Circus Afro

So William has been wanting to go to the circus ever since he saw the preview of Madagascar 3, which involved a Chris-Rock-voiced zebra dressed in clown make-up and singing about his circus afro. Today my ever-resourceful husband found two for one tickets to the Shriner Circus.

We crossed a field from the parking lot to an impressively large and colourful tent. I bought a program and got some clowns to autograph it.  A booth outside the entrance sold used action figures and stuffies.  William chose a batman and Jadzia a stuffed dog.  Adam bought the Hulk.  There was no Wonder Woman.

Once inside the sweaty tent we chose seats in the front row, partially obscured by a support pillar. The kids were "hungry" so Adam bought them a popcorn and a snowcone to share. Later, he also bought them some large annoying balloons which they swung in the faces of their fellow spectators.  Every treat left them wanting the next.   There were so many things that we didn't partake in, cotton candy, light up swords, Dora balloons, face painting, elephant rides.

The show itself was good.  It had all the things you'd expect and want from a circus: trapeze artists, clowns, various trained animals.  I enjoyed the guys who did flips through the air off this giant seesaw thing. Also the elephants. Jadzia had to leave to use the port-a-potty twice during the performance.

The allergy pill I took left me exhausted and the heat didn't help, nor the whining, but all in all I'd call this a successful family outing.

E is for Everything

Which means I can write about anything I want.  I understand that this is a cheat, but I figure I'm entitled to at least one cheat in a 26-post blogging marathon (though I thought I'd be using it for X or Q).  This whole thing kind of reminds me of a game I played in improv, where you do a scene and every line must start with the next letter of the alphabet.  So one person says: "Underwear makes me puke" and the next person says "Vomit somewhere else please" and the first person says "X Files is on soon, I don't want to leave the television." Something like that, starting from a random letter and working our way through the entire alphabet. It's as hard as it sounds.

I was going to write about elephants, which my daughter loves to draw, and which I recently saw at the Toronto Zoo despite the fact that Bob Barker wants to pay to fly them south. "Canadian Elephants, COME ON DOWN!" I have some cute pictures of the kids and elephants, but it's too much work to track them down right now, considering my computer is currently having a sick day.  It's been behaving screwy for a little while, start menu short-cuts leading to the wrong programs, programs disappearing entirely, general slowness and crankiness. Finally I enlisted my husband's help. He has backed up all my files and is in the process of reloading my programs. I know, how romantic, right?

I've gotten up to get my daughter snack foods three four times since beginning this blog post. I just went shopping so she knows what we have and wants to try everything under threat of tantrum. My patience is a bit thin today since she woke up at 6:30 and came into my bed. Wouldn't be so bad except that she first let the dog out of his crate and both of them jumped on me. If I'm going to be trampled by a large brown mutt and blond-haired monkey, I'd like it to be at least 7:30.

Anyway, since E is also for Enterprise, I'll leave you with a terribly cheesy, awesomely retro promo for my all-time favourite show: