a little lacking.  The game was such a disappointment (who let them put a high school quarterback in for such an important game anyhow?) that we decided not to bother writing about it last week.  The Ohio State game was just as disappointing if you are a Big Ten fan, but oddly exhilarating if you are purely a Michigan fan.  But the tailgating was a riot. 

Please continue to pray for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and give if you can.  The road to recovery will be a long one for many.

www.salvationarmyusa.org

Of giraffe tongues and porcupine tails

We used our Labor Day off for a zoo trip to Binder Park with Matt and Kristin. Out of all of our zoo memberships, we picked this one to visit because they close for the season soon, and how can you turn down giraffe feeding? Matt and Kristin thought that was worth the trip alone, enjoying the giraffes' long, scratchy black tongues pulling off gymnastic feats to reach our biscuits.

We discovered that the animals they use for their educational stage shows are completely different species, not on exhibit anywhere else in the zoo. This is how we got a chance to get up and close and personal with a fenic fox, who was very shy and had big, sensitive ears. We really wanted to hold him, but that luxury was reserved for the trainer.

Another animal we wished we could touch was the prehensile-tailed porcupine. We heard that his quills have microscopic barbs on them that would embed themselves in your skin, requiring a visit to the hospital and a dose of muscle-relaxant to get them out! How could something so cute be so dangerous? His special training taught him to tap his enormous, wide nose on the handler's fingers to get a treat, so holding the carrot just out of reach encouraged him to dangle from his special tail for the prize.

We continue to pray for those affected by Hurricane Katrina. www.redcross.org