Flatlands - Hangin' with Shawn, Day IV

Today  is bittersweet.  Our last full day in Omaha - but if I change my focus, we've got a whole day to spend with Shawn visiting and making memories.  Another day - yay!!  Today's sojourns took us to all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch.  Oh. My. Goodness.  It was phenomenal!!!  I've never been to a sushi restaurant where you can pick anything off the menu, have it made just for you (no conveyor belt), and do it over and over again until you just can't move.  We ordered three times, not including dessert.  Granted, each successive order got smaller and smaller, but we packed away a whole lot of fish!  We ate enough that I was starting to get just a little bit proficient with my chop sticks - a feat unto itself, that.

After so much food, it's good that our next destination was Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo.  We definitely needed to do some walking around - otherwise we might've succumbed to food comas.  It's been a long, long time since I've been to a zoo, and somehow the Anchorage zoo doesn't come remotely close in comparison.

I made it over the rope bridge - proof in the picture above.  Most likely because it was a short bridge and the ground wasn't that far below - meaning I would survive the fall, should a board snap beneath my foot or the rope fray beyond measure and give out, regardless of the vise-like death grip that I had.  I didn't even cry.  Yay!

 

As usual, most of these pictures are courtesy of Greg and his fancy-pants camera.  I do have a couple - and it's probably easier in this post to mention which are mine rather than which are his (since I got a few of his before he had a chance to mark them up).  Any pictures that have Greg in them (like the first one in the post) are obviously taken by me.  The other two that are mine are pictures of monkeys... go figure.  The monkeys in a tree (above) is mine, and I'll claim one other monkey picture below - you'll know it when you see it.  So nice to have the fancy-pants camera along on this journey (and Greg too, of course!) - there's no way I would've been able to get pictures of most of this stuff (and there are oh, so many more - I just picked a few to whet your appetite).

 

We spent about 3 hours at the zoo, and weren't able to see everything there.  Not only that, but there were several exhibits that were empty (either due to the cool Spring weather or remodel/construction work).  Definitely another reason to come back a little later in the season - not mid-summer, as I think we'd be miserable trying to adjust to the temperature differences, but maybe later spring or early fall.

My favorite exhibits were all the various monkeys.  Big ones, small ones, baby ones, orange ones, grey ones, multi-colored ones, lazy ones, pensive ones, tree-swinging ones, smart-ass ones...  Who doesn't like monkeys?!?  Lemur Island was one of the displays that was empty.  I was going to get a picture for James to show him what his home-away-from-home looks like, what with all his cousins swinging on the trees and all, but alas {smacks myself on the forehead with the back of my hand} it just wasn't meant to be.

That's the best shot I could get of the fellow above (yes, this picture is mine, not Greg's).  No matter where I moved, he arranged himself to put his hairy ass in the middle of my picture.  Alrighty then.  If that's the best I can do, who am I to argue with fate??  At least Greg was able to get some more thought-provoking poses from the various primates.

Shawn had to go to class, so after the zoo we dropped him off and headed to Jones Bros. Cupcakes to while away some time (and indulge in some cupcake decadence, of course!).  We just had to try the red velvet, sweet and salty, Guinness, tiramisu, and lemon cupcakes, as well as the coffee cake (not all at once, mind you! - we had a couple hours to kill before dinner).  After perusing the menu online, I see that they have a maple bacon cupcake they make on Fridays.  Damn!  Missed it by two days.  Maybe I can get Shawn to give it a try and send me a review...

For dinner, we went to The Pizza Gourmet Co.    They have good pizza, yummy garlic rolls, and tasty jalapeno cheese balls.  Shawn became the mayor there a few days after we left.  Being mayor has something to do with checking in online so many times, then once you've hit some pre-determined threshold you become mayor.  I wonder if you can be mayor of more than one location?  It'd be cool if he gets to wear a crown and eat at an elevated table in the middle of the room with flashy strobe lights and wait-staff dedicated just to him that refer to him as Your Mayor-ness, but I think they settle on some kind of discounts instead (or maybe even just bragging rights).  I'd be mayor of Olive Garden, if we had one.  Speaking of... that's one restaurant we didn't make it to on this journey.  Probably the first time ever we've traveled Outside, had an Olive Garden in the vicinity and didn't go there to eat.  Oh well.  We made it to lots of other tasty venues!

Another fabulous day with Shawn.  I don't want to think about tomorrow.