Repressed Memmeries

St. Louis, Day 3 - The Lion, the Fitz and the Dinosaured Road

I think we knew when we woke up that we wanted to keep today a little more low-key than the last couple. While I was fortunate enough to wake up relatively ouch-free, the missus (who's been taking one for the team and sleeping with Jeannette - aka. "The Boston Sprawler") woke up a little stiff and sore, but a hot shower and a few Aleve later, she had the spring back in her step.

We grabbed brekkie downstairs again - not quite as good today with French toast "stix" - a disturbing food product, if ever there was one, it was adequate for fuelage and we headed off to the St. Louis Zoo. Again, we had to pay to park but admission was free unless you wanted to do, you know, stuff. So, we ponied up for the Safari (all-access) pass and for the special Dino-roarus exhibit they had going on in the back.

Taking a good bit of advice from the front gate clerk, we went immediately back to the dinosaurs. It was pretty nice, really; they had around 14-15 almost-full-sized animatronic replicas of the popular favorites:

Parasauralophus

Apatosaurus (aka. brontosaurus)

Triceratops

Dilophosaurus (aka. the spitting dino that got Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park):

And, of course, T-Rex:

There was a rough and tumbling 3-D movie afterwards, wherein we realized much later that Mrs. Repressed's cell phone had decided to stay behind for more viewings. (We did find it later, thankfully!)

From there, we just moved on through the various parts of the zoo, where, admittedly, we didn't see a whole lof of animals. But the grounds were beautifully kept and landscaped, and they had a lot of shows and side buildings. It rained a little bit, here and there, but the weather was quite cooperative otherwise, remaining cool and partly cloudy for the better part of the day.

Since it's late and I'm pretty darned tired, I'm just going to throw a couple of pictures up from the zoo itself:

There were a couple of statues dedicated to Marlon Perkins (he of "Wild Kingdom" fame) scattered throughout the zoo, but this one just made me... pause...

We caught the train to the front gate around 3 pm or so and navigated our way to the second important (and to the Boy, THE most important place): Fitz's Root Beer Bottling Company. There's actually a tasty bit of a restaurant attached to it, which was fortuitous becasue we were all pretty famished by that point in the day. Another nice surprise was that even though the food was very tasty, the service there was fantastic! Our waiter, Sam, was every bit working on the other end of the service spectrum that we had experienced the night before (and yes, we're still bitter about the crappy food and service at the Schneidhorst!). He was helpful, friendly and kept my ass floating in root beer!

Most importantly, Alex got his Root Beer Float fix in grand fashion:

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel to find that the hot tub had been fixed, the pool largely empty and a few hours of aquatic fun were just waiting to be had.

So, as we lounge here in our room on the last night of the Memmer Family Summer Mini Vacation, watching Mike Rowe shave an alpaca on Dirty Jobs, we look forward to wrapping things up tomorrow with the grand-daddy of all St. Louis tourist destinations: The Arch.

Oh, how I hope the chitlins don't find a way to break it....

St. Louis, Day 2: Down On The Farm With Ulysses, Anheuser/Busch, Wondrous WALL-E, And False German Advertising

I'd forgotten how sore this tired this ol Sta-Puft Marshmallow Body can get, and after neglecting to remember to take the usual vacation dose of Aleve last night, I awoke to the acute sensation of every muscle fiber of my being screaming the banshee howls of death when I tried to move. Yeee-ouch.

But, move eventually it did, for we had ambitions of having a day down on the farm. Grant's Farm, that is, which was a short drive from our hotel (taking a decidedly less circuitous route than yesterday's Deliverance-esque sojourn through the Missouri back country to Six Flags). We arrived in short order, paid the $10 parking fee... and from there, everything else on the farm, attraction-wise, was free of charge!

Plunked down in the middle of an otherwise normal suburb, Grant's Farm was originally given to President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, and he built a fine cabin there while he worked and tended the grounds. In fact, here's the actual cabin he built (sorry if it's a bit blurry - the tram we were on didn't seem interested in slowing down for Kodak moments!):

Along the way, we saw several types of wild animals, most of which had already figured out the tram route and had situated themselves about as far away as possible from we lowly tourists. One captive audience, however, were the fish; apparently, ol. U.S. Grant had a thing for Japanese koi, as there were several ponds like this filled with them:

As we sidled through the back 40 of the farm, the missus and I took great pleasure in the relaxed atmosphere and laid-back nature of this pastoral getaway. It wasn't too hot of a day, and there was a light breeze that kissed our faces, carrying the fresh bouquet of grasses, trees and wildflowers in its arms, wrapping that fresh earthy scent around us like a floral blanket.

