Surprise, of another kind..!!

That we all throw surprises is a given. Most likely, we try to make them pleasant if it is our kith and kin in question. Sometimes though, these "planned" surprises can land on you upside down, taking the form that you would least expect them to.

I was long contemplating a visit to the Lehigh Valley Zoo. After having talking through it with my friend for quite a while, we decided to step out to the zoo during the first weekend of March, when the weather conditions turned a tad fair. The weekend did come. And I looked up their website and got in a few tickets as well. We started the drive towards the zoo. 

The drive was an extremely amazing one. The whole valley was still snow capped and looked to be more of a skiing resort than like a place that could contain a zoo in it. My friend's kid was definitely going restless with the drive and he had a few reprimands from his mom and dad.

After we turned over into the venue through all the winding roads, we never anticipated that the surprise would be for us as opposed to being for the kid..! Yes, the zoo was closed for "snow removal" operations and they had put it up on their website (probably a tad later than when we would've got our tickets and started heading out..!)

Considering all the reprimanding that was on, it would definitely not be a wise thing to even let know a future Irwin in the making that the zoo was closed. Next game plan? Try to get to the Crayola experience at Easton. But thankfully, we didn't get into any surprises there, save the fact that it was in the heart of the Easton downtown area and parking was a tad of a hassle.

A screwed up appeal from a person who understood when screwing right matters..!!

"Oh no, its all screwed up!"

"Now, don't get it all screwed up, OK?"

I am never sure how many times I could've probably heard these kind of statements floating in the air.  With a long passage of time, guess the expletive context is, thankfully, almost non existent with these expressions and they have become age and gender neutral too.

Alright - getting around the head to touch my nose is something I pretty much do. So, let me stop it at that and come to the trigger of this whole write up at what would seem like an unearthly hour for a blog post. 

One of the pleasant and cherished things I have about the US is the "DIY" furniture. The cartoon strip of an IKEA job interview where someone is asked to "take their seat" and all they see is a host of components and tools lying on the floor to actually build one for themselves remains fresh on my mind, though not the source itself. Guess it was on one of those ever friendly groups like "Joke Zone", "Medical Humor" or "Wonderful Engineering" etc on our good old Facebook. 

So, what's the big deal of the "Do It Yourself" furniture? They have been around for quite a time now and is probably the most common place stuff? Yes, they are. The only part that I always get into difficulty is with this - though I love them a lot and keep getting a ton of them to embellish my living space as much as possible, I always manage to get things screwed up - and all the wrong way for the most part, with these "do it yourself" furniture..! 

Got a fine dining table set. Guess with all the efforts for about a few hours late in the night at 7 PM, I still landed up with a "floating" seat base for the chairs and a "floating" top for the table..! Yes, I am just plain unsure how to use the remaining screws and fix them up. And calling up the help desk to talk through to a machine for about half an hour before reaching some assistance is something I wouldn't want to do. How about the neatly laid out manuals? Don't they help? Yes they do, providing there is not much to be made out of using some commonsense as well...! And I wouldn't need to accentuate that commonsense is something uncommon. And I am uncommon ;)

Any ideas on how to fix these folks? I am thinking of hunting down a two ended suction cup from the nearest Home Depot / Lowes / whatever..! But I am still not sure if they work only between glass and metal or if they are good enough for a metal and wood combination as well.