decidedlyodd

My old friend Jeremy from college is up here in Seattle visiting with some other friends for a few days. Today, we all went over to the Woodland Park Zoo which I’d never visited before for a few hours. Unfortunately, the weather was not the greatest. In fact, the first snow of the season started while we were there. Fortunately, I wore my fancy new North Face jacket that I bought the other day. Just in time it looks like too. The coat I bought in Germany 2 winters ago was a good deal, but it’s not very stylish and isn’t really designed for wet winters (i.e., it’s not water proof).

We did spend a lot of time in the tropical rainforest house (a balmy 80F) though.

A lot of the animals (like the giraffes and zebra) had been taken in from the cold…

but for others the cold actually made it easier to observe them. In the gorilla enclosure there are heat lamps right next to the glass, which allowed us to see the gorillas very close up.

We ran out of time since the zoo closed early and we got there rather late, but one of my favorite things was seeing the hippos floating around in their pond while it was snowing.

Afterwards, we drove around a bit on the somewhat slushy streets of Seattle before ending up at Dilettante on Broadway for some hot chocolate and assorted sweets.

Unfortunately, my stomach was bothering me (as it has been for about a day or so now) and I decided to head home early. If I’m not feeling better tomorrow, I’m planning to go to the doctor. I can get around fine, but I just feel more comfortable lazing about the apartment.