geckos and fruit people
Dec. 16th, 2010 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSo yesterday was going to be a nice relaxing random vacation day.
"When do you want breakfast?" I asked.
"Mmm, around nineish."
Okay, so, wake up around quarter after eight, make tea, poke at the internet for a bit, and make pancakes. Easy enough, except for the unexpected lack of internet.
No problem, sez I. I'll just call Verizon whileuilos does the breakfast dishes, and we'll still be ready to go 'round ten or so. Then we can see the geckos, have lunch, see the fruit people, maybe go ice skating, have dinner, and head home tired and happy.
Forty-five minutes and three calls later, someone at Verizon tells me it's a problem with a line somewhere, and they'll have someone out to fix it "within twenty-four hours, usually." bleh. At this point if we try to get lunch after geckos we run the risk of being kicked out of the exhibit for imitating predators. So we bum around (with no internet) for awhile and then head on in, on a somewhat compressed schedule. But hey, there will be Zengo's for lunch, which makes up for many things.
Only there wasn't. I bundled up in my gigantic down parka and my Charlie Brown hat and my gloves that I always forget are useless until I'm actually wearing them, anduilos bundled up even more than that, and we braved the sub-freezing temps and 40 mph winds and caught the metro in. And when we came up out of the Chinatown metro station there was police tape blocking off all access to 7th street in front of the Verizon Center. "Um, can we get to that restaurant right around the corner?" I asked the large well-bundled-up policeman loitering nearby. "No."
Well, crap. Given the choice of picking a random possibly-not-very-good restaurant in Chinatown and walking several blocks south in sub-freezing weather to Teaism, we went with the tea. Which was a fine and warm choice (although it had the New Dish At Teaism Problem where I kept thinking "you know, this thai chicken curry is pretty good, but what i really wanted was a salmon bento box"). And there were fresh donuts on the way back to the metro, and then there were geckos.
O my, there were geckos. Bright green geckos and faded brown geckos and white geckos with orange spots, stick-thin geckos and fat round geckos and giant geckos with creepy eyes, hanging from the ceilings and scurrying over branches and (mostly) napping. Gecko tails and gecko feet and gecko eggs. Gecko feet, incidentally, are awesome all by themselves: they're covered in ultratiny hairs that stick to surfaces by molecular attraction. Geckos are amazing and adorable and I highly recommend getting over to the Nat'l Geographic Museum to see them before they leave.
After we pried ourselves away from the geckos we wandered down to the Nat'l Gallery to take in the Arcimboldo exhibition. It was... oddly subdued, was my main reaction. These are portraits composed of fruit, or fish, or books. Playful concepts, and yet somehow the lighting and atmosphere made it all feel very stern and solemn and almost creepy. Which, granted, some of them were. I would totally hang a print of Winter in my house. (The very large sculpture based on that painting was also impressive.)
And then we dined at Zengo, in the bar because someone had reserved the entire restaurant floor. The green papaya salad had a pleasant bite to it. Then I had an eggnog cupcake, and we walked to Metro Center and finally got to stop in at the cheeseshop. And now we have cheeses, and sparkling jasmine white tea, and a Xmas present for my father. And then we came home, where the internet had not yet returned, and collapsed from having had a very full day Off.
And the internet came back around eleven PM, and there is snow on the ground, and TRON Legacy opens tomorrow, and much is right with the world.
"When do you want breakfast?" I asked.
"Mmm, around nineish."
Okay, so, wake up around quarter after eight, make tea, poke at the internet for a bit, and make pancakes. Easy enough, except for the unexpected lack of internet.
No problem, sez I. I'll just call Verizon while
uilos does the breakfast dishes, and we'll still be ready to go 'round ten or so. Then we can see the geckos, have lunch, see the fruit people, maybe go ice skating, have dinner, and head home tired and happy.Forty-five minutes and three calls later, someone at Verizon tells me it's a problem with a line somewhere, and they'll have someone out to fix it "within twenty-four hours, usually." bleh. At this point if we try to get lunch after geckos we run the risk of being kicked out of the exhibit for imitating predators. So we bum around (with no internet) for awhile and then head on in, on a somewhat compressed schedule. But hey, there will be Zengo's for lunch, which makes up for many things.
Only there wasn't. I bundled up in my gigantic down parka and my Charlie Brown hat and my gloves that I always forget are useless until I'm actually wearing them, and
uilos bundled up even more than that, and we braved the sub-freezing temps and 40 mph winds and caught the metro in. And when we came up out of the Chinatown metro station there was police tape blocking off all access to 7th street in front of the Verizon Center. "Um, can we get to that restaurant right around the corner?" I asked the large well-bundled-up policeman loitering nearby. "No."Well, crap. Given the choice of picking a random possibly-not-very-good restaurant in Chinatown and walking several blocks south in sub-freezing weather to Teaism, we went with the tea. Which was a fine and warm choice (although it had the New Dish At Teaism Problem where I kept thinking "you know, this thai chicken curry is pretty good, but what i really wanted was a salmon bento box"). And there were fresh donuts on the way back to the metro, and then there were geckos.
O my, there were geckos. Bright green geckos and faded brown geckos and white geckos with orange spots, stick-thin geckos and fat round geckos and giant geckos with creepy eyes, hanging from the ceilings and scurrying over branches and (mostly) napping. Gecko tails and gecko feet and gecko eggs. Gecko feet, incidentally, are awesome all by themselves: they're covered in ultratiny hairs that stick to surfaces by molecular attraction. Geckos are amazing and adorable and I highly recommend getting over to the Nat'l Geographic Museum to see them before they leave.
After we pried ourselves away from the geckos we wandered down to the Nat'l Gallery to take in the Arcimboldo exhibition. It was... oddly subdued, was my main reaction. These are portraits composed of fruit, or fish, or books. Playful concepts, and yet somehow the lighting and atmosphere made it all feel very stern and solemn and almost creepy. Which, granted, some of them were. I would totally hang a print of Winter in my house. (The very large sculpture based on that painting was also impressive.)
And then we dined at Zengo, in the bar because someone had reserved the entire restaurant floor. The green papaya salad had a pleasant bite to it. Then I had an eggnog cupcake, and we walked to Metro Center and finally got to stop in at the cheeseshop. And now we have cheeses, and sparkling jasmine white tea, and a Xmas present for my father. And then we came home, where the internet had not yet returned, and collapsed from having had a very full day Off.
And the internet came back around eleven PM, and there is snow on the ground, and TRON Legacy opens tomorrow, and much is right with the world.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-17 04:16 pm (UTC)Old guy: "It's ridiculous how much movies cost these days! They weren't nearly this expensive when I was young!"
Young usher: "Yes, sir, but they're worth it. For instance, now they have sound."