Entry tags:
What to Do With a 1-day weekend?
With Sunday reserved for football, having today off was mostly useless. The Tech Museum was open and the Star Wars exhibit was extended so I did the experiment of walking to the light rail stop (10 minutes, thanks to a very long stop light), and barely catching the 10:14 train because it arrived at 10:09 and did not wait longer than it took for us to get on board. I had to run to tag my Clipper card, and run even more because the train stopped at the far end of the platform, and there was only one car instead of the usual two. It took four stops before I got my breath back.
Got off at the Paseo stop, one stop before the closest to the museum, it took 40 minutes for what takes 20 minutes to drive. Paseo is a pedestrian mall, and I was hungry and thinking of stopping at Starbucks or the European bakery for some goodies, but didn't want to risk being too late to get a ticket at the museum.
The line was enormous. It was not helped by the crowd of morons gathered in front of the info desk, blocking not only the entrance to but the view of the ticket line. Once I figured I had to push through those people, it was about a block long line to enter the maze. 11:20 by the time I got a ticket and my entrance time was not till 11:45. At the entry, the Nice Lady said "you know that the Star Wars exhibit is in the other building?" Why no, there was no clue about that until right now. No biggie, just go out past the block-long line, out the doors, hang a left, around the corner to the attached next building. Got there at 11:30 because I'd stopped in at the cafe for orange juice and chips. There were two lines, one for xx:15 and xx:45 and one for xx:00 and xx:30. Again, poor signage had some 00 people waiting in my line, not knowing they could go right in.
The exhibit was large, and had a ton of stuff for kids, all kinds of experiments based on the science which was fictionalized in the movies. Many display cases of models used in the films, and some of the costumes. That part of the room was very dark, and the displays were harshly lit with halogen spotlights, and there was no flash photography allowed, so most of the shot I got are way high contrast. I had the lens pegged at 1.8, at 1600 ISO, and was surprised how few shots were too blurry to keep. Because of the crowds, especially the kids whose obnoxious parents would push them in front of others so they could take pictures of the kids in front of the displays, I did not get all the shots I wanted.
I like this one:
There's only one X-wing fighter, the glass display cases made for lots on interesting mirroring.
This model is about 6" tall
Lots of kids escaped parental supervision. Lots of parents just didn't give a hoot.
It took me an hour and a half to see everything twice. The full photo set is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
here.
I took another hour or so to go downstairs and then upstairs in the main building to see other exhibits, but the ones I had not seen before were all kids hands-on things. I wanted to get a better infrared photo of me, but the tag reader was broken.
Back to light rail, just missed the train, was too walked out to go anywhere for half an hour so I sat on one of the benches. This time the 3:14 arrived at 3:20. Figures.
Long slow ride home. On the ride to the Tech, the only nasty was one perpetually whining/crying baby. On the way back we had a series of smelly homeless people and too many bicycles for the limited number of racks.
Home, the garbages had been collected, and my new bigger garbage can was there, replacing the too-small one. I can finally throw away the packing materials and such which are not recyclable and have been sitting on the dryer and the laundry room counter.
On the carport stoop was a pair of boxes. One had the storage tub, which I managed to put the night table on top of. It's not a perfect fit, but good enough, and it raises the table high enough. In the other box was a 4-pack of 10-packs of Quaker low-cal oats variety individual serving pouches. My usual at-work breakfast. And a 200-count container of Centrum Silver.
Answered email and FB, then went to BASFA which meant I didn't have to make dinner. Very sparsely attended, but people still were talking among themselves when they should have been listening.gil_liant scored several good puns. My rumor of the week won, I know not why. I did not manage to find a place for this pun: A new musical - Web Site Story.
Home, Domino yelled at me until I gave her Fancy Feast. She is now curled up in the bed between the file cabinet and the postal stuff rack.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Giving a demo at 11
???
Got off at the Paseo stop, one stop before the closest to the museum, it took 40 minutes for what takes 20 minutes to drive. Paseo is a pedestrian mall, and I was hungry and thinking of stopping at Starbucks or the European bakery for some goodies, but didn't want to risk being too late to get a ticket at the museum.
The line was enormous. It was not helped by the crowd of morons gathered in front of the info desk, blocking not only the entrance to but the view of the ticket line. Once I figured I had to push through those people, it was about a block long line to enter the maze. 11:20 by the time I got a ticket and my entrance time was not till 11:45. At the entry, the Nice Lady said "you know that the Star Wars exhibit is in the other building?" Why no, there was no clue about that until right now. No biggie, just go out past the block-long line, out the doors, hang a left, around the corner to the attached next building. Got there at 11:30 because I'd stopped in at the cafe for orange juice and chips. There were two lines, one for xx:15 and xx:45 and one for xx:00 and xx:30. Again, poor signage had some 00 people waiting in my line, not knowing they could go right in.
The exhibit was large, and had a ton of stuff for kids, all kinds of experiments based on the science which was fictionalized in the movies. Many display cases of models used in the films, and some of the costumes. That part of the room was very dark, and the displays were harshly lit with halogen spotlights, and there was no flash photography allowed, so most of the shot I got are way high contrast. I had the lens pegged at 1.8, at 1600 ISO, and was surprised how few shots were too blurry to keep. Because of the crowds, especially the kids whose obnoxious parents would push them in front of others so they could take pictures of the kids in front of the displays, I did not get all the shots I wanted.
I like this one:
There's only one X-wing fighter, the glass display cases made for lots on interesting mirroring.
This model is about 6" tall
Lots of kids escaped parental supervision. Lots of parents just didn't give a hoot.
It took me an hour and a half to see everything twice. The full photo set is
here.I took another hour or so to go downstairs and then upstairs in the main building to see other exhibits, but the ones I had not seen before were all kids hands-on things. I wanted to get a better infrared photo of me, but the tag reader was broken.
Back to light rail, just missed the train, was too walked out to go anywhere for half an hour so I sat on one of the benches. This time the 3:14 arrived at 3:20. Figures.
Long slow ride home. On the ride to the Tech, the only nasty was one perpetually whining/crying baby. On the way back we had a series of smelly homeless people and too many bicycles for the limited number of racks.
Home, the garbages had been collected, and my new bigger garbage can was there, replacing the too-small one. I can finally throw away the packing materials and such which are not recyclable and have been sitting on the dryer and the laundry room counter.
On the carport stoop was a pair of boxes. One had the storage tub, which I managed to put the night table on top of. It's not a perfect fit, but good enough, and it raises the table high enough. In the other box was a 4-pack of 10-packs of Quaker low-cal oats variety individual serving pouches. My usual at-work breakfast. And a 200-count container of Centrum Silver.
Answered email and FB, then went to BASFA which meant I didn't have to make dinner. Very sparsely attended, but people still were talking among themselves when they should have been listening.
gil_liant scored several good puns. My rumor of the week won, I know not why. I did not manage to find a place for this pun: A new musical - Web Site Story.Home, Domino yelled at me until I gave her Fancy Feast. She is now curled up in the bed between the file cabinet and the postal stuff rack.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Giving a demo at 11
???