On Tuesday I took the day off work to spend with [Abigail->]. We started the festivities at Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, a groovy drive-through zoo, where we got to feed a variety of deer, buffalo, zebras, llamas, sheep, antelope, goats, etc. from the window of our car. The highlight for Abby was when a zebra started chewing on the top of her door, leaving a great puddle of zebra slobber behind. Helpful hint: you get to spend more time with the animals if you drive a car without enough coolant, as you’ll have to pull off to the side and turn off the engine regularly to keep from overheating.

We went on from there to Chuck E. Cheese — the very one, in fact, that I used to go to as a kid, and to which we kidnapped [Chris->] for his 17th birthday. (Aside: We handcuffed and blindfolded him and drove around in circles along the way, and yet he still guessed our destination. Obviously the brain structures which are responsible for figuring out how to get from point A to point B and which I lack were given to him instead.) I don’t remember if this is standard for pizzas there, but ours was a hyper-garlicky affair that I quite enjoyed.

After pizza, we moved on to the Riverwalk, where we took the narrated river cruise through the downtown area. Having grown up in San Antonio, the Riverwalk is one of my favorite places to go without any particular goal in mind. It’s always lovely and fun to wander around exploring. On this trip, we had the added pleasure of running into [Ross->]’s mother at her gift shop. We stayed and visited for about an hour, having a great conversation between interruptions from people wanting to buy lottery tickets and other items. She was very kind to Abigail, and regaled her with a few nifty items from the shop to take home with her. (One of which, a small star pendent with flashing red and blue lights, quickly lost favor with me when Abigail discovered that it would give Daddy quite a start to hold it up in the rear-view mirror.)

Finally, we went over to Barry’s for Siegfried, the third opera in the ring cycle. I wasn’t sure how Abby would do with something that long, but with me whispering paraphrases of the text in her ear, she loved it, and said she wanted to come back for Götterdämmerung .