After getting off the first stage of the trip, we found ourselves at the petting zoo and a recreated German outdoor square. We made some new friends along the way, of course:

And then we made our way over to the biergarten. Check out the care put into this replica of Bavarian life:

We had a little snack, some light nosh to tide us over, but the best part? Free beer! I kid you not - everyone 21 and over is entitled to two full-sized "samples" (aka a 20 oz cup) of beer, and you can choose from the whole Anheuser/Michelob/Bacardi family. I had an Amber Bock and the missus had a lighter, more summer-oriented brew called "Stout Head" or something (it's late, she's sleeping, and I'm sure she'll remind me in the morning). Yum-my! And did I mention the whole "free" part?

After that, we boarded the tram and rounded off the trip back to the main house. From there, we trundled on down to see the Clydedales. Damn. Them are some big-assed horses, and you really don't get a feel for the scale of these gentle beasts until you're standing right next to them. We actually got our picture taken with one of them, but you won't get to see it until I get home and scan it in. Until then, here's something to tide you over:

We left Grant's Farm happy and satisfied with our experience, went back to the hotel and crashed for a couple of hours before our next big thing on the agenda: WALL-E!

Folks, I gotta tell you: I don't know how Pixar keeps doing it. This is a wonderful movie, both in visuals and in its story-telling capacities. You'd never think that a movie about a little robot would pull at your heartstrings, but it does, kiddos. Plus, the thing that always seems to separate Pixar films from all the other animated films is the story behind the unparalled pictures.

Ultimately, this is a love story tucked away inside of the larger story about responsibility. Responsibility to ourselves, to each other and to the world around us. Having it, forgetting it and the consequences thereof, realization of it outside one's self and finally finding the courage to act upon it. It's not really a particularly preachy movie (I mean, when a movie has Fred Willard as the World CEO of Earth only's remaining supermega corporation B&N, which stands for Buy & Large - go on, say it out loud a couple of times - how ideological can it be, really?) 

It's fantastic. Go see it and take a lot of friends - you'll have a great time!

Now, as to that deceptive architecture... after the movie, we were all pretty hungee, ma, after after finding out that the Cheesecake Factory in the mall had a hour wait minimum, we set forth into the St. Louis suburbian countryside in search of something non-chainy, non-fast-foody. And so we searched. And searched. And searched some more. Thank goodness for (ironically) Ratatouille playing the back, otherwise we'd have had a 4-foot mutiny on our hands. The missus had looked up this restaurant, The Schneithorst, a German restaurant she'd been to as a kid. She had a rough idea of where it was located, and we finally found it. It really did look very authentic from the outside, the typical Bavarian-chalet-type architecture giving off big hints of the type of food you'd likely expect inside. Or, so we thought.

What we found instead was a mediocre-at-best watered-down namby-pamby menu with virtually NO German food at all anymore. In fact, I even asked if there was a different part of the restaurant that served the German food, to which our waitress - whom we saw very seldomly - informed us that the owners had downsized and removed most of the German dishes a few years back. What was left was a mish-mash of menus prepared to barely adequate standards of taste with no common theme or unique elements to distinguish this otherwise lovely building from a Bob Evans down the street. I tried one of the few remaning "German-inspired" sandwiches, braunschweiger with onion, lettuce & tomatoe on rye with homemade chips; the missus, the nightly special of ribs; the Boy, a cheeseburger; and the Princess, a hot dog.

My sandwich was blase' at best, lacking any real distinct flavor from the sausage, and the homechips were both cold and salt-free - MAJOR foul in my book. The chips weren't anywhere near flavorfull enough to stand alone and were practically begging for seasoning, but once a chip cools down, it's impossible to salt them again. Everyone else had similar experiences with their food. In all, it just didn't taste very good, but that didn't stop them from charging us a butt-load of cash - after tip, it was over $70.

It breaks my heart to see a restaurant with such potential be run in such a ramshackle, careless and joyless manner. They could be great - a "destination" - again if only they would put some care and attention back into what they were serving... and judging by the 3/4s empty restaurant we saw at 7 pm on a Saturday night, I don't think we were alone in that sentiment.

After stopping for ice cream to clean our palates (which were punctuated at the end by some surprise fireworks from up the street!), we came back to the hotel for a quick dip and soak. Naturally, the hot tub was filled with dank, smelly, lukewarm water, but the kids had fun in the pool. The front desk clerk already knew about the hot tub, but apparently no maintenance guy came to service it today.

