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I was startled to see Artemis in the laundry basket on the bed when I came back upstairs after lunch. I wasn’t startled because she was in the basket — that’s perfectly natural for her — it’s just that she had been in the other basket all morning.
Then I saw what the problem was…
As is becoming our Thanksgiving Day tradition, Andrew and I spent the day down at the Smithsonian. We started at the National Air and Space Museum, with hopes of seeing Magnificent Desolation, the moon-IMAX movie; however, we were too late for the first showing, so we moved on.
From there, we stopped at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, which neither of us had walked through before.
On the way to our next stop, we took a long-cut by the carousel so I could snap a few pictures.
Next we went to the Natural History Museum to check out the Columbian Gold exhibit.
Then we topped off the day at the World War II Memorial
When we got home, Andrew cooked up a Thanksgiving feast for us, and we had a quiet evening at home. All-in-all, a great day.
All of my pictures for the day are in my Flickr photo album.
Despite tired legs from walking all around Cambridge yesterday, Andrew and I headed off on foot this morning across the Charles River and into Boston. Our first goal was Quincy Market, and from there we went to the New England Aquarium.
At the aquarium we decided to take in an IMAX show, too – Sharks 3D. I’ve been going to IMAX shows since I was in third grade. My family bought and maintained a membership to the Minnesota Science Museum from that time, so that we saw every IMAX film that came through the museum. Twenty years ago, IMAX films were few (at one time, our museum had already shown something like 20 of the available 25 films). Even 10 years ago, there weren’t that many IMAX films, and they were still generally educational. Sure, the filmmakers would use the unique medium to its fullest – zooming in on a landscape, following beavers through a lake into their den – but the films largely told a documentary-like story. What I’ve noticed lately, though, is that the IMAX films, while still marginally educational, focus more on just showing pretty pictures than on telling a good, consistent story. Sharks exemplifies this new trend. We got lots of cool footage of sharks, as a friendly sea turtle gave a tour of his neighbors. The turtle started out by telling us that he wanted to show us that sharks aren’t just mindless killers in the sea, but then when we saw the footage of the great white shark the music might as well have been the Emperor’s theme from Star Wars.
< getting off the soapbox >
From the aquarium, we grabbed a quick lunch at Qunicy Market, and then walked to the old City Hall and meandered through two of the old burying grounds.
Another tiring day with lots and lots of walking, but also a lot of fun.
By the way, be sure to check out Andrew’s pictures, too – Andrew’s Cambridge/Boston Flickr Set
With the conference behind me, Andrew and I have a full weekend to play in Boston and Cambridge. Today we walked to Harvard to check out the Natural History Museum (and Peabody Musuem, which are both in the same builing). We walked through campus to get to the museums (that’s Memorial Hall in the picture – Felicia’s there, too, if you look very closely).
The Natural History Museum had a nice collection of minerals and the requisite room of stuffed animals and skeletons. There was also a room full of glass flower models. A fun surprise was the Day of the Dead displays in the Peabody Museum.
After that we walked to the MIT Museum. There was a fun exhibit of kinetic sculptures by Arthur Ganson (very hard to get a good picture of, though, given that the museum doesn’t allow flash photography). There was also an exhibit on Harold Edgerton on his work creating pictures of fast processes (like the milk drop pictures, and pictures of cats lapping water, etc.). Definately a fun museum for the nerds in the family.
I’ll post all my pictures later – I’ve got some of them up on my Flickr “Boston Pics” set
We went to the conference banquet last night, held at the Boston Museum of Science. It was pretty cool, because we had the museum to ourselves, so we could really see most of the exhibits with a minimum of children (the local participants brought their children, but there weren’t too many of them). We also got to go through the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit. I’ve made a Boston Pics set on Flickr. Here are a couple of my favorites:
I have a great view from my hotel room – here’s the Boston skyline this evening:
I hope everyone had a great Halloween. We had a good one. There were about 67 trick-or-treaters at our house. This year I had 43 books to give out, and they were a big hit. I had 6 left over (unlike last year, when I ran out by 7:30 PM), so I now know that next year I should keep it to about 35 books (though it’s not a problem to have left-overs…I’ll just save them for next year).
Surprisingly I only remember one Darth Vader this year. I think the best costume I saw was early in the evening, a little girl was dressed as a pirate, complete with hat and boots. Her baby brother was also in a pirate outfit.
Here are the pumpkins I carved this year:
And I gussied up the house a little:
Felicia and Patrick watched the trick-or-treaters:
Me? I dressed up as a saloon girl:
Have I mentioned that I love Halloween? Yes? Well, I’m going to say it again. I LOVE Halloween!!
Everyone in the house gets into it — that’s Felicia and Patrick. Felicia has a witch costume, and after Patrick saw it, he wanted to get into the act, so I gave him my cat ears so he could be her familiar.
And I carved my pumpkins today – I’ll post pictures tomorrow with the candles burning.
Have I mentioned that I love Halloween?? And, I have a collection of metal cookie cutters? Put the two together, and this is what you end up with:
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