Zooing

 Zooing is a specific activity with many aspects, indulged in by myself and my library-friend-Sara. It involves driving about an hour to the Milwaukee zoo and then shopping and Chinese food. I can hear people saying "you go to the zoo in the WINTER?" Yep. It's ideal. No giant groups of noisy children, limited number of adults making comments ranging from the inane to the truly disturbed, and there's a surprising number of animals out and about, while those that aren't are often on display inside. Our zoo trip wasn't hugely successful this morning, since the octopi (one of my personal favorites - ask me to do my octopi arms for you sometime) wasn't on display. But we saw a satisfyingly large and brown bear looking around vaguely and the polar bear was actually playing with his ball and put on quite a show. Plus, I got to further test my new camera on peacocks.

Then we went to Michaels. I was just thinking vaguely of purchasing some of those cute little dollar notebooks, but they had a huge bin of ribbon and...I ended up buying half my library supply list for spring and summer (the ribbon will make fairy wands for our Fancy Nancy party, in case you're wondering). The two things I couldn't find anywhere were reinkable stamps for stamping our SRC logs and sticker paper to make our own stickers for a craft programs. Suggestions?

We went to a baby store - I don't think I've ever actually been in one. It was kind of cute in an overpowering way. All that brightly colored plastic...my objective was a gate for our children's area and I did find one, which I hope works as it was a bit pricey. But our parents will certainly appreciate it. They've been complaining in a rather frazzled manner for some time about escaping toddlers. Plus, I've been racking my brains for small prizes for our new age 0-5 summer reading club, and my eyes lit upon...I guess they're teething rings? or links or something. Anyways, opened up, the package will provide a nice selection of small prizes for babies.

Of course we visited the guinea pigs and adoption cats at Petsmart and got yummies at World Market. We actually went into a sports equipment store because I'm sort of determined to get some kind of exercise machine for the winter when it's too cold/snowy/slushy to walk. I'm still undecided. Most of those things are so BIG. The spinning bikes looked kind of fun though...

We had late lunch/early dinner at our favorite zooing Chinese restaurant, Emperor's Kitchen, and worked on library-friend-Sara's five year plan for her department. 'Cause we're librarians! We stopped by a scrapbooking store we go to sometimes, hoping for the elusive sticker paper and reinkable stamp, but no luck. Of course we had to stop at Half-Price books, where I really hit the jackpot and found...

Terry Pratchett Discworld graphic novels (which I've been looking for forever. I might donate them to the library when I've read them. Maybe)
Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum (was in an Ozzy mood earlier this week and suddenly realized I was missing this one. It's just a cheap paperback, so I'll still need to get the right edition later, but good enough for reading)
a couple Amanda Quick romances (yes, I've read them all, but I was in the mood to re-read a couple and there they were...)
a Marvel Adventures Spider-Man digest (Avengers are my favorite, but I've got all those)
Little Red-Cap illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger (This is the more faithful translation of Little Red Riding Hood and I love Zwerger's fairy tale illustrations and it was on my wishlist!)
Girl Genius vol. 8!!! I've been meaning to get these and haven't got around to it, I have no problem starting with vol. 8, since I've read them all online and it was a GREAT BARGAIN. if you're in wisconsin, hie yourself over to the half price on bluemound, they've got more!
and I found a new Winnie the Pooh record for my collection and two Just-So stories records narrated by Sterling Holloway.

And Sara found a fairy book and a fairy tale book.

As always, we finished our trip off with a visit to Fresh Market, where normally Sara buys chocolate-covered coffee beans and a treat in the bakery and I get peanut pretzels and avocado dip and petit fours and some good bread. But....I finally got around to cautiously testing the fancy cheeses I bought a while ago and which were sitting in my refrigerator. Italian fontini and gouda. Yum! So we decided to look at fancy cheeses. The very nice lady promptly offered us samples and the benefit of her experienced advice and we both got some gouda, which was different than the gouda I got from the grocery store, being creamy and very yummy and not hard, and I got some Danish haverti, which is an experiment, and Sara got some fancy parmesan (I don't do parmesan)

Yay zooing trip! Hopefully the gate will fit and I will locate reinkable stamps and sticker paper soon. BTW, I'm looking for CUTE reinkable stamps.