Tomorrow: the Zoo and Root Beer for Everybody!

T-I-Double-Guh-Er!

As inspired by the Chieftess Chimpanzee over at Sack Full Of Monkeys, here are the results of my Pooh test:

Your result for The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test...

Tigger

And as they went, Tigger told Roo (who wanted to know) all about the things that Tiggers could do.

"Can they fly?" asked Roo.

"Yes," said Tigger, "they're very good flyers, Tiggers are. Strornry good flyers."

"Oo!" said Roo. "Can they fly as well as Owl?"

"Yes," said Tigger. "Only they don't want to."

"Why don't they want to?" well, they just don't like it somehow."

Roo couldn't understand this, because he thought it would be lovely to be able to fly, but Tigger said it was difficult to explain to anybody who wasn't a Tigger himself.

You scored as Tigger!

ABOUT TIGGER: Tigger is the newest addition to the Hundred Acre Wood, and he lives with Kanga and Roo, because Roo's strengthening medicine turned out to be the thing that Tiggers like best. Tigger is bouncy and confident -some of his friends think he is a little TOO bouncy and confident, but attempts to unbounce him tend to be fruitless.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are a positive and confident person. You feel capable of dealing with anything and everything, and funnily enough, you usually ARE. You don't worry about much, and you love to go out and find new adventures.

Your friends and family might sometimes be a little exasperated by your boundless enthusiasm. You don't like to admit your mistakes, and when you find yourself in over you head, you tend to bluff your way out of things. You would be surprised, however, at how happy the people around you would be if you would actually admit to a mistake. It would make you seem more human, somehow.

Take The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test at HelloQuizzy

St. Louis, Day 1: More Flags, More Fun!

Or, so goes the commercial.

We got off to a good start this morning, waking in a reasonable enough time to catch the free breakfast downstairs in the hotel's little refreshment area. It wasn't bad, really, especially for the price: cereals, various pastries and spreads, fruit, juices, hot drop biscuits and these tasty little eggs-cheese-ham-on-an-English-muffin treats.

One side note: the staff here at the hotel is exceptionally friendly and helpful, but there are some things over which they just have no control: the crappy water pressure in the shower & the distractingly chilly water shooting out of the butt jets in the hotel's hot tub. But, on the flip side, they did get us a cot for The Boy tonight, so that's definitely a notch in their favor.

Anyway, we hit the road not long polishing off our breaking of the fast and decided to take the, erm, "scenic" route to Six Flags (More Fun!). Little did we realize just how far off the beaten path our route would take us. What started off as this multi-lane highway somehow transmogrified into this winding, barely-one-lane road back through "Deliverance" country. There were some beee-yoouuutiful houses along the way, though, as it seems that the little stretch of wilderness has become the preferred locale for the St. Louis posh circuit.

But, get us to Six Flags it did. We found this morning that the park was running what on its face seems to be an unbeatable deal: for the price of a regular ticket ($34.95), you could use that ticket up to SIX times before the beginning of November.  That's right: if used fully, it makes your entrance price roughly $6 per visit. "How can you beat that?", we thought. And so we did. But, remember, if a deal seems too good to be true, it usually is. More on that in a sec.

We hadn't realized when we threw this little trip together over the last week that today was going to be one of the hottest days of the year so far. It topped out in the 90s today, and the air outside was close and steamy - sort of like braising, if you will. Bearing that in mind, we decided to hit up the rides first, get all hot and sweaty, then cool off in the pool during the heat of the afternoon.

I won't bore you with the mindless details of the rides, although I will give honorable mention to Tony Hawks Extreme Thingamajiggy, a rotating, spinning, dipping, bobbing and weaver roller-coaster-esque ride which I rode with both of the punkins. (In retrospect, 'twas Mommy that was the wise one to avoid that kind of trauma to one's sense of balance.)

Anywho, we saw some of the classic Warner Bros characters roaming the park grounds, practically begging for people to take pictures with them.

We realized that these are characters that most kids nowadays don't really know all that well. Think about it: when's the last time you saw a Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck classic cartoon anywhere on TV?

Oh, and there was the world's worst Wonder Woman impersonator. Anybody see what's wrong with this picture?

We moved on to the water park, which was pretty good, although the water in the wave pool was pretty damned cold! Uncomfortably enough so that we migrated over to the kids' pool until we got our bodies acclimated. And we were having a nice, cooling time, other than a questionable GI tract in some members of the family, for which they apparently had some good company elsewhere in the pool.

