Rays v. Yankees

I mentioned in my last post that we spent the a LOT of time last weekend in the Bronx. We went to the zoo on Saturday, then on Sunday we made the trip back up there to see the Tampa Bay Rays play the Yankees.

We went to a Rays v. Yankees game in September, but that was the old Yankee Stadium, you see. This time around we got to see the new one. (Eric was more excited about this than I was, naturally. Another cup for his baseball stadium souvenir cup collection!) The new stadium is much nicer, in my opinion. It's much more open and, well, newer. Obviously. We did a little bit of walking around to check it out before finding our seats.

Eric in front of the new Yankee Stadium

Hard Rock Cafe at Yankee Stadium

Banners depicting the Yankee greats hang right inside the stadium

Retired numbers on the wall

This place serves steak sandwiches that are supposed to be amazing. We didn't try them this time around, but look at all that meat!

Handsome baseball-loving husband. Note the Rays hat! Yay! So much more attractive than a Yankees hat.

I don't have a Rays hat. I tried to wear Rays colors, though.

After a little walking around, we found our seats to watch the game. It was looking good for the Rays for a while - they were up 3-1 at the start of the 8th inning, but then it turned into a big mess involving loaded bases, a walked home run, an error...you get the picture. The Rays ended up losing 4-3. Boo. You know I have never seen them win in person? What's that about?

Regardless, it was still a nice day for a baseball game, so a pleasant afternoon. That beer and hot dog I enjoyed didn't hurt things, either.

Welcome to Yankee Stadium

The field

The scoreboards

Derek Jeter at bat

After the game we stopped for a photo-op before catching the train back to our beloved borough of Manhattan.

Say cheese!

What a fun weekend out and about! Hopefully this coming weekend will be enjoyable, too. We lucked out last weekend with the weather - it rained all week leading up to the weekend, and has been raining ever since. Hopefully the rain will clear out again by the time Saturday rolls around.

On a related note, do you have any idea how LOUD and powerful thunder sounds when the storm is right on top of you, and it is echoing through big buildings? We had our first NYC thunderstorm on Monday night, and it was incredible. There was no way to sleep through that. It was crazy.

Hope you all are having a nice week!

Gators Take On The Zoo

This weekend Eric and I spent a lot of time in the Bronx! On Saturday, we made the trek up there for a Gotham Gators (the NYC chapter of UF alumni) function at the Bronx Zoo. Really, it was just an excuse for us to get out to the zoo, and then we were able to have a buffet lunch with other fellow Gators. We had a great time! (WARNING: This post is going to contain a lot of pictures. You know me and the pictures - I love 'em.)

We really enjoyed the Zoo. It flowed well, and we were able to see everything in our day there. Our tickets we bought through the Gotham Gators also included admission to nearly all of the attractions that generally cost extra, like the Bug Carousel, Butterfly Garden, and Congo Gorilla Forest. We started our day off with the Bug Carousel (which was possibly Eric's first time on a carousel) and the Butterfly Garden (which freaked me out quite a bit - there were butterflies ALL OVER the place, and they scared me).

Me on the Bug Carousel (quite possibly the only time I haven't run screaming from a large insect)

Eric was not super thrilled with his first carousel experience.

Butterflies in the butterfly garden

Fancy

Now THIS butterfly I can handle.

Eric is a hungry, hungry caterpillar.

After braving the butterflies, we hit the Mouse House, where we saw some...um...intimate activity between two gerbils. One of the poor gerbils kept running away, but that other one just would not take "no" for an answer. "No" means NO, gerbil.

Then it was on to the giraffes. There was a baby giraffe, awww!

Baby giraffe!

We then headed to the Baboon Reserve, which is where our zoo visit took a very non-G-rated turn. The head baboon was...uh...happy to be on his little reserve, I guess. And there he was, posting up in front of the females, all "what's up, ladies?" in all his baboon glory. I have posted a censored photo below (this blog is family friendly, after all!), but if baboon genitalia does it for ya, you can see the uncensored image here. Needless to say, he drew quite a crowd.

