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The girls took me out tonight for my last single-fling. Sadly, I’m not into drinking (never been drunk, never care to be), so we did not do the traditional stripper and get-the-bride-to-be-drunk kind of trip. Instead, we started with dinner at Bertucci’s near Dupont Circle, and then moved on to the Natural History Museum for a show by Second City.
Mom, Mushi and I all went to the nail shop to get our nails done this afternoon. I have never done something so girly in my life….at least not that I can remember.
Oh, and did I mention that two other semi-crises came up today? Nothing major…or at least nothing that can’t be dealt with. I picked Suzanne up this morning at Dulles at about 7 AM. She and Sweetie are staying together at a hotel in Alexandria, and Sweetie was going to rent a car and pick up Suzanne early this afternoon, after her plane came in. While at lunch, however, Sweetie calls to tell me that her driver’s license has expired, and she can’t get the car. Sooo, I drove Suzanne back out to the car rental place at Dulles, and she put the car in her name.
Later, Dad got a call from Kevin, my brother, saying that he wasn’t able to get the car he thought he’d be renting. The reason? His driver’s license had expired. Weird.
We took our last panda hunting trip today. We had just two pandas left — the one at the Anacostia Museum (were we’d tried to go a couple weeks ago, but failed miserably due to DC’s Escher-like road lay-out), and the one at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel is at 1330 Maryland Ave, SE — an address that according to both Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest does not exist. Fortunately, as we got close, there were green signs directing us to the hotel.
There is acutally one more panda, but it was stolen early in the Pandamania installation. Sigh.
One other note: the pandas are going to be gathered up over the next couple weeks and moved to one of two locations to prepare for the auction (the Mariott Wardman Park Hotel and American University — check out the Pandamania gallery page for more). They will be on display during daylight hours, so it’s a great way to see a bunch of the pandas without as much effort and Andrew and I have put forth over the summer.
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
| Panda Tales | Emperor P’ing |
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| Me with the last panda! | |
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We are sooooo close to seeing all of the pandas around town. After today’s trip, we have seen 147 of the original 150 pandas. Sadly, one of them was stolen, so we only have two pandas left to see (one of those we tried to see today, but couldn’t figure out where it was).
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
Here are a few of my favorites from today’s adventures:
| Ocean Snack | |
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| PANDAbandana | |
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| Panorama Panda | |
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We biked up to Hole in the Wall Books again today. We didn’t have very much time last Thursday, since we needed to get back to the car before it got too dark, so we decided to head out again today and take our time at the bookstore.
The ride feels shorter and shorter each time that we do it. Today, like Thursday, I actually made it up the big hill going east just after the Beltway. But today, unlike Thursday, I also made it up that same hill going the other way. Whoo Hoo!
Our destination:
After we got back, Groom Bear, in the back seat of the car, felt the need to be protected from my driving:
We’ve had little opportunity to bike on the weekends, with the panda-hunting trips and wedding errands, so we went out after work tonight. Sadly, it will soon get too dark too early to ride after work.
Tonight we took the W&OD trail from Vienna towards Falls Church. We made a little side trip to Hole in the Wall Books on Broad Street (aka Route 7). It’s just a block or so off of the W&OD trail, and the road has sidewalks, so it’s an easy ride. There I picked up a few books on the 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-2000 list. Banned Books Week is Sept 24 – Oct 1 this year, and I want to release books like I did last year.
On our way back, I took a couple pictures:
The road behind
and the road ahead:
Total miles: 10.4
Today’s panda-hunting trip did not find Andrew nor me at our best. This trip was meant to catch the pandas that aren’t easily accessible by Metro, and I had carefully plotted out driving directions to several of the pandas. As usual when using driving directions to navigate DC, we found the directions lacking, and had to scramble to figure out an alternate route. Andrew did a great job navigating, and did get us to 7 of the pandas. Sadly, we ended up missing 5 of them due to…um…road weirdness beyond our control.
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
Here’s my favorite from today’s trip:
One of the reasons for our trip to the National Zoo was to see the Pandamania Panda’s there and near the Woodley Park Metro. There were seven in all — we have just 22 pandas left to see after today (including the one that was stolen…we may never get to see that one).
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
My favorite one on todays trip is Will You Miss Us?, a panda depicting several endangered species:
  
Sadly, this one shows some vandalism — those white spots look like someone “keyed” it or something.
We got up early this morning to go down to the National Zoo and see the new tiger cubs. The cubs are only out in the habitat from 7:30 – 9:30 AM, so we had to be up by 6:30AM to get there and watch them for a while. It was well worth it. I have an album up for our trip, but here are a few of my favorite shots:
| Tiger Cub Tangle | Cubs and Mamma |
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| Tiger Cub | Keepers Getting the Cubs Inside |
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| Lounging Lions | |
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| Hidden Hippo | Panda Tumbly |
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Oh! One other thing. I’ve been to the zoo a couple times now, and I’ve been to the gift shop near the big cats and the one near the pandas. This was the first time I went to the one in the Visitor’s Center. Wow! This was a higher class of gift shop. It might not be the best one for the kids, but for the adults who want something a bit classier from their trip to the zoo, I strongly recommend visiting this gift shop above the others. They do still have most of the same kids-oriented toys, but in addition, there were two displays of lovely jewelry, a display of arty ceramic animals, and a large book section. I spent way too much there.
I’ve started feeling a bit restless and couped-up, so I dragged Andrew and me out on our bikes tonight. It was 93 degrees with 70% humidity and a 40% chance of severe scattered showers (though the sky looked clear). I didn’t care…I needed to get out.
We loaded the bikes on his car and drove up to the W&OD trail in Vienna and headed off toward the southeast. Considering neither of us has been biking for aobut a month, I think we did fairly well. We made it up the hill just past where the trail crosses the Beltway (though I did have to walk up about a quarter of the hill…on the other hand, that’s further up the hill than I’ve ever made it on the bike).
I made us stop on the Beltway bridge on the way back. My hope was to get a picture of a car or two passing under us, but only managed blank street. The traffic wasn’t dense enough, I guess. But I still think the picture looked kind of cool:
Total miles: 6.7
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