I headed out on my own today for a few hours of sketching and looking and photographing and relative quietness. Dr. SmartyPants and the boys stayed home and hung out together - watching the end of the 24 hours of Daytona and playing the Wii.
I went straight to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and ended up spending most of my day there. I could spend a solid week there and still not see everything, I think. What a magnificent museum. It is so well-planned - such a nice flow, and really wonderful exhibits. I can't wait to go back and take the boys with me.
I sketched quite a bit, when I could find an uninterrupted space. This T-Rex was drawn from the ramp leading up to the Hope Diamond room. I used the balcony railing to support the sketchbook. You can't help but laugh at the T-Rex, you know. What useless little arms. Of course, if I were faced with one in real life, I doubt I'd be noticing those arms - not with that gigantic mouth full of teeth facing me down.
When I was in college, majoring in geology. I worked at the University of Alabama's Museum of Natural History. I spent a lot of time with dental picks and paint brushes excavating a mosasaur from the chalk layers that had preserved it so well. It was painstaking, exacting work, occasionally mind-and-hand-numbing, but I loved it. I had wonderful opportunities to go out into the field and search for fossils, and I found quite a few - shark teeth and mosasaur vertebrae, crinoid stems and trilobites.
'Cause I'm cool like that.
I'll be taking the boys back with me next week, I think. Maybe even tomorrow.
And I hope they love it as much as I do.
Beautiful! I'm so glad you had such a great day. And maybe when you take the boys there they can do drawings for us to see, too!
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P.S. you are kind of cool, you know.
Sweet relief...glad you had your day and time all for yourself. You know they'll love it...they're boys! Are you kidding me? Dinosaur bones, 'nuff said.
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