And then there's that river that's AR-can-saw unless you're in Kansas, where it's stubbornly called Ar-KAN-sas.

I'm going to live the rest of my life in suspense about Burrell's commute.

ABQ report! We went to the botanical garden (where we just missed the sustainable foods fest) and it was gorgeous. We'll have to come back because they're working on a Japanese garden which will open in September. But we made it to the butterfly pavilion where the butterflies were super active and we had our own personal volunteer who walked us around and showed us plants that would grow at our elevation and climate that would attract butterflies and provide a good habitat. I think we're going to try to do that certified butterfly habitat thing in our yard. We saw lots, but an especially pretty Malachite butterfly; ours was more teal green than the one in that photo.

Then we hung out by the shark tank for feeding time, but they never got fed, so we just hung out and then did the aquarium backwards, so it was most to least impressive. Hee.

Came back to the hotel to eat lunch, and laid around. Then decided we did want to go back to the zoo, and did so. It was great, if really hot. Highlights were the flamingos, the polar bear, and the capuchin monkeys. The zoo guy had just blocked them inside so he could feed them. He was telling us that he had to work out a complex system to keep the three of them from outsmarting him in his bid to put them inside briefly. Then we got to watch them watch him, and then scramble out to eat. Oh, and there were meerkats. They looked just like their more famous counterparts.

Now we're back at the hotel eating fajitas (oh, almost forgot to tell you about our aborted search for tortillas, which did result in us frequenting a really fabulous tiny Latin bakery) and watching preseason football in the air conditioning. Later there's the sauna and the pool and the hot tub and probably more fajitas. Life is good.

And it cost us all about $24 for the three park tickets, $45 for the dog's boarding, and gas money. Rock.

Sounds like a great day, Liese!

I like to use the word "moist" to make people uncomfortable. See also "damp" and "creamy."

Oh hah! Is anyone watching How I Met Your Mother? Barney doing a performance art piece that begins with 20 minutes of him chanting the word moist.

Liese, I love the ABQ zoo/aquarium/gardens. When we took the nephew up there last summer, we did that, the Nat.Hist.Museum and the Exploratorium. We were WIPED OUT. Kid was not. I need to upload those pictures. This is the only one from that trip online. [link]

The Japanese garden was just getting started last summer!

In other news, after my fourth dentist visit in about a week, I can now announce that temporary crowns are of the suck.

Uhg. At some point I'll have to deal with this. Hopefully for not too long since they built up my teeth in prep for a crown, but the current work is supposed to hold up for a while, which will (baring some emergency) allow to schedule it all as tightly as possible.

eta: and I completely forgot that I had another dental appt tomorrow until this afternoon. Yarg. more fun.

Barney doing a performance art piece that begins with 20 minutes of him chanting the word moist.

To torment Lilly, right?

Also hah! I'm watching an old Law & Order, and there's a character named Ian Rankin. Funny.

Uhg. At some point I'll have to deal with this. Hopefully for not too long since they built up my teeth in prep for a crown, but the current work is supposed to hold up for a while, which will (baring some emergency) allow to schedule it all as tightly as possible.

They said it would be a minimum of 2 1/2 weeks to make the crown, which I hadn't realized. I suppose I'll get used to it, but the temporary crown is much more uncomfortable than the filling that was there. Had I known, I might have been tempted to see how long the filling would last. At least this inspired me to have my teeth professionally whitened, and I love how that turned out.

See, my dentists are all "and once we do all this freaking work, you can treat yourself to a whitening!" and I'm pretty much "and once we do all this freaking work, we'll have wrung out my insurance like a damp rag and pillaged my checking and MRA and I'm only gonna want to see you for routine maintenance and prevention! Screw that!" Seriously, I'll have had 4 appointments in 2 months? I'm looking forward to seeing them only every 6 months.

I do need to quiz them on the temp crown thing. I can't recall what their time lag was. If there's anything to do to minimize it, I will.

The reason I did the whitening now was because the crown is one of my front teeth and (as I understand it) whitening doesn't work on crowns (and the whitening changed the shade by a number of degrees). So it was sort of now or never. The whitening I did wasn't at all covered by insurance, but there was a special and it was only $300, which was way less than I thought it would be to have something that lasts a few years. Compared to the $600 I'm putting toward the rest of the work, it seemed like a steal!

Yeah, that makes sense. All my work is on the molars and my smile ain't a Julia Roberts kind. I could give a crap what color they are as long as they are whole and functional.

I had to wait two weeks for my permanent crown, and yeah, the temp hurt.