A Day And Night At The Museum

The last couple of weeks have been amazingly busy, both with work and leisure stuff. Colgate has been keeping me quite busy during the days as we get towards the end of the first quarter and some of the stuff we promised to get done is falling due. In addition, in the evenings, I have been doing some extra work testing the next release of my company's software. I don't mind the work - it is interesting to see the new features that are coming out and it helps you learn a lot about how it works. However, the combination of the two has led to a lot of late nights.

Last weekend did not really help the fatigue. A little bit of cleaning on Saturday morning followed by lunch at our local Indian buffet...then off to Atlantic City with a few friends for a night of poker. We arrived at the tables at 5:00 and played until 1:00, arriving back home at about 3:30. It was a lot of fun and a successful venture, finishing $130 in the plus columm after the night. I actually would have won more if not for a few unlucky cards that prevented me from winning a few bigger pots - having the nut flush and then having a 4th suited card hit the board to freeze the action; having the nut straight and getting someone "all in" only to find they have the nut straight also and having to lay down the 2nd nut flush after the 4th flush card hit (again) relegating my hand to 3rd best. Fortunately these did not cost me too much money, but could have certainly won a lot more had things worked out a little differently.

The prearranged plan was for me to sleep until 8:30 before rushing around and getting ready for ou trip toe the American Museum of Natural History. I was a little suprised when Mindy woke me at 7:30 to "see if I wanted to eat breakfast". Her comment was that it was only 30 minutes earlier than we had agreed. Strange...I figured that there was a whole hour between 7:30 and 8:30 and for me that would have been 20% more sleep! So, I decided to get up and get on with the day.

We drove into the city, arriving about 10:00. You can normally find a parking spot on the street at that time and with the "Fit" we should have a lot of options open to us, even with my very limited parking skills. We toured a few rooms showing some space exhibits and also the African and Asian mammal halls, before meeting a couple of friends at the Imax Theatre. The show was called "Wild Ocean" I believe, but it would have been better to call it "Sardine Fishing". It was really quite uninteresting I thought and the girls did not enjoy it much either.

From there, a few more exhibit halls and an overpriced, poor quality, cramped and rushed lunch were to follow, then off to a butterfly exhibit. They had created an indoor environment for them, nice and humid, and so it was a good chance for the girls to see a lot of butterflies up close. Fiona did not like the humidity or the smell, so Mindy left with her. Naomi had to be almost dragged away. After this, came the highlight of the day - the Cosmic Collisions show in the planetarium. This was really well done and a must see for anyone going to the museum. Naomi was still talking about it today.

After arriving home, we then watched the somewhat appropriate "A Night At The Museum". The girls (Mindy included) really enjoyed it, I had seen it before while trapped on a plane to somewhere. We then packed them off to bed, watched some episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and crashed ourselves. Looking forward to another week packed with work leading into the cricket on Thursday. Sleep can wait another week I guess.