Shaw's Garden, St. Louis

Well, my first visit to St. Louis must have gone well because the next time my boyfriend went home to see his folks, I got invited to tag along. This time, on top of some great family festivities, we also went to the beautiful Shaw's Garden and got some cool photos. In addition to just being a fabulous botanical garden, Shaw's Garden (or The Missouri Botanical Gardens, officially) is exceptional because it is divided into several small gardens, all with very different atmospheres, as you can see from the photos below.







The Japanese Garden -- much larger and more open than most gardens in Japan, but still, they captured the spirit well.











The sundial's off from the watch by an hour because of DST, but otherwise, remarkably accurate.



One of about a half-dozen couples we saw either getting married or having their photos done in the gardens that day.

Meeting Famous People

If you've read this blog before, you've probably come across a story or two about my near-encounters with famous people. Like my knack for missing wild animals in their natural habitat (refer to the Moose Sighting Expedition of '07), I also have a knack for not seeing celebrities even when they are right under my nose. Once, in Rome, I was standing in St. Peter's, gazing transfixedly on Michelangelo's Pieta and did not at all notice that Tom Hanks was standing directly beside me also gazing at the same. It was only after he walked away and was lost in the crowd that my friends informed me thus, and sure enough, when we got back home the following week People Magazine's front page story was: "Hanks and Springstein Visit Rome" with a photo of the two of them grinning in front of the basilica.

Similarly, when I was in Hawai'i two years ago, I was underwater playing with the dolphins when Don Cheadle paddled up in a canoe, hopped in our boat, and threw back a few brewskies with the boys. By the time I got back on board, he was a little speck on the other side of the bay.

Well, in the process of some writing projects of my own, I decided to re-read The End, the thirteenth and final book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which reminded me that I do, in fact, have one good story about actually meeting a famous person. I met Lemony Snicket. I met him at his book-signing, so it wasn't at all by chance (which I guess equates it to seeing a moose in a zoo), but the story is funny anyway.

My sister and I had went to the book-signing, which was on Halloween, 2006. The line to get to the author was massive, so in order to move people through quickly, they gave everyone a sticky note. On it, you were supposed to write your name so that he wouldn't have to ask "How do you spell that?" seven hundred times. Now in the Series, there's sort of a running gag about initials -- lots of notes and letters and journals and such are just signed with the character's initials so you can't really be sure who wrote what or knows what, etc. So in an attempt to be clever, I wrote "LG" on my sticky note.

When I got to the front of the line, I was all ready for him to appreciate my little joke, but instead the conversation went like this:

LS: "What's this? 'LG'? Don't you want me to know what your name is?"

me: "Wha? No, I..."

LS: *sigh* "No, no, you're right. It's better this way. Because if I found out your name, we'd get to talking, and soon I'd ask for your number, and I'd call you up and take you out for a coffee, and I'd be witty and you'd be charming and it would all go really wonderfully, but eight months from now we'd be just like every other couple arguing down on the street, so yes, it's better like this."

And in my book he wrote: "To LG, 31.X.06, with A.D.R."*

Nice.





*"A.D.R." in case you're not a Lemony Snicket person, is "all due respect," the way he ends all his notes to the reader.

Update: The Fam

Just some photos of the little ones -- they're growing so fast!



My sister-in-law loves being a mommy :)



Aaron meeting cousin Mady for the first time. He wonders when she'll be big enough to play ball.







One of Aaron's new favorite things is playing with Grandpa in the workshop.



Grandpa shows him all kinds of cool things, like magnifying glasses.







Hello, Blue Eyes! What a pretty little girl my niece is!







And who's her favorite auntie? I am, of course.

St. Louis "Marathon" Weekend

Here are a few more photos from my first weekend in St. Louis...



We went to the Arch, of course, and I got a history lesson on its construction as well as a few cool photos.



Touching the Arch is supposed to be good luck, so we gave it a whirl.





I also got to sample some St. Louie cuisine, including the famous Imo's pizza and toasted ravioli! Yum!



Art Hill and the museum in Forest Park on a gloriously sunny day.





This was the first time I'd been to one of Stretch's races, but I think grabbing a cup of coffee while I wait for him to get to the finish line will work nicely as my regular race day routine.

St. Louis City Museum: Recapture Your Childhood for Just $12

I was a scrawny, decidedly unathletic wisp of a child -- all sharp angles and toothpicky limbs. No matter what sport the other kids were playing, my attempts to join in typically ended quickly and unceremoniously with a nose bleed or an asthma attack. Just watching a game of dodgeball gave me bruises.

Despite my somewhat fragile constitution, I eventually discovered that I was reasonably coordinated and found a blissful sanctuary on the playground: the monkey bars.

Twenty years later, I'm still avoiding dodgeball games, but sadly, my friends and I have outgrown the monkey bars...

Until this weekend.




As part of our move from "dating" to "seriously dating," Stretch took me to St. Louis to "watch him run in the St. Louis Marathon" (read: "meet his parents and tour his hometown"). On my little tour, he took me to St. Louis City Museum, which is basically a ginormous indoor/outdoor jungle gym for grown-ups.

Here are some photos, but you really need to see this place to believe it.







Stretch squeezing through a giant slinky to get from one floor to the next. Being skinny and flexible has never been more convenient.



Slides!! Woo hoo!!!



Outside, the giant slinky madness continues as we hover three stories above the ground with only some twisted re-bar keeping us from a grisly death.











Stretch likes the chains in the castle, though it occurs to me that this might be the most dangerous part of the whole ordeal.



Luckily, neither of us fell down this staircase, and we left City Museum feeling fulling twenty years younger.