"You sure this is the right blind voodoo lady who lives in the boat in the tree in the bayou?"

Now I apologize right off the bat for my absenteeism, but I will sincerely try... again... to be more regular with the posts.It has been quite awhile since my past post, and quite a lot has happened. Holly's parents came to visit for almost a week in April, and we enjoyed spending a lot of time with them. Fortunately, Holly was able to get quite a lot of time off for fun. I however, had just finished my break, so my time was slightly more limited.

One of the highlights of their stay was a trip to the City Museum, a famous attraction here in St. Louis. The City Museum is a hodgepodge mix of an aquarium, jungle-gym, art-and-crafts center, and reception center. The aquarium is actually more like a mini zoo with fun, exotic animals like the coati (from Brazil!) and chinchilla and armadillo (not so exotic; did you know that the armadillo is the only known animal model for leprosy?). The jungle-gym is made up of several old airplanes, playground towers, a school bus, bridges and many other things all hooked together via iron or steel slinky-like tunnels. Kids can climb over and under just about everything. I hear it's the 8th Wonder of the Not-Quite-So-Ancient World. It was build inside an old shoe factory. There is a huge spiral slide that used to be how factory workers got newly-boxed shoes from the 10th floor down to ground level for shipping. It is now a slide for people. Enough said. Just keep the knees down. Oh and the best part was that we got in FREE! My friend Tom has worked there for years and pulled some strings. The pictures are me in a diver suit, Holly and parents in the jungle-gym, the mid-air iron slinky, and 10-story spiral slide.


The one drawback was that while I was on by back squished between pieces of iron trying to wiggle through to another climbing area on the jungle gym, my camera dropped out of my pocket about 20 feet and hit the ground. Lights out... literally. It was a good camera and will be remembered.

"Left?! You said right!..."
"No I didn't."
"I distinctly remember right because that's the way I turned!"
"I have the GPS, I wouldn't have said right!"
(Us in one of the plane cockpits; Very similar to what happens in other modes of transportation)