In a somewhat atypical turn of events, I actually got out this weekend to do some interesting things…

With the girls planning to take in the Richmond Ballet studio performance Saturday afternoon, and not feeling like sitting around all afternoon, Andrew and I took a little drive to the Metro Richmond Zoo around mid-day. The boy had never been there before (I’d been there once as a chaperone for Mary’s school field trip last year), and we had fun wandering around the smallish establishment, checking out the burmese pythons, feeding the giraffes, and watching the antics of Kenzie, the five year old orphan Chimpanzee.

The one sore spot was the absence of the zoo’s flock of Jackass African penguins (I guess they’d rather not offend the sensitive virgin ears of Richmonders); for whom it was apparently too cold. They spent the day, as far as we can tell, hiding in their climate-controlled hut.

Andrew was not amused by this. He was, however, greatly amused by the pooping bat in the nocturnal animal building.

Sunday, after the usual churchy stuff, Mary and I ventured over to the West End of Richmond to visit the Fall 2007 Virginia Comic Con. I’ve narrowly missed visiting this small con for several years now, but the stars lined up this time, and admission was only three bucks.

Apparently few things make comic dealers happier than letting an enthusiastic eight year old girl go diving through the fifty-cent boxes searching for new things to read; in fact, most of them will throw in a few free books! Mary had a great time looking through their wares and recognizing the obscure D-list characters on each cover. Yes, my kid gets excited to see vintage books starring the likes of Tigra and Firestar. She was the hit of the show.

We spent a couple of hours and about twenty bucks, and came home with a nice stack of old She-Hulk, Spider-Woman, Avengers West Coast, and Catwoman comics to browse. I also found a bagged-and-boarded mint condition copy of NFL Superpro #1 for fifty cents – not that it’s worth even that much, but it is, possibly, one of the worst comics ever published, and I just couldn’t pass that up. I’d do a review, but I’d never top the mighty Dave Campbell’s effort; so bad, it’s good.

Next time, we’ll definitely have one of the artists do up a commission sketch for her; it’ll take her until the next show to decide which character she’d like done.