poke the bear.

After all of the feasting of Thanksgiving, and the impulsive shopping of Black Friday (who needs to buy Christmas presents? I got a dresser!) I was looking forward to a visit with Eric and Annie, who's baby bump is now impressive at 6 months. We went to the zoo, where an exhausted looking gorilla still hasn't given birth, and saw Golden-Lion Tamarins use a sleeping sloth bear as a hammock - right before they took food from the bear's mouth! Now, sloths are slow-moving creatures, but they do have some nasty looking claws, and I'd be loath to actually reach into the mouth of any creature that much bigger than me. But they did!

It was hilarious to watch. We also saw red pandas, always a hit, and Eric had to be dragged away from watching some copulating orangutans - yes, they do it all the time.

The rest of the visit was low-key, and involved a lot of discussion of baby names. Eric's favorite seems to be Limpkins Oakenstaff, which would involve a lot of beatings on the playground, but might be a character builder.

All-in-all, my holiday weekend was a raging success, and I had a great time. And of course, there's a picture of the bump: