A Fun Winter Weekend Part 3 - More Yucky Candy at Jungle Jim's

As I've said before, no visit to Cincinnati is complete without a visit to Jungle Jim's. We had PLANNED to go ice skating at the outdoor rink at Fountain Square downtown. However, I woke up feeling badly and on the walk to church, we found it was dreadfully cold out. A windchill of negative 2! Our faces hurt by the time we walked one block to the church! So outdoor activity was a no-go for today.

I was in a rush after church to get a breakfast casserole in the oven, as Old E and Ann were coming from Columbus for a visit and said they required two meals and entertainment for the whole day. I sent my brother out to get some evaporated milk while we were at church. Apparently he went to the scary market, where the groceries are a front for the drug and gang activity that REALLY goes on. Needless to day, they did not carry evaporated milk. I sent him back out again--not to Friendly's Market this time!--to the real grocery store.

The casserole was ready mostly in time for the arrival of Old E and Ann. They berated us for chickening out about the ice skating. We played a little Wii, then were off to Jungle Jim's! Jungle Jim's has everything...I mean everything...that you could ever want as far as groceries, candy, beer, whatever. Their international section is the most fun, as you get to see lots of weird foods from all over the world. Each country has it's own isle or isles. The bathrooms look like a port-o-let from the outside, but open up to a large nice restroom. They are quite surprising to first timers! They recently won an award for the most interesting bathroom. They added a new feature between the 'port-o-lets'. We couldn't help but try it out!

Dang it all...I couldn't turn the other picture. Sorry. In the International Section, Old E decided to answer the customer service phone. Why, you may ask? Because it was ringing, of course!

I doubt the person on the other end was amused. The problem with Jungle Jim's is that it's huge, and so interesting, that everyone gets separated and lost from one another. Some of us were lost ALL the time. Just as soon as we'd find one of us, another of us would turn up missing. Regular E, Sara, Phillip and I waited an eternity after we checked out for Old E, Ann, Mom and Archie! I went to look for them, and stumbled upon this gem in the natural foods section. It's kind of dumb, but it made me laugh for some reason. I'm sure I got strange looks as I took a picture of breakfast cereal:


Who wouldn't love a bowl of cereal called Perky O's in the morning?

Finally, all together again, we made our way out and didn't even leave anyone behind! We were going to try to go bowling after that, but all the lanes were full and Old E and Ann were going to have to head back to Columbus anyway. So we went back home to the second of the required meals (spaghetti) and did some Wii Bowling and Boxing.

Of course, Mom had purchased more yucky candy at Jungle Jim's. I don't understand how she finds the grossest candy in the store to 'share' with the rest of us! I didn't even try it...I figured someone else could be the guinea pig and I'd taste it after it was deemed safe. It wasn't. Archie used some of the left overs in a craft project, but I threw the rest away. I got in trouble for that because Archie really wanted to give the yucky candy out to the meany trick-or-treators who smashed his pumpkin last Halloween. Some things are never forgotten! If my Mom visits a few more times, we'll have quite the yucky candy stash to share with the whole neighbourhood!

Here is Old E getting beaten by Archie in boxing:

Unfortunately for Regular E, it didn't snow once while they were visiting. The snow began about three hours after they left to return to Mobile on Monday afternoon! We had a nice storm and they missed it by a day! I called on his cell to tell him to turn around and come back! The really weird thing is that they were either going to come the weekend they did, or the weekend of the 22'nd. We had more snow than we had all season this weekend! And it looked so pretty falling! So of course, I called to rub it in that I was looking at huge fluffy fat flakes of snow falling and he chose the wrong weekend. He had something to say, but it wasn't very nice, so I'll just pretend he said, "Thank you for your phone call...please call again. I have enjoyed talking with you!"

But he didn't say that. He didn't say that at all!