Giraffe!!!

Betsy has lived all around the world...Liberia, the Philippines, Nigeria, Indonesia, the UK. She has done all sorts of great things like visited remote villages in West Timor, gone on safari in South Africa, hung out with orangutans in Indonesia, and laid out on the beaches of Bali. But there is one thing that Betsy has always wanted to do, and it took her all this time and a trip down Interstate 81 to near Roanoke, Virginia to finally do it --- that is hand feed giraffes of course!!

In Natural Bridge, Virginia, there is a place called Virginia Safari Park. It is about 75 minutes from Charlottesville, just north of Roanoke right off of I-81. It costs $14 per adult, and there is some pretty neat stuff to do there. The main attraction is to buy animal feed from the front gate and drive through their 180 acre park. When you drive through the park there are animals EVERYWHERE! There are tons of different types of deer, moose, pot-bellied pigs, zebras, ostriches,

emus, camels, llamas, buffalo, and more. As you drive through you stop and hold buckets of feed out the window and the animals come right up to you and eat! In fact, sometimes they come all the way into your car (Betsy got surprised by a very hungry zebra).

After we drove around (it took at least 45 minutes, maybe longer), we parked the car and walked through the Safari Village. This is a walking tour that is especially well suited for the kiddies. There are goats, really big tortoises, monkeys, birds, and a warthog. The kids can hand feed some of the animals like the goats. But the main attraction is at the end of the walking tour, the giraffe feeding station. There are four giraffes, two parents and two babies, in a large field. You can stand up on a large platform about 15 feet in the air and if one of the giraffes comes over you can feed it. The problem is that the giraffes are perfectly content chewing on the grass in the field. We waited up on the stand for about 30 minutes, and finally "Katie" the giraffe came up to us and let us feed her some millet. By the way, Betsy thinks every giraffe is named Katie. She was a beautiful giraffe, and very shy, but she got up the courage to come up to us. Betsy hand fed her 3 times! We stood right next to her. I think she liked the attention because after she was done eating she stuck her head over the fence and looked at all the people in the park.

the train

We live right by the train tracks...

Yesterday's train took over 9 minutes to clear the tracks so I could drive to work...



9 minutes...

Charlie timed it.

Dear Bayley

Dear Bayley,

Recently you were at Old Dominion Animal Hospital and were given your rabies vaccination. There is a law in Virginia that requires your vet to notify the local Treasurer's Office whenever they vaccinate an animal.

At this time, in the records at City Hall, it does not appear that your owner has bought you a current dog tag. Dog tags are required on every dog more than four months of age and the tags are required to be purchased every year by the last day of January. If by chance you actually DO have a City of Charlottesville Dog License for 2009, please have your owner call (434)970-3157 and ask us to correct our records.

Please ask your owner to fill out the application form, send it to City Hall in the enclosed envelope, along with the appropriate fee, and we will mail a license to your home. If this is not done within 30 days, it will have to be reported to Animal Control that an unlicensed dog lives at your house.





Seriously....this is the letter we got in the mail the other day....addressed to Bayley Murry.

#1 - Bayley gets a name change before I do! Who knew he wasn't a Moats anymore...
#2 - Charlottesville is seriously on top of their game
#3 - Vienna is not...and neither is Newark, DE



Bayley has his first license for a whopping $4!

Charlottesville Tire

We bought our car last July, which means every July from now until it kicks the bucket we need to get a Virginia State inspection. In Northern VA the typical process is to get up really early in the morning and drive to a gas station who does inspections and get in the inspection line. It can take anywhere from 30min to 2 hours (depending on how long the line is), and I think I remember it costing about $40. I haven't observed this behavior in C'ville, so I decided to take another approach. First I walked over to the auto shop right near our house and the very friendly lady at the front counter said that they were very busy and I could have an appointment in a few days.

So then I drove a few more blocks down the road to Charlottesville Tire. They are located at 843 West Main St. in Charlottesville. I walked in not expecting to get an inspection. They appeared to be very busy, which was confirmed when I talked to the guy behind the counter. After talking to him for a short while he could squeeze me right then, which was the only time I could do it because Betsy had to take the car to work in an hour. The inspection took 10 minutes, and the whole operation they had going seemed to be running really tight. Also, I forget the guy's name who was behind the counter, but he was very nice.

