The Duke

It is a rainy Sunday night in central Iowa. The opening-night game between the Nationals and the Braves is over on ESPN HD(let's hear it for the new cable box.) We had a nice, mellow weekend. yesterday morning, Asher and I played soccer in the backyard.

In the afternoon, we went to the zoo! Asher absolutely loved it! A lot of the animals were not out yet, including the new temporary resident elephants. We did see the lions and the tigers. The male tiger is incredibly agressive. It is a different kind of zoo experience to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the indoor part of the exhibit and having that thing run and jump full-speed at the glass with claws and teeth out, just inches away. Sarah says the male has to stay inside most of the time because he is too agressive to be outside with the female most of the time. The wallabies and emus were also outside. You can walk right through their enclosure, which is kind of cool. Two of the wallabies had babies in their pouches. One of the babies was huge! It's legs and tail would stick out, then it would do a sumersault, the head would come out, and it would eat some grass. Asher loved that, and also loved feeding the koi in the pond. He had a blast! We had the zoo almost to ourselves, even though the weather was pretty nice.

Today we went to church, then went to Costco and bought a cool new composter! (pretty exciting, I know). It is a 175 gallon, Israeli-made, plastic bin that keeps yard waste warm and aerated so it can composte without stinking up the neighborhood. If you are having a tough time imagining how much 175 gallons of yard waste is, so anm I. It is a lot. After assembling the composter, I dumped all the dead grass and leaves from some yard work Asher and I did yesterday. We are going to need a lot more waste! Also this afternoon, I replaced the headlight switch in the pickup. The headlights had developed a delightful new habit of flashing on and off at night. This was not only dangerous, it also had the effect of making other drivers think they were being chased by a road-raging maniac. Anyway, it was an easy fix.

In the late afternoon, Asher still had not had a nap. We decided to go for a drive in the country. We ended up driving to Winterset, and decided to find the Bridges of Madison County. We went and found one of the bridges last fall, but I didn't see the movie until a few weeks ago. Today, we went to the Hogsback, Holliwell, and Cedar bridges. They were very cool, especially the Holliwell. The Cedar bridge is actually open to drive across, which is fun. We ate dinner tonight at a brand new Subway in Winterset, a couple blocks away from John Wayne's birthplace (given name: Marion Morrison). I'm not sure if the Duke would eat at Subway. It was a fun mini-roadtrip.