173: Science Museum of Minnesota

Today: our field trip to the Science Museum of Minnesota, bringing along Brianna to the Twin Cities, meeting Lane and Angie. CSI exhibit: following a crime scene, peering into microscopes, comparing fingerprints and the shape of footprints, learning about blood spatter. Elsewhere in the museum: swabbing for germs, touching a tornado (and watching it dissipate), competing in science trivia, gawking at dinosaur bones and fossils (my favorite), watching a rubber ducky pummeled by waves, remembering what it was to be eight or nine and wanting nothing more than to be swallowed up by the facts of science, the magic of long-ago.

More museum images here.


Dinner with the same good company, brie and green apples, spicy wings, the smushy texture of rice burgers. Oh, and the lights of downtown St Paul! A small ice rink, our fingers tingling from the cold, the statue of F Scott Fitzgerald keeping company with the nutcracker across the park.



More from today:

Found a quilt I had been hunting for days. All it needs is the final hand quilting, and I intend to get that done just as soon as my last two Christmas projects come to a close (which should be just in time for the actual holiday). This quilt was originally going to be a double sided pillow for Yvonne, a woman who was like a second mother to my sister and myself as we were growing up, but she died of cancer before I could finish. The lion for bravery and the turtle for patience. Now, I hope to finish it as a quilt for one of her grandsons, and I'd like to send it out early in the New Year.

The car luck continues. As in, bad luck. As we were returning home, I heard that crack, the sort that one hears on a pond as the ice eases, but instead, it was my windshield, splaying one way and then the other. Fortunately, the crack is on the outside and along the dash. And though I'm a little nervous at the idea of it traveling without being fixed, Ryan has to take it to the cities tomorrow as his is still in the shop and he needs to get to work. One thing I can say about these (now four) car issues, the frozen pipes, the lost lens to the eyeglasses, the garage door malfunctioning: neither one of us is in a tizzy over it. How easy it would be to swirl into a fit of frustration at these misfires, but the truth of it is this: we have each other, we are loved, we have a home, we are happy. Good family, good friends, good love. A crack in the windshield just keeps things spicy. Or rather, chilly.