Still alive

Still in D.C., hanging out with Cardgrrl. Today we went to her church, then to the National Zoo, which is only about a mile away from her place. We saw lions:



And red pandas:





Unfortunately, a lot of the best things were closed for one reason or another: elephants, pandas, seals, great apes, and others. But it was a nice walk anyway. (She takes me on walks every day. Walking for its own sake, with no particular destination--what a concept!)

We also went to a poker tournament in Manassas, Virginia, Saturday night. I got bumped out early on a bad beat. *sigh* But it's still a fun group to play with.

On the way home, we stopped for gas and I noticed this sign:



That's an apostrophe (or possibly a severely misplaced comma) after "beer." Very odd.

Cardgrrl has also been beating me at every game we play: Upwords, Set, Bananagrams, and an odd little thing called Scrabble Word Play Poker. But she also feeds me, gives me a place to sleep, gave me a beautiful sweater and some interesting books for Christmas, and is just generally much nicer to me than I deserve, so the losing isn't such a terrible thing. As you can see, just being around her makes me temporarily ungrumpy:



Five more days of this lovely break, then it's back to the casinos for me.