One of the blogs I read is about fitness technology, and the writer often posts about 5 fun things he did during the weekend. I decided to do the same, since Wendy and I just had a fun and busy 3-day weekend.
1. Back to the Field Musuem
On Friday we went back to the Field Museum in Chicago to see all the things we didn't have time for during our last visit. We saw some exhibits I'd forgotten all about, and some that I'm pretty sure we had never seen before. I was a little disappointed the Galapagos 3-D movie was no longer playing, as I was hoping to see it. But there were plenty of other things that kept us busy for a solid 4 hours, at which point we called it a day.
There were two exhibits that I found really interesting. One was the Pacific Spirits, which had really weird and interesting masks:
And really interesting slit drums:
The slit drums were surprisingly tall. There was a quote from an anthropologist who described the drums as having a "mathematical beauty" and went on to say:
The other exhibit I really liked was the last one we saw: Mammals of Asia. It had dioramas of taxidermied animals, with the background painted to depict the animals in their natural habitat. I really liked the combination of animals and background art.A remarkable feature of the music is the way it ends. A passage is abruptly severed in the middle, producing the effect of sudden flight and unreality, as if the music had not finished but had been spirited away and would suddenly return.
We also saw a poster describing changes coming to the Field Museum this year:
- SUE the T. rex will be de-installed (this had already happened since our last visit).
- A new dinosaur, Patagotitan mayorum, will replace SUE in the main hall.
- A hanging hydroponic garden will be suspended above the main hall.
- A special exhibit, Antarctic Dinosaurs!, will open in June.
All of that sounds really cool! We may be going back yet again later this year.
2. Word Search Puzzles
The morning of our trip to the Field Musuem, I had some time to kill before we left the house to catch the train. So I pulled out my big book of word search puzzles, which I've written about before, and looked for a puzzle to solve. I found a section devoted to major cities, which included an entire puzzle based on Chicago landmarks. How appropriate! So I worked on it for a few minutes. Unfortunately "Field Museum" was not among the words to find, but I managed to find all the words by the time we had to leave, with the exception of the 8-letter mystery word.
On the train ride there and on the way back I kept trying to think of 8-letter Chicago-related words, but I didn't come up with any good ones. When we got home Wendy took a look at the puzzle and within a few minutes had found the mystery word: Illinois. Ugh, how obvious!
We then worked on the St. Louis word search puzzle together, but this time I was the one to figure out and find the 9-letter mystery word: Cardinals.
3. Festival of the Sugar Maples
On Saturday we went to the Festival of the Sugar Maples, which is an annual event run by the county's conservation district. We've talked about going to it for years, but never actually did, until now. It's held in a forest of oak and sugar maple trees, where you go on a tour to see how maple syrup has been made over the years, from Native American tribes up to modern methods. It was really interesting to see.
The basic method was to drill a hole in a tree, insert a spigot, and hang a bucket to collect the sap. The conservation district had a more advanced system in place as well, where 12 trees were tapped and connected via plastic tubing, which ran to a big tub lower down the hill that collected the sap. Then they had a big hose they put in the tub to pump the sap up to a building at the top of the hill and into a holding tank. The sap is 97% water at that point, though. A big boiler in the building boils the sap for 8 hours, until it reaches just the right consistency of syrup that will have a long shelf life.
We got to taste a sample of syrup they made a couple of years ago during the festival, and of course it was delicious! We bought a jar of syrup produced in Wisconsin, and a couple of maple cookies, which were also delicious. I'm glad we went; it was an interesting and tasty tour.
4. First Attempt at Astrophotography
Thursday evening, as I was driving home from work, I saw an enormous full moon low on the horizon as it broke through some stray clouds. I realized that in a few hours, the moon would probably be at the perfect height to view with a telescope from our deck. And a couple of years ago I got a moon filter for my telescope that I'd never used; it allows only 13% of light to pass through, so the moon isn't so blinding.
After dinner I set up the telescope, put on the moon filter, and spent a while gazing at the moon. It was cool to see. The next day I realized I should have tried to take pictures of the moon by holding my phone's camera up to the eyepiece. I've heard you can get some surprisingly decent photos that way. Friday evening turned out to be another clear night, so I set up the telescope again, and tried to take my first ever astrophotography pics. Here's how they turned out:
I am rather pleased and shocked at how well they turned out. It was hard to keep my hand steady at just the right spot, which is why some of the pics show only part of the moon. I'm glad I took the pictures on the second night, as there were more shadows since the moon wasn't totally full, which made craters along the edge more visible.
5. Bike Ride
A few weeks ago I took our bikes into the shop for tune-ups. I picked them up on Saturday, and today we went on the first ride of the season! It was a short 2.71 mile ride around the neighborhood. The temp was in the mid-40s, so it wasn't exactly warm, but it was a sunny and clear day, with just a hint of spring in the air. And today was the ideal day, because the forecast says we might get up to 3 inches of snow tomorrow!