OMFG I Am On the Internet for Today!

I come back from the land of little to no internet. But just for today. Please, do not weep any more. Someday soon I will have internet all the time. And that will be good!

So, as some of you might know, XV Bones stopped by this lovely region of Ohio in order to meet me, and Jeremy once he was peer pressured into showing up, too. We went to the Cincinnati Zoo and got massively lost which was not ENTIRELY my fault. I'll go into further detail in a second, although Jeremy was the one who was the most traumatically scarred by the incident, so he could probably tell it better. I was simply a bit aggravated. But then, after a little over 24 hours, XV was on his way to Arizona again because he couldn't stand delaying any longer.

So what is XV like in person? I will tell you. Well, I'll try. He's pretty much exactly like he is in his articles, only he is REALLY INSANELY POLITE. I wasn't really expecting that. For example, when we were at the Zoo, in the area for the children to pet farm animals, and there were literally three thousand children aged 0 to 4 running around like horrible nasty fleshy roaches that carry sugar germs, and I was on the edge of freaking out and just starting kicking everything that was knee height, a small child or its grandmother dropped a water bottle directly in our path. XV immediately stooped to pick it up and returned it to the lady with a smile and a pleasant "you are welcome, have a perfectly lovely day, you wonderful human beings." I think that I, on the other hand, would have just kicked it out of my way and continued walking, or I would have just coldly stepped over it and given both the old woman and infant a look of contempt for even being there in my sight and inconveniencing me by making me adjust my step. I'm not usually so mean, but all of those screaming, shrieking children were really making me really really tense and angry.

So yes. Paragraph break. XV is polite and thinner than he looks in photos. Granted, most photos I had seen of him had him dressed in large bulky costumes so that he looked like a banana or a tissue box, but I was still somewhat surprised that he is very thin indeed.

Besides that, XV is exactly how anyone would expect.

We went to the Zoo. It was the first OMGJ Field Trip, and coincidentally, the first time more than two writers of this site have assembled in Public. The Zoo was great and fun and exhausting as it always is. XV nearly wet himself when he saw the Bullet Ant Display and Jeremy seemed to continually say, in quiet, monotone ways, things like "Oh shit." And "Oh my god." And "Oh god, I think I'm going to throw up" when he saw strange and exotic animals.

The most enjoyable part was getting to the Zoo and trying to get home afterward. You see, I think even if I grew up IN Cincinnati, I still would be mostly lost when I drove through it. But I DIDN'T grow up in Cincinnati, and I also don't drive. But I didn't let that phase me, or Jeremy or XV, and I set off with an optimistic spring in my step and a really really poor map of Cincinnati that was supplied by a very large map of the entire state of Ohio. This of course means that the map showed all of the Interstate Highways, and about 5 actual streets. But the Zoo was marked by a red dot near a few streets I figured that we'd find somehow. And we DID find it, after we went through Mt. Adams, which is an extremely hilly, extremely narrow part of Cincinnati that I can never, EVER find when I am trying to get there. And where Jeremy nearly fell apart, because as we all know, he prefers straight, flat roads. And this is the complete opposite of that. Anyway, we eventually found signs that pointed us to the Zoo and we were glad.

When we left, however, I realized that we couldn't follow signs that pointed to my house. This is when the real fun began.

It was around rush hour, of course, so there were a thousand crazy motorists surrounding us at all times. We finally found Vine Street, which shows up on the map a little, and I said "Take this, for it heads to the downtown area." And it did eventually. After Jeremy sat nervously in one of the local ghetto areas, for which Cincinnati is famous. Our chili and our ghettos are things of legend. Both yummy and splendid in their own ways.

Unfortunately, Cincinnati is under construction lately, which I was not aware of, so as we made our way to the street I knew to take which would take us to an area I know very well, I was delighted to find that it was blocked by a huge ROAD CLOSED sign. I was SUPER-delighted to find, also, that that was apparently the LAST turn you can make in Cincinnati. Because after we were forced to go straight instead of turning left, we managed to go straight for about sixteen miles and we finally veered off onto a road I'd never heard of because we were now on the West Side of town, which I have been in like twice, and was always completely completely lost, but with a person who was from there, so they weren't lost, so I failed to bother to pay attention.

None of the street names were familiar. We blazed through this random stop sign. Jeremy thought we were running from the ghetto, but actually we were just running to another one. So eventually we were able to turn around, go back the 50 miles we came, and somehow, we made it to a highway out of there. I can't even remember what we did. Little did they know that I was deeply concerned for us all, because Cincinnati is a frightening place to be lost in, simply because it is a complicated little asphalt knot, and I was visualizing being lost in it for 14 days at the very least. But I was able to somehow give off the impression that I was confident and knew exactly how to get home. The fools!

However, we DID get home. And we had a dinner my mom made for us which was delicious. Then we were really tired and went to bed. Well, I managed to stay awake until nearly 5am. Then they got up at 8:30 am and left. And I went back to sleep. To dream, strangely enough, of rescuing kittens.

Awww.