Visit to the Norfolk Zoo

I went to the Norfolk Zoo with Kim and Don yesterday.  It was overcast, windy, and chilly but an enjoyable time nonetheless.  A few of the exhibits were empty due to the weather but that was insignificant.  Kim and I took a bunch of pictures.  I am still working on mine for publishing to my photo album but here are some shots of a particularly brazen peacock.

Recent Bird Sightings

Of course we’ve seen tons of robins and cardinals at Kim and Don’s in Suffolk.  Interestingly we have seen a pair of house finches on the hummingbird feeder.  Yesterday I went to Ragged Island WMA which is a small area off Route 17 on the James River where I saw an American egret and an osprey.  Last weekend walking and taking pictures at Lone Star Lakes Park, we saw quite a few American egrets and a Belted kingfisher.  Lastly we saw a pair of unusual waterfowl that Kim determined to be, after much looking on the Internet, Domestic Swan geese.  (Is it a swan or  a goose?)

Zeroing In On What Ales Me

My top three beers now are:

These are some easy, drinkable ales with just enough  hops and fruitiness w/o too much malt.  As such I would say they are classic IPA’s.  I think the West Coast, especially SoCal,  has the best rep for IPA’s these days as most of the brewers lay off the malt.  Beware the ABV and the price though.  The  Racer 5 is 7 % ABV, Sumpin Sumpin is 7.5% ABV, and the Sculpin is nearly 20$ a six.

Cheers, eh?

 

Another Weird Dream…

I dreamt that my family was moving my Dad’s parents, who passed away years ago, to a new place. I can’t say where this place might have been but in the dream I thought it was some place like Dagestan or Chechnya. It was very third world and rundown but mountainous, and beautiful. The backyard had a fence running from one side of it diagonally across the yard. At the break in the fence near the back, you could see far off into the distance over a complex of lakes but there was a drop off of hundreds of feet right on the other side of the fence. Also, the fence was falling down near where it connected to the house and I was afraid that my grandfather would wander back there and fall through the fence off the cliff. I can see this all so clearly in my mind it is bizarre. Later as we were trying to settle in my grandparents, a group of military policemen pulled up in personnel carriers and started approaching the house. The last thing I remember was winding down a slope through a maze of houses and vegetable gardens trying to get away.