Baboon and his harem

We had a similar experience with a zebra the last time we went to the zoo in D.C. Not sure what it is about us that brings out the joy in these animals. Maybe we're just lucky.

The other awesome part of the Baboon Reserve was THIS guy:

Whoa, guy! Calm it down!

He's making a crazy intense face at us! Doesn't he remind you of the Dramatic Gopher of YouTube fame?


After our Baboon fun, we stopped to visit the bears (both polar and grizzly) and then hit the reptile house before heading to lunch.

That's a funny way to sleep! Actually, my sister used to sleep like this when she was a baby. Ha.

Grizzly bear

Rattlesnakes

My notes tell me this is a Lace Monitor. He's totally mellow, man.

After lunch, we made our way to the other side of the zoo to check out everything over there. We saw an awesome camel first. He and Eric really bonded, I think.

Just posing for the camera

Next up was my favorite part of the day - the sea lions! They're so cool. The male was swimming around and barking his crazy head off.

Hi there, sea lion!

From there we went to the Birds of Prey Exhibit, which was Eric's favorite part. All the birds of prey were basically posing for us! They were really cool.

Golden Eagle. Does anyone else notice that his head is on backwards?

Bald Eagle

Eric and me by the Bald Eagle

King Vultures

After Birds of Prey we made our way through the Aquatic Bird House, which was fairly uninteresting because many of the birds in there were birds we can see at the beach in Florida. So, we weren't super impressed. I did enjoy the penguins, though, of course. Those we do NOT have in Florida.

This little guy was just floating along, enjoying the nice day

We then made our way over to Tiger Mountain, where we were just in time to see the tiger walk past before he went way in the back to lay down. Then it was on to the lions, where we were able to see another baby! Awww, I love all these animal babies.

Tiger

Little lion family! The baby is the one walking. He just got done pestering his mom, who is laying down.

After the lions, we hit the Congo Gorilla Forest, which was really pretty cool. There were gorillas everywhere! We got some great views.

Big ol' gorilla wandering around

These little baby gorillas ran right in front of us and then stopped to hug and kiss each other. The crowd erupted in a giant, "awwwww!"

Look at this guy! Doesn't he look fake?

By a waterfall in the gorilla forest

After the gorillas, we made our way down past the African Plains (I loved the African Wild Dogs!), then to the Wild Asia Monorail. This was a great way to end the day - a nice seated tour of the Asia exhibit. We were able to see lots of animals, while resting our feet! Perfect end to a long day.

On the monorail

Tiger, licking his chops

I can't for the life of me remember what these are. I tried to Google, but no luck. But, there were lots of them and they were cool.

And last but not least, a zoo staple: the elephants!

And that was our day at the zoo! Very fun. Glad we made the trip out there. We spent Sunday in the Bronx too, but more about that later!

A Little Funny for Friday

TGIF! I'm so glad the weekend is just about here. This has been a slightly stressful week, but I won't get into that right now. For now I just wanted to share a funny picture with you, so we can all have a little chuckle to start the weekend. This is a picture Eric and I took of a window display in a shop on W. 36th Street, right by the framing shop where I had my cross-stitch framed. We just found it too funny:


I know there's a lot of glare on it, so it might be hard to make out. Can you read the store name and description on the window? It says, "Invisiwig: Completely Undetectable Wigs." Okay. And can you see the wig monstrosities on these mannequins? Here's a closer view:


Holy giant blue and purple hair, batman! Now, I will give this "completely undetectable wig" store the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they don't really sell giant colorful wigs like this. I'm sure they really do sell completely undetectable wigs. But if so, why would you use these crazy ones as your window display? Maybe just to draw people's attention, I guess? I don't know. Whatever their thinking, it gets a big, fat FAIL from me. (On a related note, if you are not familiar with the FAIL blog, I recommend you check it out for a laugh. It's a great time-waster!)

On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Any fun plans? Eric and I had been hoping to go to the Rays/Yankees game tonight, but it is currently pouring rain. Here's hoping it clears out this afternoon (not likely) so we can still go. Then tomorrow, we're going to a Gotham Gators (NYC Gator alumni club) function at the Bronx Zoo, which should be fun!

Enjoy your weekend!

