Month: January 2009

Does this ever  happen to you?
You’re heading down the hall to the bathroom and as you’re walking by the lunchroom, suddenly a water buffalo catches your eye:
yeah. I didn’t think so.

Like I suspect happened in many places, they set up a place for everyone at work to watch the Inauguration. The museum showed it on a giant screen in our large conference room and our Board Chair even provided lunch.

I don’t really know what to say about the ceremony. My friend Bridget commented that she exhaled a big sigh, and she thinks it may be from a breath she took 8 years ago.  I just hope the country has patience….there’s so much pinned on our new President and so much pressure, it’s more than any one person can live up to.

the women in my class were really curious why the heck I was taking pictures during our workout this evening. I told them about the project, and that my favorite picture of the bunch was this one of everyone’s feet. They were both amused and somewhat relieved.

This sign has become the bane of my existence. My nemesis. Adversary. Foe. Whatever word you choose, this sign and I clearly have it in for one another. It’s been on my lawn since July. Sitting there. Mocking me. Oh, how I loathe it.

Like most jobs, sometimes mine is a big pain in the ass. I certainly don’t get paid much. I have to work every Saturday. The commute is a drag.

However…

Once a month I organize a program called Critter Day, where different live animal educational organizations come in and do presentations. So I get to see a lot of creatures, which I love, and sometimes I get to hold them which is always super cool. Today’s organization was called Jungle Encounters. The owner, Debi, has a really fantastic assortment of critters including some very cool cats, a skunk, a fox, and this guy:

And this is why sometimes I think I really have a pretty groovy job.

I was asked to remove this image. If you really really really want to see it, let me know.
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It was bad enough this morning, with the thermometer hovering around 7 F as I approached the museum.

I’m not one to get all Whitney Houston and sing about how children are our future. But these two boys were just adorable. They are five years old and in the same Kindergarten class. They were palling around together and I asked if they were best friends. “No,” they said. “We’re brothers.” This seemed unlikely and as they explained their lives to me, I realized that they are not, in fact, brothers, but that’s what they call themselves.

Meetings can be serious business: decisions get made, plans finalized, policies change. And when it’s the Boston Children’s Museum Educators getting together, little toy cars are brought out and zipped across the table, which may result in a multi-car pile up…involving a reese’s miniature…

This is how an exhibit gets built.

First, someone comes up with an idea. Then a team gets assembled, consisting of people who know the content, other people who know how to build exhibits, other people who just know about a lot about exhibits. An advisory board who is also familiar with the topic will be organized.

Then a lot of ideas get thrown around: what topics do we want to include? what do we want visitors to learn? what kinds of  interactives should we have? how do we make it maintainable? how do we make it safe, and fairly indestructable? what do we want it to look like? what do we want the text to say? what colors do we want?

Eventually there are drawings and sketches and a model or prototype gets built, and we ask visitors a lot of questions. Then we go back and change things and try it again.

The whole process takes many months or even years, and it looks a lot like this:

I go to the library nearly every Monday on my day off. My usual routine consists of bank–>library–>grocery store(s), with the occasional post office, pharmacy or other errand thrown in. When I got to the library today, I had to park on the roof of the garage, which never happens. Anyway, when I got out of the car and looked out, all I could see were chimneys.