Fun half-day with the grandkids

Otto and I woke up early today. I managed two chapters of beta reading, and while it isn't great, I get to count it as progress. That may be all I accomplish, besides updating this blog.

Our granddaughter was sick last night, so we only got our grandson overnight. We checked this morning, and she was fine, so we picked her up on the way to the Discovery Center. People were lined up before they even opened the door. Not us, we let the line go inside, then walked up without standing in the cold. No sense in exposing our granddaughter to any more cold than we had to.

The attraction is the traveling exhibit of Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex. I'll be honest and say I was as excited as they were. We get some cool things in Boise, but usually manage to miss them. This time we decided not to procrastinate until it was too late.

Sue is the largest T-Rex ever found, and one of the most complete. They aren't certain if “she's” a male or female, but it's named after one of the folks who helped extract her from the ground. They refer to her in the female, and with no better evidence, why not.

It really is impressive. The fossils are in a museum in Chicago, and are too valuable to travel. This is a reproduction/replica. The castings are so accurate even some scientists prefer to work with them. They have a second head on a rotating pedestal that you can get up close and personal with. There are cross sections of bones you can touch and examine, and even some coprolites and eggs (under glass). Cool stuff. I haven't been to a museum full of this stuff in decades, but there are several good ones in Utah. For Boise, this is a big deal.

Of course I had to be a fan-boy too. It's pretty cool seeing the remains of a predator that's longer than a cross-town bus.

We stuck around and played with slime, created a tornado, and experimented with a television green screen. We learned about levers, pulleys, and the grandkids got to lay on a bed of nails. It's the Discovery Center, it's what you do.

We have reservations at a restaurant tonight, w/o grandkids. I doubt I'll get any serious work done today, and Sundays usually aren't too productive either. I'm off Monday, and have high hopes.

Hope everyone else is having a great weekend too.

A whole bunch of cool stuff

Today turned out to be pretty busy, and I want to share some of it with you. The first part involves blogging buddy, Victo Dolore. She's served as a beta reader for me, and I've appeared on her blog a time or two. The good Dr. Dolore writes fiction on occasion, and she's very good at it. Right now it's kind of a serialized story on her blog. It's a tale of intrigue and conspiracy. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself as a character in her story. I'm even a doctor, so cool points for me. Please check out her wonderful site. The story is relatively new, so it isn't hard to catch up, and she provided convenient links to help you out. Go see what Dr. Boyack gets up to on her site, and check out some of her wonderful posts while you're there.

Secondly, the Rave Reviews Book Club is holding their virtual convention right now. The wonderful Jan Sikes is making a presentation about marketing today, and she's using me as an example. (Don't know whether it's a good or a bad example, but hey – all publicity is good right?) I never signed up for this convention, because I had to work the last two days, and today I have company. They promised to archive the sessions for folks to view later, and I'll share a link here after I figure it all out. For today, maybe you'd like to stop by Jan's virtual author booth and check out her wares.

Speaking of company, Mom & Dad are here. I never get to hang out with them together and have to pick and choose. Last time I went to town with Mom. Dad and I usually watch a video or something, but today I made us different plans. We went to the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa. This wonderful museum has quite a few vintage airplanes from WWI through Korea. I'll share a few images here, and I hope it doesn't make the page load too slowly. The museum site has a pretty cool virtual tour that works great on my iPad, so you might want to check it out.

Not exactly Red Baron red, but it's the same airplane. This one is a replica, because apparently there are no originals left.

I thought this trainer was pretty cool. It has mechanical equipment below it so it can act like a mechanical bull. Note the vintage bicycles behind it. There is so much stuff here that you can spend hours and hours. A lot of it is small, and you have to pay attention.

The main attractions are the Warhawks. They both appeared in the movie Pearl Harbor, because they both still fly. Some of these kind of things are getting pretty scarce. The parrot one is the one they let us get a close look at today.

We didn't get close to this one, because some asshat decided to wax the floor. He told us not to go across his floor. Now they open at 10:00, and I understand they are all volunteers. If today was floor waxing day, I think an 8:00 waxing isn't too much to ask. Anyway, I got to enjoy it from afar.

This Mustang is pretty awesome too. They fared a little bit better, because the air racers like them. There are any number of them that have competed in Reno over the years. Still, seeing one up close is quite a treat.

We got to see Saber Jets, Huey helicopters, and even a Russian Mig. I won't slow the page down any more than I have to for some of that. We both got a kick out of the D-Day glider that someone made into a camp trailer. The museum bought it while it was rotting in a field, stripped off anything that looked like a camper, and have the framework on display. I hope they can restore it one day, but it was still interesting.

One of the small things that I saw several of were eight day clocks. I don't know much about them, except for an old saying, “Wound up like an eight-day clock.” I never gave it much thought until today, but now I want to know more.

My mind is reeling with ideas of things to have Lisa Burton pose with. She would look great with any of these airplanes, or painted across the nose of one. They also had a bunch of home front memorabilia, and hundreds of small things that would be fun. Lisa would look great posing with these things too, WAC uniforms, flight jackets, etc.

I think she'd look pretty damned cute in this cap too.

I already have one poster I'm holding right now, and two more on commission. Maybe I'd better pay the bills before I commission more, but these make for some great ideas.

Dad's in his 80s, and he's kind of limited as to what he can do. They have chairs everywhere, and we had to take a couple of breaks, but he had a great time. His older brother was in the Navy during WWII, so that made it more interesting. I'm so glad we decided to do this today rather than find a college football game. We can always do that, but this was unique and fun.

I hope you guys are having a great weekend.