Museum and Membership

Eric and I had a really nice little weekend. The weather was gorgeous, once again. I am loving this weather right now - it's finally warming up, but we're definitely not into the dead heat of summer yet. I can wear sundresses and open the windows in our apartment. The sun is shining, but it's accompanied by a nice breeze. Aaahhh, finally. That winter was just too long.

Eric was very busy at work last week. He worked really late on Thursday night, and just had so many things going on at once at work. He had so much to do, he was actually having to turn down work, which is crazy. So, I was pretty excited that he didn't have to work on Saturday. We decided to make a really fun day of it.

We walked up to the Natural History Museum so we could enjoy the weather. It's over 20 blocks north of our apartment, so it was a little bit of a hike. We had not yet been to any of the NYC museums, so it was about time to cross one off the list. We had a really nice time wandering through and checking out all the exhibits.

Planets in the Hall of the Universe

Alaska Moose Display in the North American Mammals Exhibit

Alaska Brown Bear, fixin' to eat some fish

I think this is a jaguar, but I didn't make note of it for sure and I'm not super up on my big cats. So, forgive me if it's actually a leopard.

My favorite was probably the Hall of Ocean Life, which had a huge model blue whale suspended from the ceiling. And, of course, there were tons of other animals - manatees, giant squids, etc. They even had one of a huge whale eating a giant squid, but it was too dark to take a picture (to simulate the dark deep ocean, of course). Pretty cool display, though.

The big blue whale

A close second favorite exhibit was the dinosaurs. T-Rex is always a crowd pleaser! Especially because Eric and I always laugh at one picture of me from our wedding, as he is about to feed me cake - my arms are all hunched in, T-Rex style. So naturally, we had to do a re-creation at the museum!

So glad this pose is captured on film. Thank goodness the professional pics had a better angle, so I don't look so dinosaur-y in ALL of our cake pictures.

My 2009 recreation of my wedding cake pose, with my T-rex friend.

Mammoth

You didn't think I would let Eric get out of the Dinosaur Wing without joining in the posing fun, now did you?

After we left the museum, we stopped at the nearby Shake Shack for a late lunch. We had heard that Shake Shack has some of the best burgers in the city, and had been meaning to try it for some time, but the line was always too long! We decided to wait it out this time, and it was so good. Five Guys burgers are still my most favorite burgers (and even more so, I LOVE their fries), but these burgers were a good close second. I had a Shack Burger, fries, and an awesome "concrete" called the Upper West Slide. A "concrete" is a really thick milkshake. Actually, it's really closer to the consistency of a Wendy's Frosty. Then they mix in all kinds of yumminess with it. My Upper West Slide was vanilla custard mixed with strawberry puree, fresh banana, and shortbread cookies. It was delicious! Eric also tried a New York Dog and a vanilla shake. Mmm, mmm. We'll definitely be going back there again!

A tray of Shake Shack deliciousness. That's my concrete in the bottom left corner! Mmm, my mouth is watering.

After lunch we walked home and spent the night in watching the Cavs. And that's all I'll say about that, except that being a Cleveland fan can bring nothing but heartache. Oh, Cleveland.

Sunday was a big day for us. We became members of the church we have been going to, Holy Trinity Lutheran! It is our first time being adult members of a congregation, and it feels nice to have a church home after being so transient for so many years. It was an especially big step for Eric, who has been Catholic his whole life. As a lifelong Lutheran myself, I'm excited to have him join us!

The membership induction was very nice. One of the other new members was baptized first, then we all went to the altar and did an affirmation of baptism. After the service they had a potluck lunch, so we were able to mingle with members of the congregation as well as our fellow new members. Also, an added nice surprise: my dad and sister dedicated the church altar flowers to us, in honor of us finding a home church! I was so surprised when I saw their names (and ours!) in the bulletin for that. So sweet.

After church, Eric had to go to work, unfortunately. He only stayed a few hours then when he came home we took Achilles to the dog park. Once again, the weather was amazing! Then Eric made some of his to-die-for chicken parmigiana for dinner. Mmmm.

And that was our weekend! Hope you all enjoyed yours, as well.