Last night we went to the Denver Zoo with the Kaes for what was billed to us as "A Picnic at the Zoo." The Denver Zoological Society apparently put it together and invited us, paying members, to pay a little more and see the animals in the evening. Yeah. Um, the animals were all on vacation, taking an evening rest before the night-time hunting began or were wearing cement camouflage. We enjoyed the time eating with the Kaes and walking with them around the zoo – the carousel was a blast – but the animal watching was pretty dull. We saw a seals, camels, flamingos, Giraffes through glass, zebras, buffallos, flamingos and lots of peafowls (peacocks to those who are gender indifferent) but no lions, tigers or bears. Oh, my.

The fun with the Kaes made up for the lack of critters, but I was sorely disappointed not to see the animals in full swing. Maybe the overcast weather put them in a foul mood and so the zoo keepers put them to rest for the evening early. Anyway, in the end we enjoyed a great time of fellowship.

After the zoo we had to go to my parents house because my Mom’s Windows ME machine (ME stands for Microsoft’s Empire) stopped displaying icons after I tried to show them Linux the night before. Doh! Turns out the Active Desktop (renamed to Inactive Desktop) was the problem. Once we turned that off the icons showed up and the (insert some derogetory word) E-Machine started showing the icons. *

In short the animals were missing and the icons were missing – but we made due.

* I should note that one of the funniest things Bryce Edwards ever said to me was that Active Desktop should have been named, “Horrible waste of system memory and machine killer.”