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Busy weekend
Sep. 23rd, 2018 05:13 pmI'm totally not keeping up here. Once you fall out of the habit, it gets a lot harder.
Anyway, we've had a lot of stuff this weekend.
So Friday, we went to the Paul Simon concert with my father-in-law. It's allegedly the farewell tour (although that doesn't seem to mean a lot with many artists, so who knows). He doesn't really have a lot of the notes anymore, but still has all the showmanship. Two encores, both surprisingly long encores at that. Covered everything I wanted to hear, and also included a bunch of newer stuff, which I actually really did like. ("Wristband" is really fun.) Ended on the total downer of "Sound of Silence" - I think he was trying to shame us into doing something re: politics. But it's certainly a classic, and he'd taunted us with the intro earlier and implied he wasn't going to play it, so there was a certain satisfaction there.
Yesterday, Chuckro and his dad headed up to Uticon, so ARR and I were on our own. We took advantage of yesterday's gorgeous fall weather to hit two parks, the farmer's market, and the library. We went to a friend's birthday party. We played Star Wars Life. We ordered sushi. ARR was very tired and volunteered to go to bed half an hour early. I was very tired and pretty much failed at writing. So I went to bed early, too. And then had a series of vivid and horrifying nightmares all night, on topics ranging from government agents trying to get me to zombies to evil magical orb spiders.
Today, ARR and I braved the weather report of rain and headed to Field Station: Dinosaurs. I give it...mixed reviews. Ok, here's the thing - it's a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs, some of whom don't work particularly well, wedged into a random corner of a municipal park in Leonia. There's a pervasive scent of horse shit over about half of it, in addition to the latrine smell near the bathrooms. It's kinda expensive to do all the things. To justify the expense of the dinosaurs and the location fees (you can see all the dinosaurs in about 10 minutes) they have a ton of shows and activities. Many of the shows and activities are the kind of stuff camp counselors come up with on their own when told to entertain campers for fifteen minutes with no guidance or resources. (There's a "what color is your dinosaur" show that involves making a balloon T-Rex five times in five different colors. There's origami. There are field games.) The extra fee blacklight puppet show features adorable songs vamped like crazy because they had ten minutes of music but needed 20 minutes of show, and a number of the puppets were handpainted by someone with only mediocre art skills.
ARR LOVED it.
Yelp had warned it was like 90 minutes of entertainment, tops. So I actually delayed leaving for a bit, because I was worried it was going to rain. We just finally went anyway. (It didn't actually rain, mercifully.) We were there for four and a half hours. We went to nearly every show. (They did have an impressive number of them.) We walked the dinosaur trail I think five times. He thought it was awesome. He did ask why they sang the part about the northern lights so many times (at least seven or eight times) but still thought the blacklight show was the best and that it was beautiful. He insisted on staying for origami, even after he got dirt in his eye. He loved the T-rex puppet and the baby hadrosaur puppet. He could do 90% of the scavenger hunt from memory (I could only do maybe 40%) but we had to do it all anyway. We certainly came as close to getting our money's worth as anyone could. You needed your passport stamped at 6 activities to get a sticker, but he insisted on keeping going. (One of the staff members said she'd never seen so many stamps on one passport before.) So it was cheesy and overpriced and amateurish and seriously, it smelled like shit, but apparently I am the best mommy and he was delighted.
Anyway, we've had a lot of stuff this weekend.
So Friday, we went to the Paul Simon concert with my father-in-law. It's allegedly the farewell tour (although that doesn't seem to mean a lot with many artists, so who knows). He doesn't really have a lot of the notes anymore, but still has all the showmanship. Two encores, both surprisingly long encores at that. Covered everything I wanted to hear, and also included a bunch of newer stuff, which I actually really did like. ("Wristband" is really fun.) Ended on the total downer of "Sound of Silence" - I think he was trying to shame us into doing something re: politics. But it's certainly a classic, and he'd taunted us with the intro earlier and implied he wasn't going to play it, so there was a certain satisfaction there.
Yesterday, Chuckro and his dad headed up to Uticon, so ARR and I were on our own. We took advantage of yesterday's gorgeous fall weather to hit two parks, the farmer's market, and the library. We went to a friend's birthday party. We played Star Wars Life. We ordered sushi. ARR was very tired and volunteered to go to bed half an hour early. I was very tired and pretty much failed at writing. So I went to bed early, too. And then had a series of vivid and horrifying nightmares all night, on topics ranging from government agents trying to get me to zombies to evil magical orb spiders.
Today, ARR and I braved the weather report of rain and headed to Field Station: Dinosaurs. I give it...mixed reviews. Ok, here's the thing - it's a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs, some of whom don't work particularly well, wedged into a random corner of a municipal park in Leonia. There's a pervasive scent of horse shit over about half of it, in addition to the latrine smell near the bathrooms. It's kinda expensive to do all the things. To justify the expense of the dinosaurs and the location fees (you can see all the dinosaurs in about 10 minutes) they have a ton of shows and activities. Many of the shows and activities are the kind of stuff camp counselors come up with on their own when told to entertain campers for fifteen minutes with no guidance or resources. (There's a "what color is your dinosaur" show that involves making a balloon T-Rex five times in five different colors. There's origami. There are field games.) The extra fee blacklight puppet show features adorable songs vamped like crazy because they had ten minutes of music but needed 20 minutes of show, and a number of the puppets were handpainted by someone with only mediocre art skills.
ARR LOVED it.
Yelp had warned it was like 90 minutes of entertainment, tops. So I actually delayed leaving for a bit, because I was worried it was going to rain. We just finally went anyway. (It didn't actually rain, mercifully.) We were there for four and a half hours. We went to nearly every show. (They did have an impressive number of them.) We walked the dinosaur trail I think five times. He thought it was awesome. He did ask why they sang the part about the northern lights so many times (at least seven or eight times) but still thought the blacklight show was the best and that it was beautiful. He insisted on staying for origami, even after he got dirt in his eye. He loved the T-rex puppet and the baby hadrosaur puppet. He could do 90% of the scavenger hunt from memory (I could only do maybe 40%) but we had to do it all anyway. We certainly came as close to getting our money's worth as anyone could. You needed your passport stamped at 6 activities to get a sticker, but he insisted on keeping going. (One of the staff members said she'd never seen so many stamps on one passport before.) So it was cheesy and overpriced and amateurish and seriously, it smelled like shit, but apparently I am the best mommy and he was delighted.
