I’ve had quite a weekend, all on the cheap.

First, I looked all over town for some cord winders to help manage some of the cables for the controllers on the PS2. I have some, but one broke and I need to replace it - the cords on this thing are unruly. I looked high and low and was about to pay $5 each for them at cableorganizer.com when I found them two for $2.50 at the APC Factory Outlet. I bought four pairs so I won’t have to go looking again for a while. I hope. Cost: $15 ($10 for the winders, $5 for shipping).

Then I went out looking for a new pair of slippers. I come home every day, put on my slippers, then wear the bastards all over - out to get the mail, watering the lawn, barbecuing… it’s almost like I just need a floppy, comfortable pair of shoes. What it ends up meaning is that whatever slippers I get, I need them to have a nice, durable sole but still be cushy inside.

Anyway, I’ve worn out the insides of the slippers I bought last year and the interior comes out in hanks when you pull your foot out. Unfortunately, slippers are a seasonal item and don’t normally come out in stores until late fall/early winter. It happened that Fred Meyer had them in stock, though, and I got some pretty rugged slippers for the bargain price of $16.

Finally, Sunday (today) was the Corillian Engineering department picnic at the Oregon Zoo. A great lunch, free all-day pass to the zoo, passes to the new HimalAmazon motion simulator ride (hella fun), and passes to a behind the scenes tour of the Alaska Tundra exhibit where we got to see how they take care of the grizzly bears, musk oxen, and wolves. Fun!

I love looking at the animals at the zoo. My favorites are the polar bears and the giraffes (well, they’re all my favorites, but I really like those two). Here’s the polar bear, hanging out. (Also available in a 1024 x 768 wallpaper size, if you really like it.)

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I remember when you used to be able to feed the giraffes at the zoo and ride elephants. They don’t let you do that anymore. I can see maybe not riding elephants, but come on - I wanna feed giraffes!

Something I hadn’t seen before - a giraffe bending over to get some food off the ground. Quite the contortions it has to do to get down there:

Wait a sec… let’s investigate that a little closer, shall we?

That’s what I thought.

So now I have a new mission next time I’m at the zoo: take a picture of the nuts on every animal I visit. Heh.

Oh, but to tie that all back into the “bargain weekend” theme: It cost me $3.50 to ride the light rail from Hillsboro out to the Zoo and back; and $2.50 for a zoo key (a plastic key that you can put into electronic boxes around the zoo that tell you things about the animals - Jenn and I have a bunch of different ones and get a new one each time we go). Total: $6.

Thus, for all the cool stuff I got and the fun I had this weekend, it only ended up costing a total of $37, which is a pretty cheap weekend if you really think about it. I’m stoked.