Monday, July 31, 2006

rawwwrrr!


Today, being my day off, I went with Alison to the Natural History Museum to look at the dinosaur exhibit. The NHM was built by those wacky Victorians, which means it is an imposing edifice of dignity and whimsy--the exterior is decorated with little carvings of animals--the overall effect of which is completely destroyed by the herds of wild and unruly children running around inside. Now, I understand that an exhibit featuring (among other things) animatronic dinosaurs, hands on exhibits and dinosaur poo is not aimed at your mid twenties graduate student. BUT STILL. We paid for our tickets and I don't understand why the little monsters (the kids, not the dinosaurs) got to jump ahead of me to play with the electronic excavating game!!! The exhibit, Dinosaur Jaws, was about what dinos ate (plants, fish, one another...) and how scientists figured out their diet from fossils. It was interesting--the best part was discovering that my roommate was a dinosaur geek in a previous life and could correctly pronounce "Parasaurolophus" without looking at the helpful phonetic spelling. Then we walked through the museum's permanent exhibit. Alison was exclaiming over the bones and the displays, I was scanning the dates and geeking out about how the oldest fossil in the place had been dug up in 1780. (1780!! That's, like, DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!!!) I really enjoyed the museum, it's definitely worth a visit, but perhaps NOT when the kiddies are on summer vacation. I say "wading through waist-high groups of the little buggers" and for once I'm not exagerrating. And don't even get me started on the bloody pushchairs.

For mo' info: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

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