Year of writing 287. The Natural History Museum.

10/11/12

Fatalists and conspiracy theorists were all over the news feeds this morning predicting impending doom today, because the numbers in the date are in order.  Look, there is a pattern in everything.  And yes, things will end some day, and begin again another.  And, somebody will predict it, but that will be one out of billions of predictions, rendering it as random as everything else. 

While we're on the topic of quasi-scientific predictions, I will talk about my trip with the kids to the Natural History Museum in LA.  Not free, but not expensive.  We started off by visiting the "spider garden"  which has recently replaced the "butterfly garden," to my surprise.  Imagine telling your four year old daughter she will be walking around in a beautiful garden surrounded by floating butterflies, flitting this way and that, and landing on your shoulder like a Disney movie, then having it first rain, rendering the garden a muddy cesspool, and second, be filled with huge spiders NOT BEHIND GLASS mind you, just webbing up everywhere like it's the thing to do.  Now, if you have my daughter, that's not a problem, because she's awesome and grabbed the spider card and went spider hunting like a bad ass Dora the Explorer.  But if she's not my daughter I'm sure it would have sucked.

Next we entered the museum proper, where we were greeted by the only thing I remember about this museum, the big mouth shark, preserved from 1930 in some kind of disgusting liquid.  It is scary to say the least to see this monster from the deep marinating for almost 90 years in formaldehyde or whatever, but Isla got up enough gumption to look right near its head, and Miles threw cheerios at it like a real G. 

The highlight of the museum, and their main talking point is the revamped dinosaur exhibit.  I do have to say that their collection of actual fossils is pretty amazing, the best being the trio of Tyrannosaurs (a juvenile, teen and adult) all set up in an indoor courtyard.  Isla walked around with a pad of paper and a pen, drawing pictures of all the skeletons. It was pretty amazing.  Miles threw Cheerios at them all. 

Toward the end of the day I couldn't feel my head, hands or feet, but that's probably because all I ate today was the crust from Isla's peanut butter sandwich and a pillow mint.  I will never learn.  Ever.