Yup, the thing that clinched it for us was when they kicked everybody out of the water because someone yerked their whole lunch in it. Sweeeeeeeeet!

We got dressed and sought out some viddles for din-din, ending up at a burger & ribs kind of place. (It completed the whole junk food circle started by lunch at Papa John's Pizza.)

But, remember that whole thing about a deal too good to be true. It was while we were marvelling at the righteous amount of cash we'd just blown on burgers & dogs (with non-refillable sodas? Seriously? Who does that anymore?) that we realized that the park wasn't losing money or doing us any favors with their "special deal"; they've got a captive audience who gets thirsty and hungry and wet and all they did was jack up their "everything else" costs through the stratosphere into low earth orbit.

Or, as one fellow in the bathroom put it towards the end of the day, "I'm surprised that they didn't just charge me a dollar for the paper towel."

Tomorrow: Grant's (as in Ulysses S. and later, Anheuser-Busch la familia) Farm & WALL-E!

We're Off To St. Louis!

It's that time of year again: the Memmer Family Summer Mini-Vacation!

This year's destination: St. Louis. It's only a couple of hours south of Bloomington, and there seems to be quite a bit to do. I type this from our hotel room inside the Hampton Inn in Chesterfield, which is just a hop, skip and a jump to the west of St. Louis. It's a nice enough hotel, secreted away off the highway in a lovely tree-filled grove. We've already hit up the pool and the strangely Royal Spa-ish hot tub (and by hot, I mean mildly warm - it was one of those precast fiberglass numbers, and I soon noticed the weird sensation of cold water blowing out of the ass-massaging jets, but I digress), and now we've settled down for the night.

Odd thing number two: there were no cots (aka. "Alex beds") available tonight, so somehow the Boy and I will have to wedge into a full-sized bed for a night. Yikes!

But, we've settled down for the night. Family Guy is on the TV currently - it's their "The Shining" episode, apparently - and we've got the alarm set at a reasonable enough time to get some free brekkie in our bellies before heading off to......

Six Flags Adventure and Water Park!

More to follow!

Viva La Resistance!

AKA. "This is what happens when Mommy is gone for a week."

Is it a bad sign when my children have built a barricade in the living room, made with overturned Playschool wagons and carts, Mr. Potatohead pieces, an X-Wing, pieces from the wall of a Disney Princess Castle set and various aforemention Princess dolls standing sentry on the wall, all the while my children keep humming showtunes from Les Mis in the background and whispering furtively?

This is what I get for letting them watch just a tiny glimpse of the South Park movie, I suppose.

The question is: am I Valjean or am I Javert? Who am I?

Hurry home, honey. We miss you! :)

Year One: Done

In what was largely forgotten by most of my coworkers, today marked the one-year anniversary of my stint in our Illinois office. One year. It seems like it's flown by, really - I can still remember my first day, walking into the huge complex of cubicles on our multi-floored structure, knowing only one or two of the people in the entire office, and knowing even less about my new responsibilities in this state.

In fact, when I got here, it seemed like they weren't quite sure what they were going to do with me, so I actually ended up working virtually from my previous office in Indiana for the better part of a month or so. Make no mistake about it - that got extremely tedious and boring pretty damn fast. But eventually, I began learning all about my new state and the significant changes between what I had been doing and what I was going to be doing.

Then came fall, and our Thanksgiving trip to DisneyWorld. The Holidays were upon us at that point, and it was a toboggan race from then through the second week of January. Then came the snows. Then it was Spring already and school was letting out. Summer began and lo and behold, it's 366 freaking days later!

I had lunch with one of my teammates today, and she asked me if I liked working in Illinois or Indiana better, now that I've got a year under my belt. Honestly, I still prefer my old state by far, but I know that there's a huge amount of bias behind that statement. Indiana was and forever shall be "home". It's where I spent all my life until just recently.

Even now, Illinois doesn't feel like home, and I'm not sure that it ever will. It seems like I will always feel like I'm playing the part of a transplant, an interloper, someone just passing through. It's not that the people here aren't nice; by and large, the are, even if they are some of the worst damned drivers I've ever seen! And we have some real, live, honest-to-goodness friends here, although we don't get to spend nearly as much time with them as we would like. It's just that our roots are planted deep into the heart of that Hoosier soil, even if one of our offshoots has managed to snake its way across state lines.

In the end, though, we've got each other. We're in a nice house in a nice, quiet neighborhood, and the kids attend an excellent school, and we can still afford the gas for trips back to the Fatherland on a fairly regular basis.

It may not be home, but it'll do, pig.

It'll do.