This seems like a great place to take your car, and I will be recommending them to anybody who asks for a mechanic.

CK Nails and Spa

I love this place! I can't recommend it enough.

CK Nails is a little hard to find (it is behind the Blockbuster on 29 next to Barrack shopping center) but they are moving at the end of the month to the front of the building. One of the ladies at rockpaperscissors recommended I check it out. They are cheap ($32 for a mani and pedi) and so so sweet. The salon is clean and quiet. The lady who did my nails spent a long time really making sure she did a good job and I didn't feel like I was being pushed out of there in any kind of hurry.

These people really care about their jobs and the people that come in - so much so that while I was in there, 2 people came in just to say hi.

Love it!!!

The Bavarian Chef

The Bavarian Chef and my family are dear friends. My parents discovered the restaurant when my sister was an undergrad at UVA. The restaurant quickly became part of our routine - we visited every time we were on our way either to or from Charlottesville. If I'm not mistaken, we ate at the Bavarian Chef for Caroline's college graduation dinner.

The restaurant offers traditional German fare and a lot of it. Each table not only gets to order individual entrees, but a selection of the side dishes are then served family style. This might be my favorite part of the restaurant. Their whipped potatoes are awesome - lots of butter, some smoked bacon, deliciousness. There is a potato dumpling dish, creamed corn, green beans, whipped potatoes, spaetzle, carrots, zucchini, red cabbage - and if I remember correctly there are free refills on these.

The entrees are a little hard to pronouce but are fun to taste. Some of the dishes I have had are better than others. Most recently I tried the Wiener Schnitzel. I can't say that I loved it. It seemed a little too breaded and over cooked. Their roasted pepper soup with crab meat was great though! Their sausage entree is huge - 3 huge sausages on top of kraut.

Whatever you get, be prepared for a lot of food. And make sure to check out the boot of beer!

speeding tickets and 29

when i first came down to charlottesville to visit my sister at uva and until now, i have been warned about the cops on 29. fortunately for me, i haven't encountered them yet - well, not until this past weekend. mr. charlie was driving us up to northern virginia for the att national golf tournament and right around warrenton, the lights went on. we got pulled over for speeding while listening to barbara streisand - i guess she moved charlie a little too much. the ticket is $5 for each mile over the speed limit and then the additional processing fees. there is a court date set for august when we get back from our trip. there were cops everywhere this weekend. who knew it was such a prime weekend to catch traffic violators.

so...watch out for cops on 29. especially on big holiday weekends.

bayley is 5!

i was watching "regis and kelly" the other day and they had a dog specialist on. turns out dogs have a emotional maturity level of an 18 month old toddler. despite his emotional age, our munchkin turned 5! we felt a little guilty this year since we haven't been around for bayls' birthdays for the past couple of years. not like a dog needs a huge party, but we owed it to him to celebrate a little. we made him a mini burger and he had a couple pieces of popcorn. popcorn might be his favorite thing we drop on the floor. and he was such a trooper with that hat!

more planting

check out our new garden!

and check our green beans we planted earlier in the spring.

they were delicious - i only wish we had more.

Trivia Night at McGrady's

So a lot of my friends hang out at McGrady's every once and a while, but Betsy and I have never joined them. This past week we wanted to get together with some friends who had been out of town for awhile and we agreed we should go cheap (we students don't get paid in the summer), so we settled on McGrady's. To my pleasant surprise it also happened to be trivia night, so after eating 10 wings for $2.75 we had an hour and a half of slightly embarrassing trivia fun. (No one believed me that the frog is on the foot of a horse.) There was a good young crowd at the bar and outside on the porch and it seemed like a mix of students, alum, and town folk. All in all we had a really fun time for pretty cheap and we are planning on going back, although we would like to get a seat on the porch next time. I also discovered that they are the town Steelers bar, so I will most likely be there a few times in the fall.